As Christie rises, foes turn focus on the mess he's leaving in New Jersey

By Tom Moran

With just a month to go before New Hampshire votes, Gov. Chris Christie's opponents have begun whacking him over his dismal performance as governor.

Finally, someone noticed.

I don't think I'm the only Jersey guy who feels that the voters of New Hampshire are a pretty clueless bunch if they embrace Christie before checking with his home team.

They would find that a whopping 76 percent of New Jerseyans say that Christie cares more about himself than the state; that 69 percent say he'd make a poor president, and that 59 percent are so fed up they want him to resign today.

Put it this way: If Christie wanted to leave the state for good, he'd have no trouble finding volunteers to drive him to the airport.

During two trips to New Hampshire, and one to Iowa, I found that nearly all their voters are judging Christie solely by his performance on stage, where he excels.

Heads bob up and down as Christie claims that New Jersey's economy is robust, that the Bridgegate scandal is over, that the state's finances are rock solid, and so on. It's enough to make your head explode.

But the attack ads could pry open the door to Christie's real record. And it's been a torrent lately, with attacks coming directly or indirectly from Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio.

Christie says the attacks are a good sign. "They're coming after me because I'm doing well," he says. "Its good to be attacked. It means I'm in the game."

Fair point. Why would they waste their money attacking a guy who has no prayer?

But that's not the end of it. Because if New Hampshire voters do take a hard look at Christie's record, he's in big trouble.

This is the time bomb that's been embedded in this campaign from the start. Once a candidate gets traction, the scrutiny gears up. And for Christie, that could cut deep.

I was impressed with Christie during his first few years, as were most people in New Jersey. He signed a slew of bipartisan reforms that helped contain public spending at a time when that was a top priority.

And he made solid progress on education, with tenure reform and the robust growth of the best charter school chains in the state's poorest cities.

Give him that. It's not for nothing that he won re-election in a landslide.

Then everything collapsed. And we learned that while he may have the talent to be a good president, he lacks the character.

The turning point came when the party establishment begged him to run for president in 2012. He turned them down, but he was left with a bad case of White House fever.

By now, he's lost his bearings, like the mythical Icarus who flew too close to the sun.

The Bridgegate scandal was an early sign. It was all about an attempt to run up his margin of victory in New Jersey as a credential for a presidential run.

But the fever has deepened since then. Christie was absent from the state 72 percent of the days during 2015, a truly shameless total. And still, he attacks Rubio for missing Senate votes. Has he lost his mind?

If you wonder why New Jersey's transit system is such a mess, blame Christie's fever. He can't raise the gas tax because it would kill his campaign, even when the state's Chamber of Commerce sees no alternative to a tax hike of some kind. So he has proposed no solution whatsoever.

The result: Our crowded trains break down much more often, tolls and fares have skyrocketed, several crumbling bridges have been closed down, and the state's economy faces the risk of a body blow if the decrepit century-old railroad tunnel under the Hudson River fails. Keep your fingers crossed.

Christie's gotten sloppy in his second term, like the cocky star quarterback who skips practice. He slurps up luxury gifts from kings and billionaires, and makes the phony claim that they are all personal friends.

He flip-flops on meaty issues like gun control, Common Core, immigration, and Planned Parenthood.
He seems paralyzed by the state's budget crisis, with the credit rating dropping a record nine times.

In New Jersey, this act has worn thin. Polls show that even Republicans here don't like him, and that he'd be crushed in a primary vote in his own state.

One hopes that New Hampshire voters will soon become curious to find out why.