Will A Trenton Triumph Cap Christie's Climb?

(And by the way, I also posted over here concerning another matter close to home.)

The New York Times reports here on something that had been anticipated for some time, and that is the entry of former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Chris Christie into the race for governor as a Republican primary candidate.

Although Christie did obtain convictions as U.S. attorney against Republican office holders in Monmouth County, this Times story from last November also tells us that Christie made a name for himself primarily by prosecuting (and convicting) high-profile Democrats, including former Newark mayor Sharpe James and John A. Lynch Jr., former president of the State Senate.

And the November Times story features the following quote which I suspect will come back to haunt the current governor…

“Since President Bush appointed him U.S. attorney, Chris Christie has been a strong contributing actor” in efforts to improve the ethical standards of New Jersey politics, Mr. Corzine said.

Christie has conducted the typical slash-and-burn, politically-motivated Repug inquisitions into Democrats in the past that has definitely warmed the cockles of Bushco’s coal-black hearts, often engaging in theatrical tactics in the process, such as noted here when, as the story by Times Reporter David Kocieniewski tells us, “Mr. Christie’s office…began an investigation of Senator Robert Menendez in September 2006, two months before the election in which Mr. Menendez was seeking a full term.”

(It turns out that Menendez had leased a building to a social service agency for whom he had obtained federal financing, which Menendez had cleared through the Congressional Ethics Office, as the story tells us, something Christie could have learned himself before he decided to waste taxpayer dollars investigating Menendez, though, based on this, filing the charges against the Dem senator saved Christie’s job.)

The story with the Menendez note, by the way, deals chiefly with how Christie “drew the attention of the Justice Department’s criminal division and Congress after awarding tens of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to his friends and political allies” (love that pic of Ass-Croft in the story, by the way).

To be fair, though, Christie has vented his wrath against Republicans as well on occasion; in the same story where we learn about the Menendez investigation, we also find out that…

In 2002, when Mr. Christie’s office won an indictment against the Essex County executive, James Treffinger, a popular Republican, he was not permitted to surrender like most elected officials who find themselves in similar circumstances. Instead, Mr. Treffinger, who was about to begin a campaign for the United States Senate, was arrested and spent more than six hours in handcuffs and leg shackles.

Mr. Christie’s aides said that the decisions on how to arrest and detain Mr. Treffinger were made by the United States Marshal’s Service out of concern that Mr. Treffinger might have access to a gun.

But politicians and lawyers involved in the corruption case say that they knew that an informant had secretly recorded Mr. Treffinger making a vulgar derogatory comment about Mr. Christie’s hulking frame, and some former Treffinger aides contend that his harsh treatment was a payback.

It should also be noted that Christie benefitted from Dubya’s victory in the ’04 presidential election (not going to get into Ohio, I promise); as this Times analysis tells us, had Christie chosen to run in ’04, he would have competed in a field with former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, perpetual Repug candidate Doug Forrester, and State Senator and former T.V. anchorwoman Diane Allen (all three considered to have “star power” for the Repugs).

This time around, Christie will have to compete in a primary also, but he’ll have the James and Lynch convictions to use for bragging rights, as well as the fact that, though no charges were brought against former governor Jim McGreevey, he was referred to prominently in the indictment of a donor (Charles Kushner) who pleaded guilty to extorting campaign contributions.

Also, Christie is definitely no “wallflower” in the spotlight; this tells us how he phoned in to a Repug-friendly talk radio show and tried his best to tie Jesse Jackson, Jr. to the Blago scandal (the Blue Jersey post also provides a summary of how Christie ended up as a U.S. attorney to begin with – think “raising big dough for Bush/Cheney in 2000” and you go to the head of the class).

So we’ll see how Christie fares first in the Repug primary, and then if he emerges as the party standard bearer, I’m sure there’ll be stories and posting material galore.

And it should be a reasonably fair fight, even for Jersey standards, since, with a Dem attorney general in charge in Washington, Corzine won’t have to worry about being served a subpoena after mysteriously being named as “a person of interest in an ongoing investigation” in the timeframe of about September or October next year before the November election.