Three New Jersey newspapers have slammed Gov. Chris Christie's record as he campaigns for the White House. Photo by Molly Riley/UPI |
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TRENTON, N.J., Jan. 2 (UPI) -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may have garnered an endorsement from an influential New Hampshire newspaper, but the broadsheets back home are not rooting for him.
Two New Jersey newspapers -- The Asbury Park Press and The Courier News -- published staff editorials slamming Christie's track record as governor. Both editorials reviewed a joint reader survey on Christie's job performance. According to both papers, Christie received mostly C's and D's in many areas.
The Asbury Park Press editorial, published Friday, found three reasons for Christie's low approval ratings in New Jersey:
"[H]is absence from New Jersey due to his out-of-state travels to campaign for president; the widely shared, and largely accurate, perception that his positions on issues have shifted in order to make him more palatable to conservative Republican voters; and the sense that he has abandoned New Jersey while the state's main issues have gone unresolved."
The editorial slammed Christie for failing to resolve issues facing New Jersey such as "unaffordable property taxes, unfunded pension and health care liabilities, a depleted Transportation Trust Fund and school funding inequities[.]"
The Courier editorial, published Saturday, was not any more forgiving.
"The Christie spin on the campaign trail is that New Jersey's dissatisfaction is evidence that he's willing to make the tough calls on important issues, even if those decisions are unpopular," the editorial reads. "Nice try, but how many tough calls has he made? The kind that have delivered some needed medicine for the state's ills?"
The piece goes on to call Christie "a disaster on the environment," and "embarrassingly weak on gun control." It also criticized Christie for lacking in transparency, saying "the governor is widely and rightly seen as a secretive, devious officeholder with a taste for luxury and a thin skin."
That makes three editorial boards that have slammed Christie so far this election cycle. After winning the endorsement of the Manchester Union Leader in November, The New Jersey Star-Ledger criticized the decision. Star-Ledger editor Tom Moran reached out to Union Leader editor Grant Bosse to ask why the paper chose to endorse Christie, and then penned an editorial of his own.
"It's all about performance, not substance," Moran said. "What else could explain the fact that nearly two-thirds of Republican voters say their first choice is Donald Trump, Ben Carson, or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz?"
