Chris Christie and Paul LePage are friends, Save Jerseyans, sharing not just a Republican affiliation and gubernatorial titles but also a decidedly combustible approach to interpersonal relations in the public eye.
Said another way? They’re smack talkers par excellence.
Their respective summer 2017 shutdown experiences nevertheless ended very, very differently.
Up in Maine, Governor LePage secured the elimination of not only a surtax but also killed a lodging tax increase supported by Democrats. He did it despite the fact that the opposition party controls Maine’s lower chamber; Republicans do have a slim majority in the Senate but the Senate President loathes Lepage and, we’re told, was openly negotiating with the Democrat House speaker and boxing LePage out of budget discussions.
What did LePage do? Go to work with a goal in mind. He masterfully worked with Minority House GOP members to overcome House and Senate Dems AND rebellious Senate Republicans. He also kept state parks and related government services OPEN during the shutdown to prevent an economic hit over the July 4th holiday weekend. It’s not a perfect budget by any means, but Maine taxpayers clearly got their money’s worth from their top GOP representative who clearly cares about their well-being.
Back here? In New Jersey?
Chris Christie didn’t shut down the state to stop a tax hike.
He intervened in an internal Democrat Party knife-fight, siding with the faction (Sweeney & Co.) that wanted to seize control of a private company (!) over the competing faction that wanted to *simply* steal a large portion of that business’s resources and redistribute them for government programming. He did it, presumably, to buoy a PR campaign that was already proving ineffective. Hobbled by Bridgegate and a failed presidential bid, Christie wanted a bunch of new charitable obligations for policyholders to pay for his opioid addiction crusade to land more GMA interviews. The Horizon debacle has been talked to death around here.
But Christie also shut down the state immediately and, at the most critical juncture of the shutdown drama, got caught sunbathing at his taxpayer-provided beach house. He then claimed to have not gotten “any sun” before the pictures leaked and the memes were unleashed.
It was a “Let them eat cake sand!” moment. An unforgivable mistake for a man once recognized for his extraordinary political acumen, a mistake which makes you wonder whether there still is a plan or if he’s simply throwing stuff up against the wall down the home stretch.
The end result of the Guv’s shutdown hubris? He was forced to fold his already weakened hand early, signing off on a budget that’s a Democrat dream outcome, chock full of goodies including $325 million in extra spending (e.g. for legal aid services, home health aide salary increases, weird pork goodies like $85,000 for a ‘Garden to Nurture Human Understanding’, and $125 million in additional school aid). In return, all he got for his trouble was more public ridicule than ever before and an extremely watered down #HorizonHeist bill.
Is it any wonder that LePage’s job approval ratings have averaged around three-times Christie’s own?
Maine Republicans HAVE a governor.
New Jersey Republicans have something… less than. And our slow, tortured march towards Illinois-style insolvency will continue as a direct result of Chris Christie’s deficits of leadership and an animating principle beyond his own personal political rehabilitation, all of which is glaringly obvious after this week’s objectively sad shutdown.
—
