Outgoing Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had a falling out with then-President-elect Donald Trump in November that cost him a position in the administration. Now, it is with his constituents and media that the embattled governor is having a falling out.
Time reported on Monday that the latest Quinnipiac University poll showed the governor’s approval rating has gone down to a record-low 15 percent. It is the worst survey result for a governor in any state over the last two decades. The plunge was deep from a high of 72 percent approval rating in November 2012 after Hurricane Sandy.
Praise for response to the storm
At that time, Christie achieved the enviable and sky-high approval rating because of his response to the storm. Five years later, the governor is on the opposite end of the approval rating spectrum. His low approval rating likely is linked to his Sunday photo showing Christie and his family enjoying the luxury of the use of the Island Beach State Park, while the rest of New Jersey residents could not use two state beaches due to the state government shutdown.
Christie, however, defended his family’s use of the beach during the weekend because as governor, he has access to two residences in the state. “The governor is allowed to go to his residences and I’m at my residences,” he told “Good Day New York” on Fox 5.
Christie added he announced last week that whatever happened to the pending state budget, which caused the shutdown, he and his family would go to the Island Beach State Park for the weekend, The New York Daily News reported.
Blames state legislature for unsigned budget
The governor stressed he did not order the closure of the beaches.
Rather, the state government shutdown was the result of the New Jersey legislature’s failure to pass the $34.7-billion budget for him to sign, Christie explained. The budget standoff was because of a bill to restructure Horizon Blue Cross Shield, an insurer in New Jersey after Speaker Vincent Prieto stonewalled voting on the legislation that would give New Jersey greater oversight of Horizon.
Like Trump, Christie used the publication by The Star-Ledger of his family picture lounging on the beach as an occasion to hit media. The governor called the front-page treatment of his family beach photo a “great bit of journalism,” The New York Post reported. He told Fox 5 mockingly that The Star-Ledger would get a Pulitzer Prize for catching “a politician being where he said he was going to be with the people he said he was going to be with.”
