Parsippany, N.J.
Now this was a Jersey party. A Bruce Springsteen cover band blasted riffs by the stage. The open bar was mobbed. Ties were loose, and the Seton Hall College Republicans couldn’t stop dancing. The polls had closed hours before, and the crowd milling by the empty podium in the hotel ballroom was electric. It looked like their man, Republican Chris Christie, would soon be declared the 55th governor of New Jersey. “The numbers I’m seeing, town by town, county by county, are very encouraging,” said state senator Joe Kyrillos, Christie’s campaign chairman, to cheers.
Surveying the scene, and standing on the risers in the back with his hands in his pockets, was Tom Kean Sr., the venerable Republican who served as governor of the Garden State from 1982 to 1990. With crinkled eyes and a wide smile, Kean leaned in and remarked on how “a lot of things have changed in a year.” Oh, how right he was.
Last year, President Obama won New Jersey handily, coasting to a 15-point victory over John McCain. Last night, just before Tuesday turned into Wednesday, Christie, a former federal prosecutor, won a hotly contested gubernatorial race against incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, by more than 100,000 votes in a heavily Democratic state.
“I know the national implications,” said Kean. “Obama’s main implication is that he came in here so often. If he gets blamed, so be it.” Jay Webber, the Republican state chairman, agreed. “When President Obama came in here on Sunday to campaign for Corzine in both Newark and Camden, after numerous previous visits, he began to own also the failures of a failed governorship.” Yet both men said that Christie’s victory was not some simple knee-jerk reaction to unpopular policies in Washington. Remember, they said, something like a Chris Christie win doesn’t happen in these parts too often. And when it does, said Kean, it’s best to appreciate the real reasons why such a campaign succeeded.
Until last night, a Republican hadn’t been elected governor of New Jersey in over a decade. And the state GOP’s last big win came in 1985, when Kean was re-elected in a landslide with over 70 percent of the vote. Kean said that’s Christie’s message in 2009 echoed his own from the 1980s.
“Christie’s got the old message that resonates in this state — that if you really want to create jobs, then you have got to cut some taxes, you’ve got to show that people can afford to live here, you’ve got to help people own their own home, and you’ve got to have the kind of economy that’s going to flourish,” said Kean. “That message really brought the middle class to Christie and helped lead independents to break toward the Republicans.”
Christie didn’t try to conceal his social-conservative views, but he didn’t go out of his way to broadcast them, either. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who stopped by the Parsippany hotel late last night, emphasized that point. “Chris Christie didn’t hide,” said Steele. “He didn’t try to dress it up differently. He didn’t try to be Democrat-lite in a Democratic town. He said, ‘This is who I am.’ People respected that.”
As the hour grew late, cell phones and faces lit up around Christie headquarters. Kean, also a former university president, mingled with student volunteers. Another former GOP governor, Christine Todd Whitman, chatted with friends near the side of the ballroom. Reporters pounded cups of coffee, trying to type over the sounds of the raucous crowd boogying to the B Street Band (not a typo) from Asbury Park. Then independent gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett appeared on the two screens besides the stage. As he conceded, boos could be heard — since Daggett, a former Kean-administration official, had siphoned off some Christie support. In the end though, Daggett received only 6 percent of the vote, well down from his poll numbers in September and October.
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