Chris Christie’s Fortunes Fade After Bridge Plot Convictions
Chris Christie’s role as Donald Trump’s transition chief may be his last in politics, as guilty verdicts for two former allies further tarnish the New Jersey governor’s administration and bring corruption talk uncomfortably close to the Republican presidential nominee.
With four days before the presidential election, the timing couldn’t be worse for Christie, who is expected to campaign for Trump this weekend. The governor continues to say he had no knowledge of the plot to punish a mayor for refusing to endorse his re-election bid by closing access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in his town. During the trial, however, jurors were told that Christie was aware of the scheme and he was painted as a bully who rewarded loyalists and punished dissenters.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta on Friday said that the convictions should prompt Trump to fire Christie.
Ford O’Connell, a former presidential campaign official for Republican John McCain, said Trump’s strongest move might simply be to ignore the verdict until after Election Day, given the late focus on Clinton’s own investigations.
“The Democrats want to make this the latest thing that raises questions about Trump’s judgment, but it’s far too late in the game for that,” O’Connell said. “It’s only going to become an issue if Donald Trump wins.”
The verdict makes it increasingly unlikely that Trump would find a home for Christie, or that he would be able to survive nomination hearings in a Senate where Republicans may hold a slimmer majority after the election, O’Connell said.
“Christie is starting to hear footsteps in terms of the future of his political career,” he said. “If he wants to do something in the future this will be an albatross around his neck.”
Read more from Stacie Sherman and Terrence Dopp at BloombergPolitics
Donald Trump, 2016 Republican Rivals Picking Fights, Alliances To Survive
It’s the price of success this primary season: As New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie surges in the polls in New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary, he has drawn the attention of front-runner Donald Trump, who has started aiming some well-placed barbs accusing Mr. Christie of being a party turncoat.
But Mr. Trump is fighting a multifront battle. He also has to deal with the rise of Sen. Ted Cruz in Iowa, even as Mr. Cruz tries to fend off attacks from Sen. Marco Rubio, who in turn is fighting back attacks from erstwhile political friend and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
The crowded Republican field is looking ever more like professional wrestling’s Royal Rumble, which pits more than a dozen fighters against one another in the same ring. The fighters can square off one on one or declare truces, with two of them ganging up to try to oust another.
As the election year dawns, five candidates already have been tossed from the ring, narrowing the field to a dozen, intensifying some of the one-on-one skirmishes and testing the limits of some of the alliances.
“The nastiness very well could ratchet up tenfold,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist. “The two things to watch for are Donald Trump going ‘scorched earth’ on anyone that comes close to him in the polls, and the establishment circular firing squad in New Hampshire to see who is going to rise from the ashes.”
Mr. O’Connell said if Mr. Trump thinks he has a chance to win Iowa, he might go on the offensive. Otherwise, he will focus on his opponents in New Hampshire, where the Feb. 9 primary is turning out to be the key showdown for a glut of candidates.
Can Chris Christie Keep Dodging The Medicaid Expansion Bullet?
It may surprise some conservatives, but Ohio governor John Kasich isn’t the only Republican presidential candidate to expand Medicaid in his state under new Obamacare rules.
Relentless conservative opposition to the Medicaid expansion has largely frustrated the presidential aspirations of Kasich, Christie’s chief competitor in the hotly contested race to emerge from New Hampshire as an establishment dark horse. But though Kasich takes unrelenting flak for his decision to institute Obamacare’s expansion of the Great Society entitlement program in Ohio, Christie’s identical choice as governor of New Jersey has faced little national scrutiny. In fact, many conservatives outside of his state aren’t even aware of it.
“Christie’s hanging his hat on his ability to reform entitlements,” says national Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “All someone has to say is, ‘Wait a minute, how can we trust you to reform Social Security when you can’t even reform Medicaid?’”
Still, Christie can’t avoid the subject of his Medicaid expansion forever. If he performs well in New Hampshire and the GOP electorate moves away from its current focus on foreign policy, O’Connell says the Medicaid expansion could be “particularly problematic” for Christie. The New Jersey governor has built his domestic agenda around promises to roll back entitlement spending, producing a detailed plan that would increase the retirement age and cut off Social Security at higher incomes. By taking federal money from the very same system he now calls insolvent to pay off his own state’s debt, he risks being labeled a hypocrite. And his best defense — that he was a Republican governor doing the best he could with a Democratic legislature — may not be good enough for a conservative base tired of compromise.
With Lindsey Graham Out, Who Will John McCain Support In New Hampshire?
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s exit from the race for the Republican presidential nomination may sound like a “so what?” moment for anybody who only focuses on national polls to formulate political predictions, but his departure frees up at least one supporter who could play an important role in the nation’s first primary state: John McCain. The Arizona senator who had closely aligned himself to Graham's White House bid can now lend his support to any other candidate he pleases, and that vote of confidence could be a powerful message to voters in New Hampshire, a state that has been good to McCain in the past.
“Even though the John McCain style is out of vogue in this election cycle, the one place he has a big impact is in New Hampshire,” Ford O’Connell, a political strategist who worked for McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said, referring to McCain's general reputation as a traditional and respectful politician (the 2008 general contest not withstanding). O’Connell said that Graham and McCain have a long history together, and that the South Carolinian also spent a lot of time on the 2008 campaign trail to help boost his Southwest colleague's odds.
With that said, it is still unclear who might win McCain’s favor now that Graham has called it quits. The 2008 nominee may not throw his weight behind anyone else before the New Hampshire primary occurs, O’Connell. Instead, he’ll likely wait it out while commenting on their specific policy proposals. If there’s anyone who McCain seems most likely to agree with – and it is definitely possible he could still make a last minute decision in the week between the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire to tip the scales against Donald Trump – it would likely be one of two candidates who have been rising recently in polls.
“I promise you that, whoever he backs, it will not be Donald Trump,” he said. “I see McCain weighing in on issues, but, you know, if you had to look: I think [New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie and [Florida Sen. Marco] Rubio are likely.”
Read more from Clark Mindock at International Business Times
Terrorism A Priority For N.H. Republicans
Nearly half of New Hampshire Republicans rank terrorism among the top issues driving their choice for president, while just 17 percent of Democrats feel the same way, according to a new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll.
“The point is that voters want to feel safe,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told the Herald. “Right now it’s a bigger issue for the Republicans, but it could turn into a much bigger thing for Democrats depending on how world events unfold leading up to the election.”
In a clear sign that the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have Republicans looking to elect a president that will be tough on jihadis, 46 percent of those polled had terrorism in their top three issues, and 24 percent said it was their top deciding issue.
Less than 6 percent of Democrats had terror at the top of their list.
The disparity, O’Connell said, shows the increasing focus on terrorism by Republican presidential candidates is having an impact on voters. The constant use of the word “safe” during Tuesday night’s final Republican primary debate, O’Connell said, was no accident.
“One example of that is Chris Christie shifting from being a New Jersey governor to being a federal prosecutor with a history of prosecuting terrorists,” O’Connell said.
“Candidates want to talk about issues and policies, but at the end of the day there are certain buzzwords that will make voters feel better about them.”
Chris Christie In New Hampshire: Amid Attacks From Trump, Election 2016 Candidate Sees Rise In Polling Ahead Of State Primary
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie plans on doing Friday exactly what he’s been doing for months now: holding a town hall meeting in New Hampshire and speaking to and with his supporters there. His bid for the White House has put an emphasis on such events, where he is skilled from years of practice in his home state.
Christie has been largely discounted in the Republican 2016 presidential race so far, but his all-in, personal approach in the Granite State, coupled with the focus he’s placed on national security and terrorism, seems at last to be paying off. While still recovering from a local transportation scandal that made national headlines, he's been steadily rising in the polls and racking up endorsements. But the fact that his surge has invited attacks from front-runner Donald Trump may be the best indicator of his progress.
But, there’s another way to tell he’s doing well, aside from favorability polls. As Christie has seen his stock rise in New Hampshire, Trump has now turned his sights on New Jersey's governor. Revisiting the “Bridgegate” debate, Trump has recently been telling supporters at rallies that Christie knew about the traffic closure as it happened.
“You know that he is doing well because Donald Trump is starting to say he’s guilty on the bridge,” said Ford O’Connell, a former adviser for Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign who is unaffiliated with a 2016 race.
Christie’s potential return to grace can be compared to McCain in 2008, when the Arizona senator won New Hampshire after months of poor polls, O’Connell opined. In that cycle, McCain was widely viewed as the front-runner going in, but he dropped dramatically in the polls in 2007 because of his support for adding troops to the Iraq War. He eventually won the nomination. “There are some similarities in the sense that the path Christie is taking, he started out as one of the top two then he got slimed with ‘Bridgegate’… and now he’s on his resurgence.”
Christie’s rebound can be attributed to several additional factors, political analysts and observers said. New Hampshire prides itself as being a state that thinks independently and values one-on-one interaction between presidential hopefuls and voters.
Read more from Clark Mindock at International Business Times
Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee Relegated To Undercard At Next Republican Debate
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee have been demoted to the undercard for next week’s prime time Republican presidential debate, while Sen. Lindsey Graham and former New York Gov. George E. Pataki learned that they did not get an invite — stoking speculation as to whether their sputtering campaigns can survive the damaging blow.
Fox Business Network announced Thursday that businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson will take center stage at the two-hour event in Milwaukee. The debate, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. EST, is the fourth of the nomination race and also will feature Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, who have picked up momentum.
Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist, said the candidacies of Mr. Christie and Mr. Huckabee could be doomed “because of the stigma attached to being on the undercard, and we are roughly 80-plus days to the first nominating contest.”
“There just is not enough time to recover,” Mr. O’Connell said. “Politics is all about perception, and if you are not in the prime-time portion of the debates, it is going to be very hard for voters to get excited about you given the size and scope of the current field.
“Put it another way, how does getting demoted to Pawtucket help you make a MLB all-star game?” he said, alluding to the Boston Red Sox AAA baseball affiliate in Rhode Island.
Chris Christie Takes Campaign Break To Visit Drug And Alcohol Treatment Program In Paterson
Governor Christie took a break from his presidential campaign to visit a Paterson drug and alcohol treatment program Tuesday afternoon to highlight the work of a task force he appointed one year ago to combat addiction in the state.
Tuesday’s event followed several media appearances by Christie, and Gov. Scott Walker’s announcement Monday that he was suspending his presidential campaign. Christie isn’t showing any signs that he plans to follow Walker or former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in dropping out.
While Christie has pushed to put a focus on addiction treatment and other issues – including overhauling Social Security; reforming the tax code; and bolstering the country’s military – his campaign has been struggling to gain traction.
Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist who worked on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said Christie has more hurdles to overcome than the other Republican candidates because Democrats worked so hard to smear his reputation in the wake of the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal.
“The traditional rules of rising to the top don’t apply to Christie because he’s still battling the perception the Democrats labeled on him beautifully of being damaged goods,” O’Connell said. “He has to turn in two or three of these good debate performances because he has to dig himself out of a bigger hole than a lot of these other candidates.”
And in order to remain relevant ahead of the next debate in Colorado on Oct. 28, O’Connell said Christie needs to raise money. Though he noted Christie’s campaign has been smart by keeping its staff slim – unlike Walker who blew through the funds he raised – and by relying largely on a super PAC to run ads supporting his bid.
He said Christie has an opportunity with Walker dropping out of the race and donors looking for someone to back other than frontrunner Donald Trump.
“The best thing he has going for him is Jeb Bush isn’t gaining traction and John Kasich didn’t light the world on fire in the last debate,” O’Connell said. “Where the money people are looking is who can take on Trump.”
O’Connell said the question is whether Christie can convince the big donors to back him becayse many donors are “keeping all their options open.”
Donald Trump Takes A Hit In Debate
A group of neutral observers almost unanimously agreed Thursday night that Donald Trump fared poorly in the second Republican presidential debate. The big winners in the eleven-candidate extravaganza, most felt, were Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie.
Most in the group also gave high marks to Marco Rubio, for his grasp of foreign policy.
Several, however, noted that Trump thus far has not been hurt in polls by bad performances and cautioned against “instant analysis” of the CNN-sponsored show-down at the Reagan Presidential Library.
My group included pundits, an historian, a pollster, and political consultants.
Almost all in the group cited moderator Jake Tapper’s questions about the tycoon hopeful’s cutting comment on her looks and Fiorina’s withering reply: “ I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said."
“Carly resonated on woman’s issues and her interchange with Trump concerning his unsavory comments was a homerun,” GOP political consultant Ford O’Connell told me soon after the debate’s conclusion, “Her knowledge of foreign policy given that she is an outsider really turned some heads.”
Next to Fiorina, the candidates the group felt gained the most from the debate was Christie.
“He made the American people the focus and not the candidates,” O’Connell agreed, “When he interrupted the Trump/Fiorina squabble on their personal successes — Christie was right to steer the focus to the struggling middle class. That said, given his low standing in the polls, I am not sure it will change his sagging fortunes. Christie is probably slapping himself for not running in 2012.”
A Tag-Team Effort Needed To Topple Donald Trump In Debate
GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s three biggest threats tonight could come from a re-energized Jeb Bush, a surging Carly Fiorina out for blood after the New York billionaire’s “look at that face” put-down, and a combative New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with little left to lose, political observers told the Herald.
But even that might not be enough to knock off the real estate and casino mogul, said one Republican strategist.
“I don’t think one of them can take out Donald Trump — it has to be a concerted tag-team effort,” said GOP operative Ford O’Connell. “He’s basically defied political gravity.”
As for Trump himself, O’Connell said he should focus on the two other candidates splitting the rest of the anti-establishment vote — Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who consistently comes in second in the polls.
“What Trump wants to do is consolidate the outsider vote,” said O’Connell, noting the trio of non-pols in the race regularly draw more than 50 percent of support in polls. “If he does that, he knows he can be one of the final two candidates, no matter what.”
