Christie hasn’t helped New Jersey GOP win much

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie has been traveling the country to bolster Republican candidates in attention-grabbing events from New Hampshire to Arkansas, but he hasn’t had much success in getting members of his party elected at home.

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As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, he has raised more than $60 million. His efforts in liberal-leaning New Jersey have been lower key.

Those who say he has not done enough for New Jersey Republicans can point to last year’s election: Christie won re-election as governor by a huge margin, but Democrats escaped the legislative elections with their majorities in both chambers intact. In fact, since Christie took office in 2010, Republicans have lost two legislative seats. With Christie’s help, though, his party has picked up one New Jersey U.S. House seat.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this, where an incumbent Republican officeholder wins such overwhelming personal victory and his party as a whole fares very poorly,” said Richard Merkt, a Republican former state lawmaker who frequently criticizes Christie. He suggests that Christie is more concerned with his own success than his party’s.

Bill Palatucci, one of Christie’s most trusted advisers and a member of the Republican state committee, blamed the grumbling on “a small number of critics in the peanut gallery.”

He pointed to a long list of candidates he said Christie had helped and is planning to help through events and fundraising, including Rep. Frank LoBiondo, Senate candidate Jeff Bell and Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan.

In his first term, Palatucci said, Christie raised “well over a million dollars” for legislative candidates alone and nearly $20 million for the state party for candidates at all levels. Christie also signed letters and blast emails, posed for photos and recorded calls for “dozens if not hundreds of Republican candidates” from mayor to freeholder to legislator, he said.

Christie’s predecessor as governor, Democrat Jon Corzine, a former Wall Street executive who funded his own campaigns, made his presence felt in New Jersey politics in a much more significant way, personally donating more than $30 million to the state and local Democratic organizations and to individual campaigns.

Palatucci said Christie is involved in his own way.

“We didn’t do that with a lot of fanfare, but very systematically and aggressively over those four years helped people up and down the ticket,” Palatucci said, promising more help this cycle. “He’s been pretty active for some of those key races already and I’m sure he’ll be much more active once Labor Day comes and goes,” he said.

Indeed, Christie seems to have gone out of his way in recent weeks to try to counter the lingering perceptions. During a recent Q&A with reporters, Christie volunteered a list of state candidates for whom he’d recently helped or planned to help raise money, including Republican congressional candidate Tom MacArthur, whose race is considered among the most competitive in the country.

“Just last night I had a fundraiser for the Republican state party,” Christie said. “I mean, we’re doing those things every day.”

Bell, a Republican running for U.S. Senate against Cory Booker in November, said, like others interviewed, that he’s happy with Christie’s help, which so far has included a fundraising email Christie sent to his supporters and promises to do more.

In general, Christie has shown a preference for fundraising over retail campaigning for other New Jersey candidates. The fundraising stops do not appear on his public schedule and are typically not disclosed until after the fact — if at all, in sharp contrast to his RGA duties. Christie said candidates prefer fundraising help to a made-for-the-media walk on the boardwalk with him.

“We’re still working very hard on all those things and making sure that the people inside the state have the resources they need to communicate their message,” he said.

State Sen. Joe Pennacchio, a Republican, said in a Democrat-dominated state, Christie needs to cultivate relationships with opponents — and sometimes that means doing less than he could to help Republicans.

“He’s got to work with Democrats,” Pennacchio said. “That’s the political reality here.”

Some wonder what will happen to the party after Christie leaves office.

“He hasn’t used his position to help create the next group of leaders to make gains in the legislature, to make gains in local offices, at the county level, and to build a stronger party structure,” said Patrick Murray, director of the local Monmouth University Polling Institute.

“Whenever he leaves office here in New Jersey,” Murray said, “he will leave a weakened Republican Party behind him.”