Analysis: Chris Christie is a Man Without a Mandate

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christie4Paul Mulshine of The Star Ledger reports:

It’s wonderful to watch democracy in action, and I know I’ll sleep better as a result of having witnessed this campaign for governor. I’ll just think back on the speeches and I’ll be out before my head hits the pillow. Has there ever been a year in which two candidates had so little to say about issues of such importance? If so, I can’t recall it.

The winner last night, Republican Chris Christie, managed to get through the entire campaign without taking a single principled stand on a single issue. He was against waste, fraud and abuse. He was against corruption. He was in favor of tax cuts. And that was about it.

As a result, Christie can’t claim a mandate. That’s not just because he won by such a small margin in what should have been a runaway. It’s also because you can’t win a mandate to do nothing – which is what he promised to do.

As for his opponent, Jon Corzine honestly seemed to believe in his pie-in-the-sky promises. Despite his background as a hard-numbers guy on Wall Street, Corzine lives in a world where everyone believes in the gauzy goals of the progressive movement. A telling moment came late in the campaign when the New York Times interviewed both candidates for a big pre-election piece:

“Mr. Corzine seemed almost resentful that he was not more appreciated by voters or the news media, citing unsung accomplishments like the passage of a civil union law, paid family leave and the abolition of the death penalty,” the article stated.

Note the assumption on the governor’s part. On the death penalty, for example, a Quinnipiac Poll showed 78 percent of New Jersey residents favored keeping it for the most violent murders. Yet Corzine expected us journalists to congratulate him for holding a position opposed by the majority of our readers.

The governor’s sincerity was the key difference between him and Christie, and I suspect it’s the reason Corzine managed to remain competitive in a race that should have been an easy victory for any Republican.

As for Christie, by playing it safe he deprived himself of any chance to remake the political power structure of the state. He will come into office with a Legislature that looks pretty much like the Corzine Legislature. He will be able to prevent that Legislature from enacting any more of the expensive programs Corzine proposed, such as universal preschool and universal health care. And that’s certainly something.

But as for dealing with the major problems facing the state, he remains a blank slate. One of his most daring proposals during the campaign was to push for creation of the office of Auditor General – i.e. to push for someone to make the sort of cuts in government the governor should be making.

Then there was zero-based budgeting. Zero-based budgeting is a gimmick that Jimmy Carter employed in the 1976 presidential election. For a few months after that election, politicians all over America were talking about this great new idea that called for starting every budget year with a clean slate. Every employee’s job was on the cutting block.

Then the pols realized that they couldn’t actually get rid of those employees. And that was the end of zero-based budgeting. Until the Christie campaign resurrected it.

None of those gimmicks will be of the slightest help in dealing with the debt this state faces. Christie will take office under pressure to do what his predecessors did – search around every year for one-shot gimmicks to balance the budget. He’s already agreed to the worst one-shot of them all, a one-year delay in $2 billion worth of payments into the state pension funds. That pushes the estimated bankruptcy date of the fund a year closer.

But don’t worry, he’ll restore your property-tax rebates – even if the billions he’ll need are in effect borrowed. Oh yeah, he’ll also cut the income tax that funds those rebates – across the board and for everyone.

It’s not merely that such programs are impractical. It’s that if he tries to enact them he will be ceding the role of responsible adults to the Democrats. And I suspect the South Jersey Dems who are rising to prominence this year will be glad to take that role. That would be political boss George Norcross, whose brother Donald won an Assembly seat last night, as well as state Sen. Steve Sweeney, the iron worker who is expected to become the next Senate president.

Christie may not have a mandate, but I suspect those guys think they do. And the fighting that will ensue should be much livelier than the campaign we just witnessed.

{Star Ledger/Matzav.com Newscenter}


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