From President Obama, who twice toured New Jersey with Christie
after Hurricane Sandy and then failed to endorse Christie’s challenger,
to the Democratic National Committee, which sent just one staffer to
the state to fortify local efforts, to major donors and high-profile
party leaders such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, powerful Democrats have
stayed on the sidelines in the blue state contest that top brass deemed a
loser from the start.
The
result is a Republican governor cruising to double-digit reelection in a
state where Democrats have a 700,000-voter advantage but are losing or
breaking even with Christie among independents, women, Hispanics,
and young voters, all groups Democrats typically dominate and which
Republicans will need to win over nationally to win the White House. The
script for Chris Christie 2016 writes itself, and Democrats will have
helped pen the first draft.
“When
we started looking at his reelect numbers, he was just above 50
percent. That meant he was formidable but movable,” said Patrick Murray,
director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Early on,
Barbara Buono could have appealed to the national electorate by saying,
‘Look, we need to bloody this guy up before 2016 because he’s the
biggest challenge going into that race.’ But she never was able to
articulate that…so Democrats stayed out of that race and Chris Christie
basically got a free pass.”
Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., was re-elected as New Jersey governor in a
landslide - 60-39 percent over his Democratic challenger, state Sen.
Barbara Buono - and virtually no one ever thought the outcome might be
different. For months, Christie held a commanding lead in the polls as
Buono failed to get her campaign off the ground.
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