New Jersey Governor Chris Christie addresses VA Consumer Electronics Association during a Leadership Series discussion at the Ritz-Carlton on May 1, 2015 in McLean, Virginia.
Source: Chris Christie to announce 2016 run
01:47 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and a New America fellow. He is the author of “Jimmy Carter” and “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.

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Chris Christie was once seen as GOP frontrunner for 2016

Zelizer: If Christie enters race, he'll have difficult road because of Bridgegate and New Jersey's economic woes

CNN  — 

This week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is expected to announce that he will be entering the contest to become the Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election.

Christie has traveled a long and winding road to reach this point in his career.

After his decisive re-election victory in November 2013, the governor seemed to be one of the strongest possible candidates within the Republican Party.

“Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey,” noted The New York Times, “won re-election by a crushing margin on Tuesday, a victory that vaulted him to the front ranks of Republican presidential contenders and made him his party’s foremost proponent of pragmatism over ideology.”

He was a popular, tough-talking Republican from a blue state with a decent record of policy accomplishments under his belt.

Julian Zelizer

He was perceived as one of the few politicians who could potentially unite the conservative and moderate elements of his party under one big tent. The media loved Christie, or loved to hate him, and many experts believed that he would be a formidable campaign fundraiser. His work with President Barack Obama after Superstorm Sandy made him seem like the rare politician willing to work with politicians from the other political party.

Upon winning his second term to govern the state, Christie said: “I know that if we can do this in Trenton, New Jersey, maybe the folks in Washington should tune into their TV sets, and see how it’s done. I know tonight, a dispirited America, angry with their dysfunctional government in Washington, will look to New Jersey and say: ‘Is what I think really happening? Are people coming together?’ “

But then everything took a sharp turn.

A bizarre political scandal emerged front and center right around the time that New Jersey and New York were supposed to be basking in the spotlight of co-hosting the Super Bowl.

A story that began as a tale of the government temporarily shutting down a normal access route to the George Washington Bridge in September 2013 and causing unbelievable gridlock turned into a saga of unseemly political retribution.

Members of the governor’s inner circle had sought revenge for the decision of a local Democratic mayor to refuse to endorse their boss. Although the investigation did not produce any smoking gun linking Christie directly to the decision to shut the tunnel, the inquiry depicted the governor’s office as highly politicized and filled with a shady cast of characters who didn’t seem to believe that there were any lines separating rough political behavior from unethical and possibly illegal conduct. Because the investigation has still not come to an end, it’s not clear whether Christie is out of the woods.

Today Christie is not the same potential candidate who the nation had once seen. The scandal has proved to be devastating to his standing.

In an Internet age when scandals can bring down candidacies within days, campaign contributors and party elites are leery about backing a person who could be vulnerable. Bridgegate has not ended.

The lawyer representing former adviser David Wildstein commented that there is “a lot more to come out” and saying that the governor knew more than he has admitted. No such evidence has emerged.

This is combined with questions such as the story recounted in the book “Double Down” of a thick folder from the 2012 campaign filled with information about the governor that reportedly led Mitt Romney to pick someone else for the vice presidency, making it difficult for him to gain solid support.

After Christie came to be seen as vulnerable, there were greater incentives for other Republicans to jump into the competition – and jump they did.

Although there are many reasons that Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Scott Walker and others moved toward entering the Republican primaries, the absence of a clear front-runner created a more appealing environment. Bush, according to Politico, has been conducting a stealth campaign to win over major New Jersey donors such as Lawrence Bathgate, who became disillusioned with their governor.

The result is that there is now a Republican field that is incredibly crowded and includes some big political names. Christie enters the competition with more people to defeat. The size of the field has taken away a number of potential donors, especially those looking for the most moderate candidate in the pack, and will probably make it harder to gain a decent amount of time (if any) in the debates. Playing the underdog can sometimes be a good role, but right now, it is more of a liability.

The governor still displays some of the virtues that made him attractive, such as being an effective communicator and showing some ideological flexibility at a moment when most in the GOP have gone rigid on the right. But those virtues are overshadowed by his problems.

And conditions in the Garden State haven’t gotten better.

When governors run for the presidency, their record in the home state matters. Just ask Michael Dukakis, who famously suffered in the general campaign against George H.W. Bush in 1988 when Republicans successfully challenged the claim that there has been a “Massachusetts Miracle.”

New Jersey’s economy has remained sluggish at best. The long-term fiscal outlook is bleak as a result of the state’s huge unfunded pension liability.

Christie’s approval ratings have fallen to 30%. If the governor still had the same national glow as in 2013, it might be possible to overcome the challenges that he faces in his own state. But a weakened candidate in a troubled state is a recipe for political disaster.

Christie has a long struggle ahead.

Some believe that it is impossible for him to win and that he is the only person in the room who doesn’t seem to realize how bad his situation has become. Regardless of whether the skeptics are right, Christie’s saga is a powerful warning to all politicians of how scandal has the potential to devastate the strongest of candidates.

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