Chris Christie: three different outcomes are possible

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Gov. Chris Christie faces uncertain political future after Bridgegate
By George Amick, January 20, 2014

Gov. Chris Christie faces an uncertain future as he takes the oath of office tomorrow for a second term. How events play out in the Bridgegate scandal now under state and federal scrutiny will have a huge effect on government and politics in New Jersey in the years ahead.

At least three different outcomes are possible.

Outcome One: Evidence emerges that Christie lied in his repeated claims to have been “blindsided” by his appointees’ plot to deliberately gridlock the borough of Fort Lee — and you can stick a fork in his governorship. He’ll have to leave office, either by forced resignation or a process that mimics the federal model: impeachment by the Assembly and removal by a two-thirds vote of the Senate after a trial presided over by the chief justice.

Outcome Two: The probes turn up no incriminating evidence against Christie himself. He remains governor, but concludes that his hopes of winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination are over. (A sign that he may have begun to weigh that possibility was his assurance to a Shore audience last week that New Jersey “is where I intend to spend the rest of my life.”)

Already, his nonadmirers in the GOP are unable to conceal their schadenfreude, and a poll has shown him with his first-ever upside-down national favorable-unfavorable rating: 28 percent to 30 percent. Party leaders, primary-election voters and rich donors may reassess the wisdom of embracing a candidate who not only can’t control his closest aides but doesn’t know, or want to know, what they’re doing on his behalf.

Outcome Three: As above, Christie’s professions of innocence hold up — but the scandal fades from the news, and the larger-than-life personality that has intrigued so many recovers its appeal. His national political ambitions prove to be stronger than the storm.

Of the three alternative outcomes, the first would be the most dramatic — and the most disruptive. If Christie is forced from his job in the next few months, his lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, would succeed him.

Guadagno is recognizable as the person in the front row who led the standing ovations for Christie during his State of the State speech last week. Little is known about her personal political views.

Her governorship, moreover, would be limited in duration. If it commenced more than 60 days before a November general election, the voters would choose a governor at that election to serve the remainder of Christie’s four-year term. Otherwise, it would continue until the general election in the following year.

Guadagno could be a candidate to succeed herself, of course, but she’d have to compete with other hopefuls from both parties, including some of the prominent Democrats who were unwilling to make the race against Christie in 2013 but would slaver over the opportunity to run against anybody else.

Having three different governors in four years, a real possibility, would hardly contribute to smooth and responsive government.

For New Jersey, the best scenario would be Outcome Two. Here’s why:

It would leave in place a governor who had abandoned the national ambitions that turned out to be in conflict with his constituents’ best interests and wishes.

Instead, he would serve the second and final term allowed him by the state constitution, free to base his decisions, initiatives, vetoes and appointments on what’s best for his state and his own standing in history.

His policies no longer would be influenced by a perceived need to appease the Tea Party wing of the GOP. Irrelevant now would be the agenda of ultraconservative residents of Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, who have a lot to say about whom Republicans nominate for president but whose views on taxes, guns, climate change, the environment, social issues, Obamacare and the minimum wage have minimal appeal for the moderate voters of New Jersey.

Stay tuned. However it ends, this story will be around awhile.
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