Chris Christie (R) did not get a friendly reception in his home state on Sunday. If Christie sticks to the lines he’s being fed throughout the entire debate without straying, the media must refrain from commenting on his weight throughout the remainder for his campaign, and also has to comply whenever Christie instructs them to sit down and shut up.
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Governor Christie, who remained publicly confident that he would qualify for the Fox News/Facebook primetime debate despite poor poll performances, has said he hasn’t done anything special to prepare to go up against Donald Trump, who has been leading national surveys of GOP voters. The children of New Jersey are worse off educationally than they were when Christie took office. “I have been saying that since 2009. I’ve got the scars to show it. But I’m never going to stop saying it, because they never change their stripes”.
Christie answered, “The national teachers union who’s already endorsed Hillary Clinton 16, 17 months before the election”.
Christie didn’t hesitate, firing an immediate broadside against the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Christie has long tangled with public employee unions but has a particularly fraught relationship with teachers unions, frequently railing against their pensions and health care benefits.
The demonization of unions, including teacher’s unions, is a primary piece of the warped puzzle that makes up the Republican Party’s agenda, one dear to the New Jersey Governor’s heart, that seeks to privatize the public school system and turn education into a profit venture for the hedge-funds who are backing his campaign.
New Jersey voters see Christie as a good debater. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), who helped prepare President George W. Bush for debates by playing Democrats John Kerry and Al Gore.
On the state level, the New Jersey legislature is overwhelming Democratic: 60 percent of the Senate and 59 percent in the General Assembly.
Teachers unions, and the teaching profession generally, are a predominately female profession.
NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer said in a statement that Christie should resign as governor, chiding him: “He is a awful role model to the children that our members work so hard to protect, nurture and educate”.
“You want to stanch the flow”, he said as his Republican rivals watched from the front row of the crowded St. Anselm College auditorium. “Bully@chrischristie says he wants to punch educators in the face”, National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen-Garcia, an elementary school teacher from Utah, tweeted. The entire day was a great experience for the more than 60,000 people in attendance.
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Christie had requested a 45-day extension from the FEC.
