With Christie’s Coffers Flush With Cash, Republican Challenger Wages Frugal Campaign

Leading by more than thirty points in the polls, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign war chest is overflowing with cash, his campaign announced on Monday.

Christie’s campaign has raised a total just shy of $6.2 million and reportedly has $3.4 million on hand as of May 3.   That total includes contributions from no fewer than 14,260 individual donors in all fifty states, though the vast majority of the governor’s contributions — some 85 percent of the total, according to his aides — were from donors within the Garden State.

State Sen. Barbara Buono, Christie’s presumptive Democratic challenger, had raised only $738,000 as of April 30, not including $1.02 million in matching funds.

At her current fundraising pace, it is unlikely that the little-known Buono will be able to raise enough money to qualify for the $2 million maximum in state matching funds for the primary — thereby becoming the only major party candidate for governor in the history of the state’s campaign matching funds program not to qualify for the maximum amount.

The blunt-spoken Christie, who accepted matching funds during his 2009 campaign, opted against public funding in this year’s primary.  He hasn’t yet indicated whether he will accept them in the general election.

Seth Grossman, Christie’s lone Republican challenger in the June 4 primary, has raised about $8,500 in his long-shot quest to unseat the popular incumbent.  Grossman’s meager total includes $1,000 raised on Sunday afternoon at a $25-person fundraiser at Caroline’s Restaurant and Bar in Somers Point.

A former city councilman and Atlantic County freeholder, Grossman told Uncovered Politics shortly before Sunday’s fundraiser that he’s “hoping to raise an equal amount for the remaining four weeks” of the campaign to help pay for yard signs, palm cards, voter lists, postage, and other basic campaign materials.

The amiable conservative acknowledges that’s not a lot of money for a major statewide race.

We just have to be frugal about things, said Grossman, a self-described “fiscal conservative” who presumably would govern in a similarly parsimonious fashion.

A caustic critic of Christie’s “crony capitalism” and profligate spending practices, the 63-year-old Grossman has been highly critical of the governor’s recent $1.2 million media buy.

“It’s all lies,” he says.

“First, Christie says he cut taxes.  But he raised state spending by 17%, put hidden taxes on our electric bills, and forced big property tax hikes in most Republican towns,” said Grossman.

“Second, Christie says he fixed the economy.  But every week, we see ‘For Sale’ and ‘For Rent’ signs and closed shops, offices, and businesses that were open the week before.

“Third, they say people are proud to live in New Jersey again— but United Van Lines says people are still moving out of New Jersey in record numbers.”

Grossman, who’s hoping for a large conservative protest vote in the primary, told Uncovered Politics that although “Christie blames whatever failures he admits to on a Democratic run legislature, his whole TV buy does nothing to encourage voters to support Republicans in the Legislature.”

The Atlantic City attorney might be on to something, quietly expressing a growing discontent and sense of frustration belied by Christie’s dizzying approval numbers.

New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the country with the average homeowner paying $7,900 in property taxes last year, making it increasingly difficult for many working-class, middle income and seniors to keep their homes.

Consequently, the state  now has the second-highest foreclosure inventory in the nation with one in every 14 homes sitting vacant (some, sadly, because the displaced homeowners couldn’t afford their rising property taxes).

While the housing market has improved slightly in most of the country, New Jersey is one of only four states where the foreclosure percentage actually climbed over the past year — something Christie’s admirers in the media fail to mention.

Under Christie’s watch, the state’s economic situation hasn’t improved much either.  In truth, his pretentious promise to usher in a full-fledged economic recovery following the “Great Recession” hasn’t really amounted to much.  It was just more hot air in a career marked by ostentatious and meaningless bluster. 

The unemployment statistics speak for themselves.

Though the state gained 8,000 jobs in March, dropping its jobless rate by a negligible three-tenths of one percent, New Jersey’s 9 percent unemployment rate remained dramatically higher than the national rate of 7.6 percent.

Only a half dozen states in the country currently have a higher rate of joblessness. 

Moreover, sixteen states had higher unemployment rates — several of them substantially higher — than the Garden State when Christie was sworn into office in January of 2010.  Ten of those states now have lower jobless rates than New Jersey.

At that rate, in another year or year-and-a-half New Jersey may lead the nation.

With 414,973 New Jerseyans currently looking for work — the real number, of course, is much higher than that — the state’s dismal 9 percent unemployment rate is only nine-tenths of a percent lower than when Christie took office. 

That’s not a lot to hang one’s hat on.

Grossman believes New Jersey can do much better.