New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got a truckload of bad press Tuesday morning on his tenure leading his state, and how his campaign for the White House is a long shot, just ahead of his announcement that he’s running for president.
The Washington Post on Tuesday described Christie as a “faded Republican star” with “wilted prospects.”
Christie “seemed almost checked out last week when he announced the departure of the three cabinet officials,” said a New York Times story.
Noting Christie’s popularity during the 2012 cycle, USA Today said his “former front-runner status is a remnant of the seemingly distant political past.”
Christie has seen his star power diminish, largely due to his administration’s entanglement in the politically motivated George Washington Bridge lane closures in 2013. The governor himself was never implicated in the scandal, but some of his top-level staffers and allies were.
Before that, Christie enjoyed a long, charmed relationship with the press, which relished his brash and outspoken personality at public town hall-style gatherings.
“I think when you’re riding high, it’s easier to have a playful, friendly relationship with the press,” said David Catanese, senior political writer for U.S. News and World Report. “Remember he was the belle of the ball on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’? Then MSNBC went all in covering Bridge-gate and that soured. Obviously it doesn’t help when you’re consistently calling members of the media stupid or lazy.”
Christie was known before the scandal to be good friends with “Morning Joe’s” Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, and co-host Mika Brzezinski. He often appeared on their show.
But in a November New York Times profile of Christie, he complained that the show had taken a turn.
Asked specifically about Scarborough and Brzezinski, Christie said in the Times piece, “It seems to me there is a completely different approach to me than they were approaching me in the past.”
His public polling numbers have also fallen. Ahead of 2012, Christie was seen as a top contender for the Republican presidential nomination, which he declined to pursue. Now, the RealClearPolitics average of national polls has him in eighth place (4 percent) among the declared GOP presidential candidates.
One national politics reporter suggested that it’s not the coverage of Christie that changed.
“Though the tone of national Christie coverage shifted dramatically in January 2014, I don’t think it’s necessarily accurate to suggest that he wasn’t covered aggressively or fairly before then,” said the reporter, who requested anonymity. “I think that what changed is the negative reports started to stick and impact his polling and reputation, whereas before Bridge-gate he could ignore or dismiss negative press and be on his way eating donuts on late-night TV.”
Another political reporter based in New York backed up that point, saying Christie may invited any perceived shift in tone from the media.
“Yeah he’s getting negative coverage but it’s not necessarily unfair given the full context of the candidate and his administration,” the reporter said. “He is openly combative; was just embroiled in the pettiest corruption scandal in recent memory; is not generally liked by the GOP electorate; and is not really in possession of an outstanding record back home. I’m not sure what the media is supposed to do besides what it is already generally doing.”
