North Charleston, S.C.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says he never backed the confirmation of Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor despite a statement from his office at the time offering his support. In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD shortly before the debate here Thursday night, Christie denied he ever supported Sotomayor and said he was unsure where the 2009 statement of support from his office had originated.
During the debate, Senator Marco Rubio, claimed Christie had “endorsed many of the ideas that Barack Obama supports,” including “the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor.”
Christie responded with a categorical denial, saying: “I didn’t support Sonia Sotomayor.”
The controversy cast a shadow over an otherwise solid debate performance, as fact-checkers quickly pointed out Christie’s contradictory language on the Barack Obama’s controversial appointment in 2009.
Here is the backstory and the TWS exchange with Christie from Thursday afternoon.
In appearance on CBS “Face the Nation” last Sunday, January 10, host John Dickerson asked Christie about his endorsement of Sotomayor.
“Another challenge to you, and conservatives in New Hampshire are bringing this up, they say you’re not strong enough on judges. They said you supported a Democrat as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and you voiced support for Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court.”
Christie denied he had backed Sotomayor. “I didn’t voice support for Sonia Sotomayor,” he said.
But a statement from Christie’s office at the time, released as the Senate considered her nomination, tells a different story. While Christie said Sotomayor “wouldn’t have been my choice,” he nonetheless said she had “more than proven her capability, competence and ability” and called for her to be confirmed.
When we asked Christie about this during a 35-minute interview a few hours before the debate here on Thursday, he insisted that he hadn’t supported her nomination.
“All I said at the time was that she was qualified,” he told me. “My quote at the time was that she was qualified.”
We read him part of his statement. Here is our exchange:
Christie’s spokeswoman, Maria Comella, noted that there were two different statements, one of which included the language we’d asked about and another “where he got asked and he says, ‘I don’t personally support her.'”
The rest of the exchange on Sotomayor follows in its entirety:
The Christie campaign pointed us to a statement from the New Jersey Democratic Party accusing Christie of opposing Sotomayor.
It cites as support a response from Christie gave to Malzberg. “She wouldn’t have been my choice. Absolutely not. Not my kind of judge.”
Christie says he’s not concerned that these kinds of questions will erode the main rationale of his candidacy, that he is a tell-it-like-it-is candidate. “This is the nature of campaigning in presidential politics,” he said.
Christie says if he were elected president he’d seek to nominate justices like Samuel Alito and would seek Alito’s counsel as he considered any open seats. “He’s the guy on the Supreme Court who I respect the most.” Alito, who like Christie served as a US Attorney, “is the best conservative on the Court,” Christie says.
“He’s the guy I would call over to the White House and say: ‘Justice, tell me the people on the circuit courts that you respect the most. You see all those opinions coming up from the circuit to you, who are the really smart, reliable conservatives that you see out there? And give me some names to sit down with some people.”
Christie, who says he reads in detail Supreme Court opinions on cases that interest him, says he appreciates the reasoning of Justice Stephen Breyer, though he rarely agrees with his conclusions. Breyer and Alito aren’t flashy justices or poison-pen opinion writers, like Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he says, but they reason methodically and write with great precision. That kind of demeanor is what he would look for in prospective Supreme Court justices.
