In Word and Deed, Christie’s Ambitions Shrink at Home Amid White House Bid
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey speaking to potential voters in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Jan. 16. Mr. Christie has spent large chunks of time outside his home state while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Gov. Chris Christie’s return to New Jersey was swift and efficient: He flew to his home state on Monday night after a campaign trip to Iowa. The next day, he sliced through a towering pile of legislation awaiting his signature, approving 93 bills and blocking 62 others from becoming law.
By Wednesday, Mr. Christie was off to address the State Legislature — in Concord, N.H.
The governor’s drive-through appearance in New Jersey was no aberration. As Mr. Christie, a Republican, pursues a long-shot bid for the presidency, he has nearly vanished from the State Capitol in Trenton.
A review of his activities in New Jersey found that Mr. Christie, who has started past years by proposing grand legislative compromises on issues like public pensions and criminal justice, has called on lawmakers to pass only one specific law in 2016.
Mr. Christie spent 191 days entirely outside New Jersey last year, and since 2016 began, he has held only two public events in the state: his annual State of the State address, and a joint appearance with legislative leaders to unveil an agreement on casino regulation.
The governor has also been using his executive powers only sparingly, creating just two commissions and task forces over the last year, compared with the roughly two dozen he convened in his first term. When he has issued executive orders, it has most often been to lower the state flag in honor of someone’s death.
Being criticized for spending more time on the campaign trail than at home is an occupational hazard for sitting governors running for president, but Mr. Christie’s absence has been particularly felt in New Jersey.
Democrats and Republicans in Trenton described Mr. Christie as having abandoned the commanding political role he played earlier in his tenure, when by force of personality and public argument he cajoled Democratic lawmakers into enacting sweeping reforms.
And with a heavy snowstorm predicted to bear down on New Jersey this weekend, Mr. Christie said on Thursday that he had no intention of taking a break from the presidential race to return home. His office said in a statement that Mr. Christie spoke by telephone with his cabinet about the storm from New Hampshire on Thursday night.
In interviews, Mr. Christie has rejected criticism of his long absences from New Jersey, while leveling acid remarks at a Republican rival, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, for missing votes in the Senate. (After Mr. Rubio failed to vote on a policy he said he opposed, Mr. Christie jabbed, “Dude, show up to work and vote ‘no.’”)
At a campaign stop in Iowa last weekend, Mr. Christie said he was still doing the important work required of a governor. He said he planned to read a 62-page memo about the flood of bills passed in the new legislative session, and would hold a conference call with two top aides to discuss it.
“I’ll make some decisions and when I get back on Tuesday, we’ll execute on those decisions,” Mr. Christie told reporters, according to a transcript provided by his office.
Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for the Christie administration, said the governor’s modest legislative agenda for 2016 was a product of Democrats’ relentless opposition to him. Mr. Roberts said the governor would be asserting his executive powers forcefully in the coming months, starting with a review of charter-school regulations that Mr. Christie announced in his State of the State speech.
“You can run a government, but you’re only going to be able to achieve reforms when you have a willing partner on the other side of the table,” Mr. Roberts said. “We don’t have good-faith partners across the aisle on every single issue these days anymore.”
If Mr. Christie has sought to project the image of a governor firmly in control, his actions in Trenton detail the pared-down aspirations of his administration as he seeks national office.
He has delegated virtually all of his office’s public activities to the lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, who has played an increasingly prominent role even when Mr. Christie is in New Jersey. Ms. Guadagno has met frequently with foreign dignitaries, business leaders and civic groups. She also attended the funerals of two police officers in December when Mr. Christie was in the state.
When the governor’s office releases a daily schedule these days, it typically identifies Ms. Guadagno as the acting governor, and directs queries about Mr. Christie’s schedule to his campaign staff.
Mr. Christie has also moved slowly to fill key offices in his administration. Seven cabinet positions, including those of the attorney general and the state treasurer, are filled on only an acting basis; four of the seven have not had a permanent officer for half a year or more.
Kim Guadagno, New Jersey’s lieutenant governor, has been performing many of Mr. Christie’s public functions amid his presidential run. Credit Julio Cortez/Associated Press
Mr. Roberts faulted the Democrats who control the State Senate for failing to confirm several of Mr. Christie’s nominees to fill those positions permanently.
In his State of the State address this month, Mr. Christie called on the Democratic-controlled Legislature to enact only one policy: the immediate and total abolition of New Jersey’s estate tax. Vincent Prieto, the speaker of the State Assembly, said the idea was dead on arrival.
Mr. Christie has also eased up on using his executive powers as governor to advance policy. The two dozen state task forces, commissions and agency divisions he formed in his first term covered policy areas from homelessness and higher education to pension fraud and gun violence.
In the last year, the governor has created only two such bodies: a state unit on cybersecurity, and a commission to review New Jersey’s process for issuing gun permits.
Mr. Christie announced that commission on June 29, the day before he entered the presidential race. The move was widely viewed as part of his aggressive courtship of national conservative activists.
Senior state lawmakers said the governor remained accessible by telephone on matters of great importance, and had occasionally engaged legislators on urgent concerns. This month, for example, he intervened to help resolve a standoff between Mr. Prieto and Stephen M. Sweeney, the State Senate president, over casino regulation.
Mr. Prieto, a Democrat from Secaucus, said it was difficult to manage the state without consistent participation by the governor. As long as Mr. Christie holds veto power, Mr. Prieto said, Democrats cannot craft meaningful legislation on thorny issues without him serving as a negotiating partner.
A chief example, Mr. Prieto said, was a looming crunch in state transportation funding that Democrats hoped to address in part by increasing New Jersey’s gasoline tax.
“I can speak to him, in any given week, a few times,” Mr. Prieto said of the governor. “Or it can go a few weeks or a month that I have not had a conversation.”
On the most difficult legislative issues, Mr. Prieto said personal interaction was essential. “I’m a people person,” he said. “I’m not a phone guy.”
In Mr. Christie’s absence, legislative leaders said that two of his top aides had been deputized to act as his proxies: Regina Egea, the chief of staff, and Thomas P. Scrivo, the chief counsel.
Ms. Guadagno’s role as acting governor appears strictly limited. She has signed only nine pieces of legislation, all of them uncontroversial, as acting governor since the start of Mr. Christie’s presidential campaign, according to the administration’s website. Those measures included one regulating veterinary clinics and others related to the beekeeping industry.
Jon M. Bramnick, the Republican leader in the State Assembly, said Mr. Christie remained in frequent contact while campaigning, returning phone calls and text messages “within seconds, unless he’s in the middle of a speech.”
New Jersey Democrats, Mr. Bramnick said, had become “less and less cooperative” with Mr. Christie and more eager to undercut him during the presidential race.
“Running for president is really, really hard, and somebody’s got to do it,” he said. “We’ve got a governor from New Jersey who’s willing to do that, and I think that is something we should respect.”
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