Chris Christie

Chris Christy is an American politician and former federal prosecutor who served as the governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018. He is a Republican and a close associate of Donald Trump. Christy was elected while campaigning on the contentious issue of pensions for NJ teachers, promising to discontinue them (which he did after being elected) in the face of staunch opposition from teacher unions. This was popular overall with the public due to high state taxes caused, in part, by teacher pensions which were no longer available even to workers in the private sector in NJ.

Beginning in 2014, Christie's governorship was marred by the Bridgegate scandal whereby a Christee staff member had colluded in 2013 to block lanes of tolls plazas in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The blockage was allegedly done to punish Fort Lee's mayor for political opposition to Christie proposals. While there was never any legal action taken against Christie himself, the public suspected he had knowledge of the staffer's actions, and Christie's popularity began to wane. The public was outraged because, during the long traffic delays, sick people had been unable to reach hospitals.

Christie also provoked widespread ridicule, and became an internet meme, in 2017 as pictures emerged of him and his family sunning themselves on an empty NJ state beach that had been closed during the holiday weekend because of a state government shutdown. The incident became known informally as "Beachgate".

During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Chris Christie volunteered to spearhead Trump's presidential Transition Team and was able to do so only by raising funds for the team independently, since Trump himself refused to fund it despite a legal mandate to do so. The purpose of the transition team is to prescreen some or most of the 1200 of so appointees which an incoming president must appoint, subject to approval by the U.S. Senate, in the first three months after taking office. In the first chapter of his book "The Fifth Risk", non-fiction author Michael Lewis states that the output of Christie's transition team was deliberately ignored--and actually destroyed--after Trump took office and before the information could be used, because Jared Kushner (Trump's son-in-law) had a grudge against Christie because Christie's father had once convicted Kushner's father of tax evasion, retaliating against a federal witness, and lying to the Federal Election Commission.