Christie sued for defamation 90's over false accusation.

In Chris Christie’s first successful campaign for public office, he sat down next to his wife and baby, looked into a camera and told voters something that wasn’t true.

It was 1994, and Christie was a 31-year-old lawyer running for the county board in suburban Morris County, N.J. He was making a television ad, saying to the camera that his opponents were “being investigated by the Morris County prosecutor.”

Actually, they weren’t. But Christie’s inaccurate ad ran more than 400 times on cable TV before the June GOP primary. He won.

Today, Christie is the Garden State’s governor, facing allegations that, during last year’s reelection campaign, his aides snarled traffic on a major bridge to punish a political enemy.

That 1994 race was New Jersey’s introduction to the brash and confident Christie, whose hardball tactics have repeatedly surprised people — even in a state that thinks it invented hardball.

But in Morris County back then, people thought Christie had learned the downside of playing so rough: That ad helped get him into his first elected office but then helped get him out of it. He was sued for defamation, required to apologize and then defeated at the polls after just one term.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/chris-christies-1994-ad-was-too-tough-and-inaccurate-for-jersey/2014/01/19/b69f0d86-7ef8-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html