Beyond his abrasive behavior, the fact is that he has NOT - as he has claimed all summer - started a "come back" for NJ.
From the article:
Alabama and New Jersey showed the biggest increases in unemployment. The rate in Alabama climbed to 7.8 percent in June from 7.4 percent the previous month. New Jersey’s unemployment rate jumped to 9.6 percent in June, the highest in almost two years, from 9.2 percent as more people entered the labor force looking for work.
About a year ago, I tried to find a way to realistically look at how NJ's economy is doing. Here is what I posted on DU 2.
Christie has NOT helped NJ's economy, he has hurt it. During his time in office, NJ has done LESS well in recovering than the nation as a whole. A fair test of how he is doing would be to compare NJ with a similar Democratically led state.
NJ is an affluent state with an abundance of jobs in R&D and in Finance. It is also a state where high school kids are among the top performing in the country. It also has a significant number of older urban centers that were once successful cities. Another state that could be described similarly is MA.
Since Governor Christie was elected in 2009, you can think of these two states as if they were testing the republican and the Democratic economic solutions. The unemployment rates are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
December 2009 (a month after Christie was elected - as a baseline): NJ - 10.0 MA - 9.3
December 2010 : NJ - 9.1 MA - 8.2 (Note, at least in NJ, the budget was passed in the fall of the previous year - so this year is not yet affected much by Governor Christie. MA and NJ are moving pretty much in sync - though MA is doing slightly better.)
May 2011: : NJ- 9.4 MA - 7.6 (This year it is a Christie budget and Christie is in charge - and while MA continues to improve, NJ gets somewhat worse.)
December 2011 - the most recent I can find - NJ 9.1 and MA 6.9.
There is NO way to look at these numbers in Christie's favor. It is often said that the states can be laboratories for federal policy, in this case, I really think before Scott Brown supports policies like Christie's, he should look at the results.
If you look at NY, also run by a Democratic governor, the results look like MA's. What is clear is that the cuts that Christie forced through have hurt the state of NJ.
Now, the results are EVEN worse - from the link within your link, MA is now at 6% unemployment and NJ is at 9.6% unemployment. There is no way - other than state policies - to explain why MA has improved while NJ is very close to where it was years ago. Looking at the unemployment numbers, it is easy to see why the state's revenue estimates have fallen short by a very large amount.
Now remember, this is the man that Romney chose to be the key note speaker for a convention where he wants running the economy competently to be the issue. I think it would be a great idea if people across the country put out facts (like these and others) in the period of a few days before Christie speaks and then AFTERWARD to challenge that his (and Romney's) methods work.
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