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BY CARL GOLDEN
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
History has it that when Nazi Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and drove to the outskirts of Moscow, the Russian dictator Josef Stalin summoned his generals and issued his orders.
His instructions were simple: "Not one step back."
Gov. Chris Christie's first 100 days in office were like that.
From the moment in January when he lowered his right hand after swearing to uphold the Constitution, Christie charged forward, issuing a blizzard of executive orders, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with public employee unions over salaries and benefits, scrapping ferociously with the New Jersey Education Association, and sending the Legislature a budget more noteworthy for what it refused to spend money on than for what it funded.
When the politically fierce pushback came, Christie was prepared. He took "not one step back."
Instead, he shrugged off the criticism and, rather than go into a defensive shell and attempt to explain his massive budget cuts, he went on the offensive, completely reversed the debate, and forced his opponents into a corner where they had to defend their support for increased spending.
His critics were flummoxed. They couldn't figure out how to deal with someone who was eager — some say, too eager — to stand his ground and seize the initiative by sheer force of personality.
Christie set the tone early: He would not be bullied, threatened, or intimidated by legislators or powerful interest groups accustomed to wielding a disproportionate influence over budget issues in particular. While he understood that compromise was an integral part of governing, his notion of it was to give a little and get a lot in return.
With considerable assistance from the Democratic majorities in the Legislature, he achieved an early victory in March with the passage of a series of reforms to the state's distressed public pension system, effortlessly sweeping aside an intense lobbying effort by public employee unions to block the changes.
When he proposed a cut of nearly $1 billion in state aid to local school districts, he brought on a confrontation that veteran Trenton watchers were skeptical of his winning.
It started a pitched battle with the NJEA, the likes of which had never been witnessed before and the language of which had never been heard before. The two sides hurled insults at one another in such volume that the rift between them may never be healed.
The Governor undertook an audacious gamble, calling for defeat of school budgets in those districts in which teachers had refused to accept a salary freeze. The result was an historic rejection rate of nearly six in every 10 local budgets, widely seen as a major victory for the Governor and a stunning defeat for the NJEA.
His aggressive nature, the sandpaper lurking just beneath the surface of his personality, and his choice of language have been cringe-producing on occasion, but have also established him as a "damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead" individual who stands ready to do battle in pursuit of his agenda.
Nor has he flinched from butting heads with Senate President Steve Sweeney. His decision to replace Supreme Court Associate Justice John Wallace of Gloucester County — Sweeney's home county — immediately kicked off an epic struggle between the two, one that has the potential to overshadow even the contentiousness over the budget.
He has succeeded early on in achieving a reputation as someone whose motivation is to wrestle a spendthrift government to the ground, tame an out of control public employee union, demand greater responsiveness from an out of touch bureaucracy, and restore fiscal discipline and lower cost to the taxpayer.
Along the way, he's managed to offend virtually every group or organization which stand to lose substantial financial support if his budget is enacted. Nothing, including areas heretofore deemed politically untouchable, escaped the swath he cut through the budget — higher education assistance, aid for senior citizens, homestead rebates, school lunch programs, health care for low income families, family planning services, tourism promotion, the State Commission of Investigation and New Jersey Network. And, that's a partial list.
While the Democratic leadership of the Legislature has groused and grumbled and accused the Governor of favoring the rich at the expense of the middle class by refusing to agree to reinstate the income tax surcharge on incomes exceeding $400,000, the odds are that the budget which eventually reaches Christie's desk will closely resemble his original proposal. And, if it doesn't, he's vowed to use his line item veto authority to rewrite it to his satisfaction.
Democrats understand all too well that the public discontent which paved the way for Christie's victory last November remains strong and that he has capitalized on it to occupy the high ground in the debate over who can better provide relief to an overburdened taxpaying public. Democrats cannot afford to come out on the losing side of that argument.
One hundred days does not an Administration make, obviously, and there are 1,361 left before Christie's first term is completed.
They will be challenging days, to be sure, particularly if the reductions in state aid result in triple digit property tax increases, widespread loss of popular school programs and activities, crowded classrooms, fewer police officers and greater emergency response times, and more traffic congestion on crumbling roads.
When parents of college age children learn that student loan funds have dried up and that aid to public colleges has been so deeply cut that admissions will be sharply curtailed, it's likely they'll blame the Governor.
One thing is certain, though: Christie has made it clear that, when faced with those challenges, he'll take "not one step back."
Carl Golden served as press secretary to Govs. Kean and Whitman and is a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton College.
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