{"id":40802235939,"date":"2014-04-10T08:52:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2014\/04\/10\/when-it-comes-to-profiling-christie-facts-are-for-wussies\/"},"modified":"2021-06-04T11:09:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T15:09:35","slug":"when-it-comes-to-profiling-christie-facts-are-for-wussies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2014\/04\/10\/when-it-comes-to-profiling-christie-facts-are-for-wussies\/","title":{"rendered":"When it comes to profiling Christie, facts are for wussies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the movie Love & Death, the main character impersonates a Spanish ambassador and is asked how much progress he\u2019s made on a pending treaty.\u00a0 The ersatz diplomat replies, \u201cI’ve come up with all the little details.\u00a0 If I can just think of the main points, we got something.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recent\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0profile of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie<\/a>\u00a0turned this quote on its head.\u00a0 It got all the main points right, but it misfired on the details.<\/p>\n

Ryan Lizza\u2019s article was geared toward a national audience that has recently turned its attention to the Garden State\u2019s chief executive.\u00a0 It was not aimed at me, but the number of errors in material fact and other arguable characterizations of history were off-putting to anyone with a modicum of knowledge of recent history.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at a few blunders that jumped off the page.<\/p>\n

The 2006 U.S. Senate race was not contested by Congressman Robert Menendez as the article claims.\u00a0 Menendez was actually a U.S. Senator during the time period discussed.\u00a0 He was appointed by Jon Corzine to fill the newly elected governor\u2019s vacant seat in January of that year.\u00a0 That means Menendez was already in the Senate before Solomon Dwek was arrested and turned government informant.\u00a0 It would be pretty difficult for Christie to turn his attention on \u201cMenendez, then a Jersey City congressman\u201d unless he had a WABAC machine.\u00a0 And for the record, Menendez is known as either a \u201cUnion City\u201d or \u201cHudson County\u201d politician.<\/p>\n

The article also asserts that top Democrats were considering a run for governor later in Christie\u2019s first term because \u201cChristie\u2019s popularity began to dip in 2012.\u201d\u00a0 While some politicos may have thought Christie was beatable, his poll numbers were fairly stable in 2012 until Superstorm Sandy hit, at which point they skyrocketed.\u00a0 According to three independent polls that regularly track the governor \u2013 Monmouth University, Quinnipiac University, and FDU-Public Mind \u2013 Christie\u2019s voter approval rating never went lower than 50% or higher than 59% from January to October that year.<\/p>\n

While there were some minor fluctuations in the 16 poll readings taken during that ten month period, there is no point where a \u201cdip\u201d is evident.\u00a0 In fact, Christie\u2019s job approval ratings in 2012 were consistently higher than they had been during his first two years in office.\u00a0 His average job approval rating for 2010 was 46%, in 2011 it was 50%, and for the first ten months of 2012 it was 54%.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure if I plot that on a graph, we won\u2019t find any dip.<\/p>\n

Another material error in the article is that the KIPP Cooper Norcross Academy is not, in fact, a charter school under New Jersey law, but a specially legislated \u201cRenaissance School.\u201d\u00a0 This distinction is noteworthy because the special designation was created in part to help George Norcross\u2019s foundation avoid the onerous charter school application process.\u00a0 The irony here is that reporting the more accurate designation would have strengthened the author\u2019s argument about Christie\u2019s style.<\/p>\n

Other statements stand out not because they are technically incorrect but because they are somewhat misleading.\u00a0 For example, saying \u201cChristie and his prosecutors gave Dwek a second assignment\u201d to ensnare politicians makes it sound like it was thrust upon the Dwek rather than coming at Dwek\u2019s prompting, as has been reported elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The article also contends that George Norcross and former Gov. Jim Florio are both \u201cfrom Camden\u201d with the context suggesting that they grew up in the city.\u00a0 While both were Camden County politicians, neither hails from Camden City.\u00a0 Norcross grew up in neighboring Pennsauken and Florio was raised in not-so-neighboring Brooklyn.\u00a0 Florio did move to Camden as an adult to attend law school before settling in a suburban community.<\/p>\n

Oh.\u00a0And one more. New Jersey has 565 municipalities, not 566 as the article claims.\u00a0 Although perhaps the New Yorker would have us believe that Staten Island is part of the Garden State rather than the Empire State.\u00a0 I hear that\u2019s a pretty popular idea among its readership.<\/p>\n

These errors and mischaracterizations are minor you might say.\u00a0 True.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t necessarily undermine the overall theme of Christie\u2019s personality and governing approach the article attempts to portray.\u00a0 But in a time when mainstream journalism is under attack for both lack of relevancy and declining standards, you\u2019ve got to wonder\u2026<\/p>\n

It is only fitting then to end by misappropriating another movie line that is itself an erroneous quote.\u00a0 To wit: \u201cFacts? We don\u2019t need no stinkin\u2019 facts!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ In the movie Love & Death, the main character impersonates a Spanish ambassador and is asked how much progress he\u2019s made on a pending treaty.\u00a0 The ersatz diplomat replies, \u201cI’ve come up with all the little details.\u00a0 If I can just think of the main points, we got something.\u201d A recent\u00a0New Yorker\u00a0profile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802235939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802235939"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802249205,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235939\/revisions\/40802249205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802235939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802235939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802235939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}