Governor Chris Christie’s vacation during the Blizzard of 2010 did not suppress voters’ approval of the job he is doing.
In the first independent poll since the storm, the Fairleigh Dickinson Public Mind Poll says that 53% of voters approve of Christie’s performance while 36% disapprove. FDU polled 802 registered voters by phone, land line and cell, between January 3 and January 9.
Christie’s favorable/unfavorable rating of 47%-39% is better than every elected governor’s in the last two decades.
Contrasting the FDU poll released this morning to the Quinnipiac Poll of December 21, 2010, one might conclude that the administration’s performance during the Blizzard of 2010 boosted Christie’s ratings. The December Quinnipiac poll gave Christie a 46%-44% approval rating. Quinnipiac polled 1276 voters between December 14 and 19.
Today’s poll should serve as a wake up call to much of New Jersey’s media elite who attempted to turn Christie’s family vacation during the Christmas holiday into a controversy. The controversy existed only in their minds and editorial board conference rooms. The voters and the media elites’ diminishing readership didn’t care.
In perhaps related news,Gannett announced they are laying off half of their remaining reporters at three of its Central Jersey newspapers. Maybe business would be better if the newspapers/news sites listened and reported rather than tried to advance their agenda upon a readership that views them as irrelevant.
Today is 1/11/11. Christie will delivery his first State of the State address this afternoon. New Jersey will be hit with another snow storm this afternoon.
Not Even Close. The Mainstream Media damages its credibility and demeans the victims of Katrina with the comparison.
By Art Gallagher
This photo was taken in New Orleans on September 5, 2005, seven days after Hurricane Katrina hit the city:
Source: popmatters.com
This photo was taken this afternoon in Monmouth County, NJ, seven days after the Blizzard of 2010 hit:
FEMA will be in New Jersey tomorrow to start to access the damage caused by the blizzard. The damage will be a great deal less than the $81 billion that Katrina caused. The loss of live and human suffering caused by the blizzard was negligible. Not so Katrina.
Last week Capitol Quickies and InTheLobby got caught up in the hysteria of the storm and Governor Christie’s absence from the state during the storm. By now they should be over it.
Today, the Star Ledger used the Katrina reference in critiquing the public relations of Christie not being here during the storm.
The Sledger even quoted the PR hack who advised former Louisiana Goveror Kathleen Blanco during Katrina. Talk about epic failure. The hack, Bob Mann did a heck of a job for Blanco in 2005. Now he teaches political communications at Lousiana State Univeristy. Yikes! That’s like Jim McGreevey teaching ethics at a New Jersey state college.
Here’s a video of Chrisite answering the Sledger reporter’s PR questions during his press conference on Friday at the Monmouth County Hall of Records:
I guess the reporter didn’t like the Governor’s answer.
When we last visited Paul Mulshine he was preparing to blame Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno if his cat pooped on his rug. Mulshine’s cat must have peed in Paul’s Cheerios and drank his last beer. The dipsomaniac expositer has been on a bender since.
First Mulshine said Guadagno should stay in Mexico because the roads were bad in Ocean and Monmouth Counties as he successfully made his way to the Edison studios of News12. He said the roads were bad in the Republican counties because Guadagno and Governor Christie left the Governor’s office in the hands of Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney.
After Mulshine found out why Guadagno is in Mexico, she and her brothers are spending probably their last Christmas holiday with their father who is suffering from advanced cancer, that was OK with him. Then it wasn’t OK with him. Kim’s clan should have spent the holiday in Iowa, where they are from, instead of going to Mexico. Mulshine better hope he keeps his Star Ledger gig, he won’t qualify for America’s next emerging profession, end of life counseling.
In his latest rant, Mulshine demonstrated that he doesn’t qualify as a storm cleanup expert either. He writes as if he’s an expert. His seven hours of shoveling and failure to get to the store to get kitty litter are his qualifications. Paul said:
The effort in the coastal counties was nothing short of pathetic. Though this snow was deep, it was very light – as I can affirm after seven or so hours of shoveling it.
Just a few good passes with a plow would have cleared key state highways at the Shore.
Instead, many of those highways still had just one lane open the day after the storm.
Worse was the lack of coordination. State, county, and municipal roads were all plowed by separate crews. One road would be just fine, till you turned onto another that was barely touched.
Paul is right. The snow was deep, and fortunately light. The reason the snow was so deep is that we got too much of it too fast. Just a few good passes did clear it, on Sunday, and then it snowed some more covering up the area that had just been plowed. I know, while Paul was shoveling and cleaning up cat poo, I was plowing. Then my plow broke, as did many many others that I witnessed at the repair shop today. This storm was historic. 30 inches and wind-blown drifts in less than 24 hours. New Jersey is not equipped to clean up this type of a storm quickly. Nor should we be because they are so rare. Syracuse and Buffalo are equipped for these types of storms which occur in those cities every year.
One would expect a guy who covers New Jersey government and purports to be an expert to know why there are different jurisdictions clearing different roads in the same communities. Coordination is a great idea and might even work in the private sector if unions weren’t involved. But in New Jersey government their would be fights over which entity would pay the overtime and which union would get the overtime.
Mulshine related his personal snowstorm. Just like hundreds of others did in the comments on the app and nj.com websites and who called into News12 while Paul was in the studio that he managed to get to in the horrendous conditions. One would expect better from a professional journalist and opinion maker.
And better we got from the Star Ledger’s Mike Frasinelli. Reading Mike’s article I learned that despite Mayor Cory Booker’s ability to simultaneously handle a snow shovel and an IPhone Newark is more messed up over the storm than Monmouth and Ocean. The reporter witnessed two men threaten each other with gunfire over a parking spot and then start shoveling together. There’s the making of a reality TV show that I would watch.
In addition to getting into the streets, Frasinelli talked to men who worked overnight clearing the snow. He spoke to James Simpson, the State Transportation Commissioner who explained the Route 18 and other State Highway problems. Rather than neglect as Mulshine would have you believe, Route 18 was impassable because plow trucks were breaking down. 9 or 10 trucks broke down clearing the highway.
I guess I knew that Neptune has five state highways running through it. I just never thought about it until I read Frasinelli’s fine article. 175 abandoned vehicles would certainly complicate a clean up. Those vehicles wouldn’t have been abandoned if it hadn’t snowed so hard so fast.
Or just take it from me. What happened was we got too much snow too fast. Christie and Guadagno being here would not have resulted in a faster clean up. Even if they were here, their political opponents in the media and a few idiot legislators would have tried to rile you up and score political points.
There are few pundits in the mainstream media and the blogosphere who should take the rest of the year off. Forget the blizzard. Some of these guys should pray for a power outage to stop themselves from killing their credibility on the Internet.
Two sites I like so much I give them live feeds here on MMM, Gannett’s Capitol Quickiesand InTheLobbyare suggesting that Governor Christie’s absence from New Jersey during the blizzard of 2010 will do to his administration what Hurricane Katrina did to George W. Bush’s presidency.
John and John, you guys should have followed Christie’s lead and taken the week off.
Christie will be back in New Jersey tomorrow. The weather will be in the 50’s and raining on Saturday. The snow will melt and Christie will launch the year with his 2011 agenda. By this time next week, no one will be talking about the blizzard except mayors who will be choking on the overtime bills.
Fortunately, The Star Ledger also has