TRENTON, N.J. _ New Jersey residents, who have increasingly expressed a negative view of Gov. Chris Christie, said they were "disgusted" and called him "selfish," "arrogant" or worse, according to a Monmouth University poll conducted after photos surfaced of the governor lounging on the beach with his family during the recent government shutdown.
The same poll found Christie's job approval to be at 15 percent, matching an all-time low set by the governor in a recent Quinnipiac University survey. And like Quinnipiac, Monmouth said that Christie's support within his own party has eroded significantly, with just 30 percent of Republicans saying they support the job he has done.
Christie is now less popular than the state Legislature, which always draws low approvals from the public, President Donald Trump, who lost New Jersey by 14 points in last year's election, and Sen. Bob Menendez, who is under federal indictment on corruption charges. And a majority of the public said it now feels that New Jersey is worse off now because of Christie.
"It really is difficult to drive approval ratings into the single digits barring something like a criminal conviction. However, you have to admire Christie's seeming tenacity for trying to get his numbers down to that level," Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement. "In reality, Christie may have found the floor for his ratings, but it's a level where most of his constituents now feel his time in office has hurt the state."
The public's view of Christie has steadily declined in recent years, as the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal engulfed his administration and his frequent trips out of state to campaign for president left an impression that Christie had abandoned New Jersey. But the photos of Christie at Island Beach State Park, which was closed to the public because of the government shutdown he ordered in a budget dispute with the Democratic Assembly speaker, drew wide condemnation from the public.
Monmouth said 86 percent of those polled saw the photos of Christie on the beach with his family last Sunday. Two-thirds "expressed a negative sentiment" when asked to describe how the images made them feel. The most commonly used word was "disgusted," and "anger" and disbelief" were frequently mentioned. Nearly one-in-five described their reaction in terms of Christie's character, using words such as "selfish," "hypocrite" and "arrogrant." Six percent of those polled used profanity to describe Christie. Fewer than one-in-10 had anything positive to say, according to the poll.
Christie has said he is unconcerned with his popularity in polls and that he doesn't necessarily believe their findings. And he said last week as he flew back and forth between Trenton and the governor's beachside residence during the shutdown that he doesn't care about "political optics."
"This is New Jerseyans telling it like it is, but the governor has said that he basically doesn't care what they think. This just confirms what most of his constituents have suspected for the past three years," said Murray.
The poll was released about an hour before Christie was set to begin a two-day audition on the sports-talk radio station WFAN-AM, where he is a regular co-host and is in contention for a job after he leaves office. That may do little to counter the prevailing view that Christie is less concerned about the state than himself. The Monmouth poll said that 79 percent of those polled feel that Christie puts his own political future before the good of the state, and 14 percent said he is more concerned with governing.
Christie did not share all of the blame for the three-day government shutdown, which he ordered when Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto refused to tie legislation increasing oversight of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey to the state's 2018 fiscal year budget. Christie had wanted the insurer, the state's largest, to pay a portion of its excess reserves into a fund that would help provide drug treatment to the poor and uninsured, but later said that he also wanted increased transparency of the company. Prieto and Christie came to an agreement late last Monday on a bill that would redirect the insurer's excess to ratepayers, not drug abusers, and adds more public members as well as requires executive salaries to be posted online.
Fifty-four percent of those polled said that they think Christie and the Legislature were equally at fault for the impasse. Another 28 percent put more of the blame on Christie and 14 percent put more of the blame on the Democratic-led Legislature.
Although about two-thirds of those polled were aware that the shutdown was caused by the dispute over Horizon, just 16 percent said they were inclined to believe transparency motivated the push for the Horizon bill. More than half of those polled said they "think it was probably driven by some sort of political payback against the insurer," according to the poll.
The telephone poll was conducted among 800 New Jersey adults July 6-9 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
