A glowing Susana Martinez stood at the side of Chris Christie this week as the scandal ridden governor of New Jersey stopped in Roswell to assist Martinez with her re-election bid. Christie has been recently implicated in wreaking havoc on the citizens of his state while enacting political payback and is currently involved in a brewing public pension scandal whereas he raided teacher’s and other public worker’s pension funds to balance his state budget, while giving away $1.5 billion in corporate welfare to corporations like Pearson. Surely noteworthy to most New Mexicans, yet the story by local news outlets covering Christie’s visit centered around the two’s “unique chemistry” and the already tired speculation of the pair running on a presidential ticket in 2016.
When speaking of Governor Martinez, Christie described her as “one of my best friends in the entire Republican Governor’s Association.” The Republican Governor’s Association has been critical to Martinez political aspirations and provided her last campaign with $1 million. The organization gets cyclically flooded with cash from the likes of the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch and large health insurance interests that operate in New Mexico.
KOB quoted Christie as saying that he and Martinez “Share the same values, same approach to solving problems.” A quick glimpse into Christie’s political career and that assessment sounds disturbingly accurate. The New Republic’s Alec MacGillis penned an article earlier this year entitled, “Chris Christie’s Entire Career Reeks: It’s not just the bridge.” Some of MacGillis’ descriptions of the troubled politician’s storied career sound eerily similar to a certain New Mexico “straight shooter.”
He has been so singularly successful at constructing his own mythology—as a reformer, a crusader, a bipartisan problem-solver—that people have never really seen him clearly...The problem with Christie isn’t merely that he is a bully. It’s that his political career is built on a rotten foundation. Christie owes his rise to some of the most toxic forces in his state—powerful bosses who ensure that his vow to clean up New Jersey will never come to pass. He has allowed them to escape scrutiny, rewarded them for their support, and punished their enemies. All along, even as it looked like Christie was attacking the machine, he was really just mastering it.
Christie, like Martinez, adopted scores of bills that were crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Similar to Martinez he’s enacted an aggressive for-profit education reform agenda that has resulted in a gutting of public education money and a racially segregated school system. In 2012 he awarded the billion dollar for-profit education firm Pearson a “multi-year subsidy of up to $82 million.” The Mercury talked about the Martinez administration's ties to Pearson and the company's influence in New Mexico in an article we ran last December.
Unfortunately, New Mexican’s are used to local news outlets offering not much more than horse race and press release political coverage, but one has to ask why democratic strategists don’t pick up on these affiliations and ring the alarm in the press and on social media? Republican operatives, known for their odiousness even within their own circles, never fail to grab an affiliation and use it to their advantage. In this particular case, it’s two peas in a corporate foot soldier pod.
(Image of Christie by DonkeyHotey)
Responses to “Christie’s troubles and history go unnoticed while stumping for Martinez”