Chris Christie

TRENTON - Sometime before the Saturday Night Live appearance, before Shaq stopped by to say hello, before the second nod on Time's "most influential people in the world" list, the governor of New Jersey morphed into something else. He became a bona fide 21st-century celebrity. To America, Chris Christie isn't the governor of the 11th-biggest state, who ushered in a controversial benefits reform plan for public employees. To America, he's the dude from Jersey who almost got into a fight on a boardwalk, as captured by the gossip-mongerers from TMZ.com.

TRENTON - Those New Jersey conservatives who believe that Republican Gov. Christie is a tax-and-spend liberal may soon have an alternative in the June gubernatorial primary. Seth Grossman, a Somers Point lawyer and Linwood resident, was elected to the Atlantic County Freeholder Board and Atlantic City Council in the 1980s. In 2003, he founded an organization, Liberty and Prosperity, that espouses many tea-party principles. "Chris Christie is not a conservative, never was a conservative, and all he wants is the power and celebrity," Grossman said in an interview.

In January 2011, amid much fanfare, Gov. Christie trekked out to Chicago on the heels of a public-relations blitz, promising to lure businesses and jobs from Illinois to New Jersey. His administration spent more than $300,000 in taxpayer money on an advertising campaign starring Christie himself. Newspapers ads ran up and down the state, from the Chicago Tribune to the State Journal-Register of Springfield, encouraging businesses to pick up stakes and relocate to the Garden State. Even though major employers such as Kraft Foods ignored or refused the governor's request for a meeting, Christie nonetheless immediately deemed the trip a success.

Gov. Christie has been playing a game of chicken with the federal government over sports gambling, and he just threw his steering wheel out the window. He said he would proceed with plans to allow sports betting at New Jersey's racetracks and Atlantic City's casinos even though the federal government restricts such gambling to four states.   Christie campaigned on promises that he would lower taxes. But now he is advocating raising the most regressive tax of all: the ease and availability of gambling.

No U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt has won reelection when the unemployment rate was more than 7.4 percent. That has many Republicans wondering why Mitt Romney isn't the runaway favorite over President Obama.   So why isn't he? Because Obama remains more popular personally than one would otherwise expect. Because the Obama campaign has been more effective at sowing doubt about Romney's record as a wealthy capitalist than the Romney campaign anticipated — which is evidence to some that Romney's campaign isn't overstaffed with brilliant strategists.

IT WAS THE Odd Couple, Good Cop/Bad Cop, Beauty and the Beast, pick any divergent duo. Ann Romney and Chris Christie fit the bill. They looked different, sounded different and delivered different messages to the Republican National Convention Tuesday night. But their aim was the same: blend together to (a) convince America that Mitt Romney is a caring human being and (b) sell voters on the notion that he and his party have tough-love solutions to move the nation forward. It was a one-two punch.

During his Reagan Library gig Tuesday night, Chris Christie fueled or dampened speculation that he may or may not be revisiting or reconsidering his decision or nondecision on whether his heart tells him whether he should lean toward or away from running for president in 2012. Or something like that. At this point, perhaps the Christie-parsers in the press corps, and all the Republicans who are so eager to anoint him their latest savior, might unearth a more definitive message if they took the audio version of his Tuesday speech and played it backward.

TRENTON - Saying the measure would overwhelm local election workers, Gov. Christie vetoed Thursday a bill that would have required polls to open two weeks before Election Day. The bill won final passage in the Assembly on March 21. It would have required that each county open a limited number of polling places in advance of the election. Democrats touted the measure as a way to increase voter participation; Republicans panned it as a costly initiative that would add little in the way of expanded access for voters.

You won't hear a discouraging word about New Jersey during Wanda Sykes' stand-up shows at the Borgata's Music Box this weekend. "I love Atlantic City," she says on the phone, "and I'm really impressed with Chris Christie and the job he's done with Sandy relief. Jersey is fun. " This represents a big turnaround for the comedienne when it comes to the Garden State. She used to joke in her act that Jersey was so toxic women should get mammograms at the toll booth. "That was years ago," she says, "when I was actually living in New Jersey.

If oddsmakers were infallible psychics, the next presidential election will pit Hillary Clinton against former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie - and Clinton will win. The Democrat's chances vary from 5-2 to 9-2 with 11 online bookmakers, while the nearest Republicans, in various rankings, rate no better than 6-1, according to www.oddschecker.com . Her closest competitors...

TRENTON - Sometime before the Saturday Night Live appearance, before Shaq stopped by to say hello, before the second nod on Time's "most influential people in the world" list, the governor of New Jersey morphed into something else. He became a bona fide 21st-century celebrity. To America, Chris Christie isn't the governor of the 11th-biggest state, who ushered in a controversial benefits reform plan for public employees. To America, he's the dude from Jersey who almost got into a fight on a boardwalk, as captured by the gossip-mongerers from TMZ.com.

TRENTON - Saying the measure would overwhelm local election workers, Gov. Christie vetoed Thursday a bill that would have required polls to open two weeks before Election Day. The bill won final passage in the Assembly on March 21. It would have required that each county open a limited number of polling places in advance of the election. Democrats touted the measure as a way to increase voter participation; Republicans panned it as a costly initiative that would add little in the way of expanded access for voters.

Elle magazine has declared Kerry Washington a bona fide star and an A-list celebrity! Finally! The 36-year-old Scandal beauty graces the June cover. Kerry tells the mag she didn't initially plan to go into acting. "I imagined I'd be a clinical psychologist, with a focus on how performance shapes identity," says Kerry, who did a double major, in sociology and anthropology, at George Washington University. "I'd figure out ways to use role-playing in the healing of people.

You won't hear a discouraging word about New Jersey during Wanda Sykes' stand-up shows at the Borgata's Music Box this weekend. "I love Atlantic City," she says on the phone, "and I'm really impressed with Chris Christie and the job he's done with Sandy relief. Jersey is fun. " This represents a big turnaround for the comedienne when it comes to the Garden State. She used to joke in her act that Jersey was so toxic women should get mammograms at the toll booth. "That was years ago," she says, "when I was actually living in New Jersey.

The fight for the New Jersey governor's seat is to heat up on the airwaves Wednesday as Gov. Christie launches his first TV ad of the campaign - a $1.2 million, 60-second spot on jobs, education and taxes, with a hint of Sandy imagery. "Four years ago, New Jersey was broken: runaway spending, the nation's highest taxes, and unemployment on the rise," the narrator says. "Then we elected Chris Christie. He made the tough decisions to get New Jersey back on track. " The ad notably does not mention the name of the Republican governor's presumptive Democratic challenger, State Sen. Barbara Buono (D., Middlesex)

TRENTON - Barbara Buono is losing. Yes, it's still more than six months until an election in which she tries to unseat a popular governor. And yes, beating Chris Christie - named last week to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world, for God's sake - was never going to be easy. But at this early stage, the little-known Democratic state senator from Middlesex County is outmatched in the crucial areas of polls, party unity, and cash. Buono is participating in the state's donation matching program, which gets her $2 in public funds for every $1 she raises.

TRENTON - The federal prosecutor who busted more than 130 corrupt politicians became governor based in part on New Jerseyans' belief, and hope, that he could clean up government. But despite a sweeping ethics package that Republican Gov. Christie proposed in his first year in office - and despite continued political corruption in all corners of government - Trenton during the Christie administration is where ethics reforms have gone to die. None of the governor's ethics proposals dating to September 2010 have been passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

TRENTON - Gov. Chris Christie continues to maintain a strong lead in his re-election bid. But the woman who wants to defeat him in November is gaining some ground in a new poll. A Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released Friday shows Christie holds a 30-point lead among registered voters surveyed. That's down from 42-points in a Rutgers-Eagleton survey conducted in February. The new poll shows Christie's support has dropped six points while Democrat Barbara Buono gained six points. However, Buono continues to suffer from name recognition and 61 percent of her supporters expect the state senator to lose.

TRENTON - Rutgers officials are scrutinizing practice videos of all sports to see if any coach engaged in behavior like the type that cost men's basketball coach Mike Rice his job, the university president announced Monday. The inquiry into Rice and how university officials responded is also going deeper as the school announced that it plans to hire a consultant to conduct an independent review. University president Robert Barchi, speaking Monday during a town-hall meeting on the school's Newark campus, said he wants any instances of bullying or homophobic language to be reported immediately.

A fresh crop of South Jersey candidates vying for legislative seats this year have impressive backgrounds but little or no political experience. On the Republican side, they include a Marine who participated in the invasion of Iraq, and his running mate, a law firm partner who was a Delran police detective, sheriff's officer, and appointed mayor. The Burlington County Democrats, for their part, are fielding the retired administrator of Buttonwood Hospital, once a government-run nursing home and psychiatric institution that was highly ranked by Medicare.