NEW YORK TIMES, June 2, 2011—Woe to the politician who claims to be fiscally responsible, in touch with regular folk, and turns out to have some pricey habits. Think Newt Gingrich and Tiffany, John Edwards and haircuts, Sarah Palin and clothes — and now, Chris Christie and helicopters.
Mr. Christie, the governor of New Jersey, took a State Police helicopter to see his son play high school baseball on Tuesday. And whether that is important or trivial, it surely did not help the image of a conservative Republican who has won national notice for preaching belt-tightening and berating those who resist.
In the State House, online and in the news, the chopper caper (L’Affaire Copter? Rotor Rage?) quickly overshadowed weightier matters like state budget talks. Democrats professed outrage, including some who seemed less offended in 2002 when one of their own, Gov. James E. McGreevey, was accused of abusing flying privileges. Republicans who were shocked by Mr. McGreevey had little to say about Mr. Christie.
Throughout Wednesday, Blogrunner, the Web site that tracks online commentary, rated the helicopter story, first reported by The Star-Ledger of Newark, as one of the five most influential in the blogosphere. Even Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, weighed in with a statement saying that it was somewhat more responsible, environmentally, to go around by S.U.V.
“The public is not going to cast their ballot over helicopter use policy,” said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “It is an issue only because Chris Christie has created a certain public image, and the use of this helicopter would appear to stand in stark contrast to that image.”
Since the 1980s, New Jersey governors of both parties have come under fire for using state helicopters.
Mr. Christie has used them far less often than predecessors like Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, and Jim Florio, a Democrat, who each flew hundreds of times a year, or Mr. McGreevey, who used the helicopters 277 times in his first year in office. After coming under fire, Mr. McGreevey said 14 of those trips were personal; he had the Democratic Party reimburse the state $18,200, and sharply curtailed his helicopter use.
As a candidate for governor, Christie Whitman, a Republican, said she would sell the helicopters, but after taking office she did not. Then she was criticized for using them to fly to events like a Devils hockey game.
As governor, Jon S. Corzine largely avoided the issue by paying from his own deep pockets for private helicopters. When he suffered near-fatal injuries in the crash of a state S.U.V., critics said he should have used state helicopters more often.
The State Police said Wednesday that Mr. Christie had used its helicopters 35 times in his 16 months in office; neither that agency nor the governor’s office would say how many of those were for personal or political matters.
The State Police superintendent, Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, released a statement saying that Mr. Christie’s trip on Tuesday cost the state nothing. The helicopter would have been flying anyway, Colonel Fuentes said, because the pilots need the experience. He added that law enforcement and rescues always take precedence over the governor.
The governor’s press secretary, Michael Drewniak, would not say whether the flight, to Montvale, had included any other business besides the game, or where the flight originated. Mr. Christie flew from there to Princeton, to meet with Republican fund-raisers from Iowa who want him to run for president.
“I think this story deserves a little perspective,” Mr. Drewniak said. “In comparison to past practice by other administrations, the governor uses the helicopter with relative rarity.”
Democrats argued that what matters is not frequency, but helicopter use that might violate state law, and the contrast to the governor’s talk of ethics and budget-cutting.Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski of Middles*x County, the state Democratic chairman, said, “The real issue is less about the helicopter than about the hypocrisy.”
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Thursday, June 2nd 2011 at 1:25PM
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