Beach trip puts heat on Christie

Photo of governor in park he closed raises public’s ire

TRENTON, N.J. — There’s Gov. Chris Christie, lounging in a beach chair in the Oval Office. There he is again, sitting in the sand as the lovers from the movie “From Here to Eternity” roll around in the surf. And there he is, relaxing outside the meat store from “The Sopranos.”

Christie is getting blistered online and in the real world after he was photographed with his family soaking up the sun on a beach that he had closed to the public over the Fourth of July weekend because of a government shutdown.

“Tell Gov. Christie: Get the hell off Island Beach State Park,” read a banner carried by a plane flying up and down the New Jersey coast Monday, mocking the time the governor told people to “get the hell off the beach” during a hurricane in 2011.

New Jersey state beaches and parks were shut down along with other services deemed nonessential after Christie and the Democratic-controlled Legislature failed to

agree on a budget for the new fiscal year that began Saturday.

“Taxpayers can’t use the parks and other public sites they pay for, but he and his family can hang out at a beach that no one else can use?” asked Mary Jackson, a Freehold resident. “Doesn’t he realize how that looks, how people will see it as a slap in the face?”

Christie’s approval rating is already at an abysmal 15 percent after three aides were convicted or pleaded guilty in the bridge scandal and after he threw his support to Donald Trump when his own presidential campaign fizzled.