CHRIS CRISPY
Gov burned for beach pics — but gets his budget deal
His approval rating is 15 percent, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie couldn’t care less what voters think of him. So he had no remorse about hogging a beach that was shut to residents amid a government shutdown, which finally ended with a budget deal last night.
Listen up, beaches — Chris Christie don’t give a damn.
A day after the New Jersey governor was caught in a blatant lie about not getting “any sun” — despite being photographed soaking up rays with his family on a miles-long stretch of sand closed to the public due to his own budget impasse — the Garden State’s chief exec was unrepentant and even seemed to troll constituents on Twitter.
“NJ beaches are open in 119 of our 130 miles of coastline. Come and enjoy them — but use sunscreen and hydrate!” Christie tweeted Monday.
Christie and about a dozen of his pals and relatives were caught sunning it up on Island Beach State Park in Berkeley Township Sunday afternoon, after he shut down the staterun beaches due to New Jersey’s budget standoff.
People in New Jersey and beyond seized on what many saw as a “let them eat cake” gesture by the state’s chief executive.
“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?”
The tone-deaf pol even scoffed at the Star-Ledger newspaper for publishing the aerial photos of him on the sand — which came out after he denied having gotten any sun on Sunday.
“I am sure they will get a Pulitzer for this one. They caught me doing what I said I was going to do with the people I said I was going to be with,” he told Fox 5.
“The governor is allowed to go to his residences, and I’m at my residences. I said last Monday, a week ago today, that no matter what happens, we were coming here as a family this weekend . . . This is one of the places we live.”
After Christie was caught in the lie, his spokesman Brian Murray admitted the governor had hit the beach, but bizarrely insisted, “He did not get any sun. He had a baseball hat on.”
Christie’s approval rating is already at an abysmal 15 percent, after three aides were convicted in the Bridgegate scandal over the politically motivated closing of George Washington Bridge traffic lanes in Fort Lee.
“It is hard to imagine a worse optic for public relations on a hot July day. Pollsters may find out how low approval ratings can go in New Jersey,” said Fairleigh Dickinson University political-science Professor Peter Woolley.
“Because the [beach] story and the photos have gone national, it makes it harder for Christie to rehabilitate his career outside of the state.”
Indeed, Christie was lambasted Monday as selfish and arrogant.
“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 toughtalking governor told people to “get the hell off the beach” during a hurricane in 2011.
But while Christie may be more than happy to burn bridges in the final stretch of his administration, his deputy, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, is hoping to succeed him come the November gubernatorial election.
She was quick to distance herself from Christie on Monday.
“If I were governor, I sure wouldn’t be sitting on the beach if taxpayers didn’t have access to state beaches. It’s beyond words,” Guadagno posted on Facebook.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Murphy also weighed in Monday, calling on Christie to get off the beach and get back to work.
And others piled on — including former US Attorney Preet Bharara, who grew up in Monmouth County and whom Christie previously accused of “moaning and complaining” after President Trump fired him earlier this year.
“Attn Chris: When Springsteen sang, ‘Down the Shore everything’s all right,’ I’m pretty sure this is not what he had in mind,” Bharara tweeted early Monday.
Bharara added in a jab over the Bridgegate scandal.
“Also not Churchillian: ‘We shall close our bridge, whatever the cost may be, we shall shut down the beaches . . . we shall never surrender,’ ” he said, spoofing the former British prime minister’s famed “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.
Among those affected by the state-beach shutdown were Cub Scouts forced to leave a state campsite and people trying to obtain or renew motorvehicle documents.
Liberty State Park was closed, forcing the suspension of ticket sales and ferry service to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. But the two sites remained open.
Prisons, state police, state hospitals and New Jersey’s bus and commuter-rail system were unaffected. The majority of beaches were open as well, since most are controlled not by the state but by towns up and down New Jersey’s 130 miles of coastline.