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Christie returns home to reclaim N.J. narrative

TRENTON - Outside groups backing Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich are blitzing New Hampshire with attack ads that portray Gov. Christie's New Jersey as a wasteland of high taxes and credit downgrades, a laboratory for expansion of Obamacare, and home to a governor with unscrupulous aides under criminal indictment.

TRENTON - Outside groups backing Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich are blitzing New Hampshire with attack ads that portray Gov. Christie's New Jersey as a wasteland of high taxes and credit downgrades, a laboratory for expansion of Obamacare, and home to a governor with unscrupulous aides under criminal indictment.

Donald Trump, the unvarnished celebrity real estate mogul leading the GOP race, has declared that New Jersey is the "worst state in the union in terms of economics."

Against that backdrop of an unpredictable and brawling presidential race, Christie will return briefly to Trenton on Tuesday to deliver his annual State of the State address with a chance to tell a better story about his record in New Jersey.

The speech, scheduled for 3 p.m. in the General Assembly's chamber in the Statehouse, comes less than a month before February's Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, which are critical to Christie's hopes to capture the GOP presidential nomination.

"With the State of the State and other speeches, it's important for him to frame New Jersey in a way that's much more positive than what we've been hearing" from Christie's rivals, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

In the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., Christie has emphasized the job he held before he rose to national prominence: U.S. attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008. Campaigning as a former prosecutor whose office convicted suspected terrorists has helped Christie rise in New Hampshire polls.

So Christie's rivals have begun to attack him where he is more vulnerable: his record as governor.

One TV ad that began airing last week in New Hampshire, paid for by a super PAC supporting Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, reminds voters of the George Washington Bridge case, in which several people who were tied to the governor are accused of intentionally closing lanes leading to the bridge as a political retaliation: "Christie's close aides are under criminal indictment."

"Chris Christie," the narrator says. "High taxes, weak economy, scandals: Not what we need in the White House."

Christie dismisses as "old news" the fact, cited by opponents, that the three major Wall Street ratings agencies have downgraded New Jersey's general obligation bonds three times each since the governor took office in January 2010.

He has welcomed the scrutiny. "So, listen, they want to have a debate about the New Jersey record, bring it on," Christie said last month on ABC's This Week. "I'm ready to have it."

On Tuesday, he'll likely play up a new statistic that he has boasted of recently: Through November, New Jersey added more private-sector jobs (55,100) in 2015 than in any year since 2000.

Job growth has indeed been strong, relative to New Jersey's recent past. Driving growth is residential and commercial construction in Camden and Newark, said Stephen Ciccarella, a senior economist with Moody's Analytics.

But New Jersey's year-over-year growth lags the nation and its peers in the mid-Atlantic region, Ciccarella said.

Since Christie's first full month in office, February 2010, New Jersey's total private-sector employment had increased about 7 percent, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. By contrast, the United States and New York have experienced growth of about 13 percent and Pennsylvania about 7.3 percent.

Unlike its neighbors, New Jersey still has not recovered all the jobs it lost during the recession.

Other seemingly good economic news: The Garden State's unemployment rate dropped from 6.5 percent in May to 5.3 percent in November. But that decline coincided with a reduction in the number of residents looking for work, or, in economics parlance, participating in the labor force, Ciccarella said.

Of New Jersey's growth, he said, "We really want to see over the next year: Does this continue?"

Once construction "tapers down again, do you have this sustained gain in employment in the state?" Ciccarella said. "I'm not sure it's enough to say they've turned a corner in some sense."

Governors traditionally use the State of the State address to review their accomplishments and articulate a vision for the year to come. One problem Christie faces with assessing the Garden State: He has not been here very much.

Christie spent 190 days out of state in 2015, excluding trips to New York and Pennsylvania, the administration confirmed. He visited those neighboring states 71 days, but for a majority of them, Christie spent most of his time in New Jersey.

Just 33 percent of registered voters in the Garden State approve of Christie's job performance, according to a December Rutgers-Eagleton poll. Fifty-eight percent of residents say the state is heading in the wrong direction, another Rutgers survey shows.

New Jersey's pension and health benefits systems remain underfunded. The pension plans for teachers and state workers will run out of money within the next 10 years or so, according to a 2014 report by a Christie-appointed commission.

The state's fund for road, bridge, and rail maintenance and repairs is set to run out of money at the end of the fiscal year in June, according to lawmakers and Christie's former transportation secretary.

These problems must be solved before New Jersey elects its next governor, said Thomas H. Kean Sr., a Republican former governor and mentor to Christie.

Christie's presidential campaign and jockeying by state Democrats to succeed him hasn't made things easier, Kean said.

"I think there's plenty of blame to share," Kean added. "We've got the most powerful governorship in the country. . . . When he's not around, that creates problems."

Democrats, who control the Legislature, complain that Christie's absence has stalled policy-making, even as they advance a controversial constitutional amendment to mandate pension funding.

That contrasts with Christie's message on the campaign trail, where he says he's better qualified than other governors are for the White House because he knows how to work with Democrats.

Zelizer, the Princeton professor, said Christie needed to try to show "he's actually governing and seriously engaged in the various problems that New Jersey faces."

Christie's main vulnerability isn't that he is traveling a lot out of state, but rather that New Jersey "hasn't been doing very well when he was here," Zelizer said.

aseidman@phillynews.com

856-779-3846

@AndrewSeidman

Staff writers Maddie Hanna and Jonathan Lai contributed to this article.

Christie's Travels

Gov. Christie won't be home for long.

On the heels of Tuesday's State of the State speech, Christie will travel to South Carolina, where he will appear in Thursday's GOP presidential debate.

After the debate, Christie heads west to Iowa, which holds caucuses Feb. 1. Another New Hampshire trip is in the works, too: Christie is listed among candidates confirmed to speak Jan. 23 at the "First-in-the-Nation Presidential Town Hall Event." - Maddie HannaEndText