Christopher J. Christie was in shirtsleeves, standing in the parking lot of the Forked River Diner in Ocean County during Memorial Day weekend.
A few feet away, traffic clogged the very patch of Route 9 that locals believe Bruce Springsteen memorialized in "Thunder Road."
Despite the heat and the cranky tourists eager to begin a season of partying and relaxation, Republicans jammed this campaign stop and embraced Christie. They weren't just shaking his hand, they were hugging him, and, very naturally, he was hugging them back.
The Republicans in New Jersey haven't won a statewide race in a dozen years. They've been embarrassingly out-fund-raised by Democrats and reduced to the sidelines in Trenton.
But there was the sense among these loyalists that maybe this man, the man friends describe as everybody's big brother, would end the drought and return the GOP to power.
In the long gubernatorial campaign, this had been a good day, full of heartfelt support. But the race would turn ugly soon enough.
Jersey politics is a blood sport, and governor's races are the bloodiest of all. Christie, who balances genuine personal warmth with cool pragmatism in battle, knew that truth from the start.
But the onslaught of attack ads from the well-heeled campaign of Democratic Gov. Corzine has been bruising, personal, and highly effective, turning Christie's yearlong lead into a dead heat, according to the latest independent polls.
Christie says his opponent has crossed a line, distorting his career as a nonpartisan prosecutor who went after Republicans and Democrats alike. But political observers say Christie also made it easy for Corzine and other Democrats to caricature his ties to the Bush administration and to tar him as overly partisan.
Christie grew up in a world of politics in Livingston, the son of an accountant and an office worker. And he exhibited a politician's instinct for people from his earliest years.
Mystery writer Harlan Coben, a boyhood friend who remains a strong supporter, remembers walking up to the edge of the Livingston Little League field, nervous because he'd missed half the season. A 10-year-old Christie approached, shook Coben's hand, and introduced himself.
"He was trying to make me feel welcome, which is really weird for a kid that age," Coben recalled. "I didn't know him. But he kind of went out of his way."
They played baseball together up through high school, where the Livingston Lancers, with Christie as catcher, became state champs.
"He would include the person who seemed farthest in the corner, who seemed the loneliest - he would go up and talk to the guy and help bring him into the fold," Coben said.
At 14, Christie volunteered in former Gov. Thomas H. Kean's first, unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. Christie was elected to student government in high school and at the University of Delaware, where he met his wife, Mary Pat, a Paoli native.
After college, it was off to law school at Seton Hall University and then a job at the firm of Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci in Cranford in 1987, where he began volunteering to work for Republican presidential candidates.
From 1993 to 1997, he ran for office four times, winning once, a seat as a Morris County freeholder in 1994. With its rolling hills, gated estates, and high concentration of Republicans, Morris County is nothing like the gritty cities of New Jersey, except that in both places the politics is rough and dirty.
Christie won his seat after inaccurately claiming that the county prosecutor was investigating Christie's opponents. They sued him for defamation and, to settle the case, Christie made a public apology.
Three years later, opponents used the same knife on him. They said Christie tried to use county money to pay legal bills for a defamation suit filed against him by an architect whom Christie helped fire. It wasn't true - and this time Christie sued, and ultimately settled.
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