Christie vows to finish out term, touts N.J. economic progress

Gov. Chris Christie has emphatically dismissed calls from some of New Jersey’s newspapers to resign.

 

Christie knows his poll numbers are about as low as they’ve ever been, but he said Thursday that he’ll be focusing on the state’s issues until the end of his term in January 2018.

“I’m coming to work every day, do my job, do it hard, do it the way I’ve always done it,” he said. “And the people of New Jersey will react to it, and I’ll do better.”

Although he has no immediate plans to hit the presidential campaign trail with Donald Trump, Christie said he expects that, at some point, he will.

“You need to understand. He and I are friends, and so if he picks up the phone and calls me and says. ‘I need you help somewhere,’ and he makes a compelling case for it, and I have the time to do it, I’m going to go help him,” he said. “If I can’t, I’m going to tell him I can’t.”

Christie also said he’s not concerned about all the Internet comments that he seemed shell-shocked when he was on stage with Trump on Super Tuesday. The governor introduced the billionaire after his strong showing in the primaries that day.

“I wasn’t been held hostage. I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t despondent. I wasn’t anything other than happy that we had done as well as we had done that night and listening to someone give a press conference in front of the national press corps,” Christie said. “I don’t think that’s the appropriate time for smiling, cheering, and clapping.”

While he doesn’t agree with everything Trump says, Christie said he’s the best of the remaining presidential candidates.

During his two-hour news conference at the Statehouse, Christie also called a drop in the state’s unemployment rate to 4.8 percent a monumental day for New Jersey’s economic recovery.

“We need to continue the momentum that’s going on in our state with job creation. We need to pass a lean and a smart budget this June that doesn’t raise taxes on the people of New Jersey,” he said. “We need to oppose any type of special-interest constitutional amendments, which would foist a $3 billion  tax increase.”