Chris Christie leaves New Jersey behind for Palm Beach fundraiser | www.palmbeachpost.comNew Jersey ...

1. Christie leaves NJ behind for Palm Beach fundraiser
Chris Christie leaves New Jersey behind for Palm Beach fundraiser | www.palmbeachpost.com
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie left a political scandal back home to raise money for fellow
Republicans in Florida this weekend, including a kaffeeklatsch Saturday at the Palm Beach mansion
of Jose Pepe Fanjul Jr.
About 30 of the town"s top GOP givers attended the afternoon event held by Fanjul, who is executive
vice president of Florida Crystals, one of the nation"s largest sugar producers.
Town Councilman Bill Diamond declined to name others who attended but said none of the
billionaire conservative Koch brothers did.
"It wasn"t an ideological discussion, either," Diamond said after the gathering, which was closed to
reporters. "It was "how to win." If you can"t win, you can"t govern and if you can"t govern, you can"t
change things."
Christie and Florida Gov. Rick Scott spoke for about 45 minutes, Diamond said. "It was quite a tour
de force."
Christie, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said the way to get Scott reelected is to
focus on his record of creating jobs, improving education, recruiting companies and lowering taxes.
"That"s the great Republican message and that"s what"s going to be emphasized. Every Republican
governor is trying to do the same thing," Diamond said.
There was no mention of the scandal surrounding Christie"s top aides, an apparent political payback
scheme that caused massive traffic jams last fall by closing local access lanes to the George
Washington Bridge, one of the world"s busiest bridges.
"No one asked," Diamond said. "The whole thing is very simple: If they can"t tie Christie to
knowledge before it happened, they"ve got no case except a lot of media hype and Gov. Christie will
come out stronger."

2. Christie is headlining a series of events to help Scott and the state party. The events give Christie his
first chance since the scandal escalated to reassure big financial donors that he remains a viable
presidential contender for 2016.
But there also was no discussion of his presidential ambitions, Diamond said. Christie is
concentrating on the 2014 governor races and not his own campaign, the town councilman said. "He
emphasized that strongly."
Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP consultant, says donors he"s spoken with feel Christie"s rising star
was tainted by the controversies. "He"s gone from an A-plus to a B. He"s not going to be the
presidential nominee in waiting. We"re in a watch-and-see phase."
Democrats have tried to use the bridge scandal to tarnish Christie, who cruised to re-election
against an underfunded Democratic opponent.
Backed by local elected officials, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, who leads the
Democratic National Committee, held a news conference near a Christie fundraiser Saturday in
Orlando to tie the New Jersey governor to Scott, one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the
country.
"Republican governors have been touting themselves as the grown-ups and the ones that have the
ability to lead us forward," she said. "The guy they chose as their leader is Chris Christie, who has
been characterized as a maniacal bully by Republicans and who was willing to take out retribution
against not the elected officials who wouldn"t endorse him but " his own constituents."
Republicans countered that Democrats were trying to distract from their own party"s leading
gubernatorial contender, former GOP Gov. Charlie Crist, whose tenure coincided with the recession.

3. Under Crist, Florida"s unemployment "spiked to record high numbers and jobs disappeared from the
state in droves," RGA spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said. "This weekend, Charlie Crist and Florida
Democrats want to talk about anything other than their failures."
In Orlando, hundreds of donors attended the fundraiser where Christie presented Scott with a $2.5
million check from the RGA for a political committee that"s helping Scott"s campaign, according to
the association.
Today, Christie is scheduled to attend fundraisers in Palm Beach and meet with major financial
supporters at a gathering organized by Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot, who
urged the governor to consider a late entry into the 2012 presidential race.
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