Politics

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (CBS) ― Chris Christie has a reputation for fighting political corruption, but that doesn't mean the Republican seeking his party's nomination for governor hasn't engaged in rugged politics.

He won his first election after claiming -- falsely -- that two opponents were under investigation.

"I think he was dirtier than most," said Edward Tamm, one of the two incumbent Morris County freeholders Christie and a running mate ousted in a primary 15 years ago.

Christie's allies -- a group that includes several former adversaries -- have said he learned from that first campaign. They also gave him credit for improving the government in Morris County during a tumultuous term on the freeholder board. That foray into politics before the office made him well known across the state, and he served as U.S. Attorney from 2002 until last year. There, he built his corruption-busting reputation as his office won convictions of 130 public officials. 

Christie is now running as the favorite among New Jersey's GOP establishment, seen as moderate enough to have a chance in a state that has not elected a Republican to statewide office in 12 years.

But the last time he ran for office, he was a divisive figure among Republicans in his home county.

In 1994, Christie was 31 and a new partner at a Cranford law firm. He had political experience already from working on President George H.W. Bush's failed 1992 re-election bid campaign and serving as class president at Livingston High School for four years. He also served as student body president at the University of Delaware.

But Christie was a newcomer to Morris County, among the nation's highest counties in income, and a place where Republicans routinely scuffled in primaries but dominated in general elections.

Instead of working his way up through municipal government, he burst onto the scene on the county level. He said last week that he started there because when he addressed the board to oppose a road widening project near his home, he felt the public was not treated with respect.

In newspaper and cable TV ads in the campaign's final weeks, Christie claimed that Tamm and Cecilia Laureys were being investigated for violations of open public meetings laws. But there was no investigation.
 
Christie won the primary, then the general election. Tamm and Laureys sued for defamation, and  Christie later settled with them and apologized.
Christie said the problem was regrettable but relatively small: He used the word "investigation" when he should have used "inquiry."

Tamm maintains that Christie should have known better, whileLaureys has forgiven him en-route to endorsing him for governor.

"Sometimes you have to learn from your mistakes," she said. She believes he has. Furthermore, she said, Christie has treated her well since the lawsuit was settled.

John Eckert, who also served on the board in the mid-1990s, said Christie was determined to carry out his plans for reform. In each of the first five meetings, Christie raised another major point, recalled Eckert, who now lives in Wayland, Mich.

Eckert said he saw an ambitious young politician who was forceful and articulate.

"If you didn't agree with him, you had to sharpen your pencil and do your homework," Eckert said.

While his open government agenda initially annoyed other freeholders, it was eventually adopted.

The principle of an open government that affords no special favors to the elected or the connected became a fixture of his time as the state's top federal law enforcer and is being echoed again in his current campaign.
The board began requiring that all public contracts -- even for professional services -- be awarded only after a competitive bidding process.

The board also installed a stringent ethics policy for county officials that, among other things, barred accepting gifts from contractors. John Murphy, a freeholder who sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2005, said it means he needs to be careful not to let a college friend who's now a lawyer buy him a beer.

As U.S. attorney, Christie used to warn that elected officials could show they were for sale by taking gifts as small as cups of coffee from contractors.

But Christie said he never accepted coffee or any other gift when he was a freeholder. He also added he wasn't as politic as he should have been when he joined the board -- something he chalks up to his relative youth.

"You needed to be more gentle and delicate than I actually was," Christie said.

Oscar Doyle, who was chairman of the Morris County Republican organization when Christie was a freeholder -- and who had some arguments with him -- said Christie stood out for being careful with taxpayer money at a time when not every politician was.

"In the '90s, we didn't even think of a recession," Doyle said.

One of the major dilemmas of the time was over building a new county jail. Before Christie was on the board, the freeholders hired an architect who had never before designed a jail without competitive bidding. The architect estimated the facility would cost $49 million.

Christie was a leader in the charge to fire that architect and have firms bid for the job. The facility cost $32 million to build and opened in 1999, and Christie still cites it as one of the major accomplishments of his term.

The fired architect sued Christie for defamation over a campaign newsletter in which Christie claimed his action saved taxpayers $17 million. Christie initially asked if the county could pay his legal fees in the case, asserting it had to do with county business. He later changed course and paid his own legal bills, but the issue would come back. 

Christie lost the primary in his re-election attempt in 1997, and chalks that up largely to the way he tweaked the power structure with his reform agenda. "I had bucked the status quo a lot," he said.

But another factor may have been the campaign ads that run by a slate of candidates including John Murphy, another Christie opponents who has become a supporter.

They said Christie had agreed to have the county pay his legal bills.
After the loss, Christie did what the incumbents he had defeated three years earlier did: sued for defamation.

And like the earlier case, it eventually settled out of court.

"Chris and I hammered out the deal one-on-one," Murphy said. "That was the beginning of somewhat of a friendship."

  

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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