You Thought ‘Air Claire’ Was Bad, What About ‘Air Chris’?
Well, if you’re not familiar with the controversy surrounding Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), here’s the Garden State version, more or less. Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ), decided that he just couldn’t be late to his son’s baseball game. Rather than try and traverse the awful Garden State Parkway, Air Chris decides to take one of the state’s police helicopters to the game.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie—who has made government reform a major talking point of his administration—is coming under fire for his decision to travel in a state-owned helicopter to his son’s high school baseball game Monday.
According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Christie landed in the state’s $12.5 million helicopter just before the game began, buzzing over the trees in left field and distracting spectators. The GOP governor then got into a black sedan with tinted windows, which drove him about 100 yards to the baseball diamond.
Flanked by bodyguards, Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, watched the game from the stands until they left during the 5th inning. The two got back into the car and rode back to the helicopter. According to the Star-Ledger, the game was stopped for a “couple of minutes” while the helicopter took off.
Christie’s oldest son, Andrew, was playing the position of catcher in the game, which was held at a high school in Montvale, N.J.—about 80 miles away from Trenton, where the state capitol is. But it’s unclear exactly where Christie was coming from because his office won’t say.
Whatever it was it couldn’t have been important. Oh wait, wasn’t he meeting some Iowans about running for POTUS? Definitely not important. Dems in the state aren’t backing down either, which they shouldn’t. This is clearly an abuse of power by the governor.
“Gov. Christie obviously doesn’t include himself in his hollow call for shared sacrifice,” state Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, a Democrat, told AP. “Gov. Christie must learn that taxpayers cannot afford his helicopter joyrides.”