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Christie enjoys ‘a good argument’

Raised in a household that loved politics and debate, the candidate for governor says he demands accountability.

First of 2 candidate profiles

Even when Christopher J. Christie seems angry, there's that spark in his eyes, the slight turn of a lip, and the raised eyebrow that say he's still in control and enjoying the battle.

He'd better like it.

If the Republican candidate for governor wins Tuesday's primary, he'll likely go up against multimillionaire Democratic Gov. Corzine in the general election. The governor has shown no hesitation to fillet his opponents with expensive television campaigns.

Christie's comfort with the art of the argument was on display recently as he talked about his conduct as New Jersey's U.S. attorney and his brother Todd's troubles with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Standing in a Statehouse meeting room, Christie justified hiring the prosecutor who had previously overseen an investigation that included Todd Christie, a stock trader who was cleared of any wrongdoing.

And candidate Christie was making sure everyone in the press corps, as well as at least one Corzine operative in the audience, understood that his brother had been absolved.

Cradling his legal pad, signaling he was just about finished, Christie said, "I answer questions when they come up. I'm not going to say you'll always like my answers, but these are my answers and this is who I am."

Christie was raised for this kind of clash.

His mother, Sandy, was a warm Sicilian who never fulfilled her dream of going to college but used her strong mind to challenge her children intellectually.

"Oh, yeah, I like a good argument. I like a good fight," Christie said with a smile, and that spark in his eyes.

Fondly recalling his mother, who died in 2004, he said, "She was very opinionated. She loved to argue."

There was no holding back at the Christie home. "You had to learn how to argue or you got run over," he said.

The eldest of three, Christie was born 46 years ago in Newark and raised in Livingston, on a street so busy that he and brother Todd were relegated to the family's backyard for hours of Wiffle ball.

"It was fenced in, so a lot of home runs were available," he said with a chuckle. Later, he played catcher on his high school baseball team, and was captain when the team became state champs.

His father, William, worked at Newark's Breyer's ice cream plant and put himself through Rutgers University at night. He graduated as an accountant two months before Christie was born.

When he was 14, Christie saw Thomas H. Kean campaign for governor at his school, and he came home so inspired that he told his mother he wanted to work for Kean.

"My mother put me in the car and drove me up to Tom Kean's driveway," he said. After a pause, he said, "And made me go to the door by myself."

He volunteered for Kean's unsuccessful 1977 campaign distributing literature at events, beginning his political life. It was a life he'd contemplated even before that long walk to Kean's front door.

His grandmother, Anne Grasso, was a divorced mother of three who constantly talked about politics. Christie doesn't know whether she was a Democrat or a Republican, just that she was on fire about politics. She loved her Democratic congressman and voted for Republican Richard M. Nixon three times.

After high school, he attended the University of Delaware, where he became involved in student government, meeting upperclassman Rick Mroz, who became student government president. A year later, Christie followed him. And the year after that, Christie's future wife, Mary Pat Foster, from Paoli, was elected.

Mroz went on to become former Republican Gov. Christie Whitman's chief counsel and now is a lobbyist.

Friends with both Christie and Foster, Mroz was a groomsman in their wedding. They remain close, and with a group of friends share a box at Delaware Stadium, where they watch Blue Hens football games.

Mroz remembers Christie's family as "embracing," literally and figuratively. They're huggers. It's not that Mroz didn't come from his own warm, tight ethnic family in Camden; it's just that the Christies "treated me like I was family. They talked to me like I was a peer."

Christie attended law school at Seton Hall University and married Foster on his first spring break. The couple has four children, ages 5 to 15. On the campaign trail, Christie has little family time but drives his children to school every day at 6:30 a.m. He and his family live in Mendham, near his brother, Todd, and sister, Dawn, and their families.

After graduating from law school in 1987, he worked at Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci in Cranford. He defended physicians in malpractice cases and built a practice based on securities law, taking clients referred by his brother, Todd, a securities trader, and his wife, Mary Pat, a bond trader. He also was the lawyer in the firm who stood in appellate court fielding unpredictable questions from a panel of judges.

Longtime friend and former law partner William Palatucci said he believes the appellate court experience helped Christie become nimble, whether it's fielding questions from reporters or parrying a debate opponent. Or tackling questions about his weight, as he did on a recent campaign stop in Whiting, Ocean County.

A man in the audience of about 200 at a senior citizens' complex asked, "How's your diet?" Christie replied, "Not as good as it should be. . . . I'm a work in progress." Then smiling, he said, "Thanks for piling on."

After a few years practicing law, politics called again. In 1992, Palatucci was running President George H.W. Bush's reelection operation in New Jersey.

Palatucci made Christie an advance man whose job was to ensure all the details were worked out before the president would appear at an event in New Jersey. After Bush lost, Christie asked Palatucci to join the law firm, and eventually Palatucci became a partner.

At the firm, Palatucci noticed Christie's knack for getting people to trust him. "Chris was always the person people who had a problem would stop in the office, confide in him. Talk about their kids," Palatucci recalled. "He was always the big brother in the office."

In 1993, Christie tried to run for state Senate, but got booted from the ballot for failing to have enough signatures on his nominating petition. In 1994, he ran for Morris County freeholder and won. A few months later, he ran for the Assembly and lost.

He remained a freeholder until 1997, when his own Republican Party defeated him in a primary. His brief career on the freeholder board was stormy and resulted in three defamation suits, all since resolved. He says he was a young man in a hurry and has since learned to be patient.

Even after that string of defeats, Christie stayed interested in politics. When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, Palatucci was again running the New Jersey operation and brought in Christie as campaign counsel.

A combination of factors led Christie to the U.S. Attorney's Office. He had already made important friends in Palatucci, Mroz and Lew Eisenberg, one of the state's premier Republican fund-raisers. He likes to tell audiences on the campaign trail that few thought he was fit to be the state's top fed because he had no criminal-law experience. And he likes just as much to launch into a litany of foul politicians, minor terrorists, and other criminals his office brought to justice.

While the New Jersey U.S. Attorney's Office has a strong reputation, it had not delved deeply into political corruption on such a large scale for decades.

Christie took career prosecutors and reorganized them into small groups, concentrating on specific areas of the law, with one supervisor to eight attorneys. Every seven days, supervisors reported to the office on their teams' progress.

"There were a lot of ugly meetings and I got really angry if things weren't going the way I asked or people didn't have answers," he said.

Christie uses that experience to make the case for why he should be governor. The theme of tough accountability has run through his campaign when he talks about laying off thousands of workers and bringing in teams of investigators to get to the bottom of government spending, and calling for an elected state auditor, independent of the governor.

Christopher J. Christie

Personal: Lawyer, age 46. Lives in Mendham with his wife and four children.

Legal career: U.S. attorney for New Jersey from January 2002 until his Dec. 1 resignation. Joined the law firm of Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci of Cranford in 1987; named partner in 1993. Specialized in securities law and appellate practice.

Political career: Republican. Morris County freeholder, 1995-97; fund-raiser for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.

Education: Bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Delaware, 1984; law degree from Seton Hall University, 1987.

Of interest: As the state's top federal prosecutor, he prosecuted more than 130 elected and appointed political officials, including former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, former State Sen. Wayne Bryant, and former State Senate President John A. Lynch Jr., without a single acquittal.

Source: APEndText

Coming tomorrow

A profile of Steve Lonegan, also a Republican candidate for governor.

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