Christie ends day with stop in Toms River
Monday, November 2, 2009
TOMS RIVER — As Gov. Jon S. Corzine shared the stage with President Barack Obama in two cities on Sunday, his chief rival, Republican Chris Christie, made seven campaign bus stops throughout the state at much smaller venues. The GOP gubernatorial candidate capped his frantic final weekend before election day as the featured speaker at Ocean County Republicans' pre-election night rally.
More than 300 supporters gathered in the ballroom at the Holiday Inn for an event featuring most local and county party leaders. The general theme of the evening was to mobilize the party's get-out-the-vote efforts.
"It all comes down now to three things,'' said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. "Turnout, turnout and turnout.''
This was the fourth visit to Ocean County for Christie since Wednesday and his second appearance in Toms River.
The Garden State's gubernatorial race is one of only two such elections in the country this year, with Virginia being the other.
Since mid-October, most opinion polls show the race as a toss-up, including the Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll released on Sunday, which had Christie up by one point but well within the poll's three percentage-point margin of error.
Most assembled were optimistic about Christie's chances in unseating the incumbent.
"New Jersey is a great place. It just has terrible leadership,'' said Ocean County Freeholder John Bartlett, who is running for re-election.
In his speech to the party faithful, Christie touched on the familiar general themes of his campaign -- high taxes, the high unemployment rate and his call for deregulation on businesses.
"This is two very different choices in 48 hours for you to choose from,'' said Christie. "You can't find two more different guys than me and Jon Corzine.''
Christie's running mate, Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno, spent most of the day campaigning in Union and Bergen counties.
Big name state and national Republicans have also been actively campaigning for Christie in recent days.
On Saturday, Christie was stumping with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and his primary opponent, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan.
He also enlisted the help of the GOP's most recent presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to record a robo-call phone message that was sent potential voters in the state.
Christie wasn't the only candidate to focus on the Shore region this weekend.
Chris Daggett, the most prominent of the 10 independent candidates on Tuesday's ballot, spent a portion of his Halloween night at the annual Toms River parade shaking hands and greeting some of the thousands of people in attendance for that event.
Daggett, who is still drawing double-digit support in some polls, has a 12-hour bus tour scheduled for several stops in northern New Jersey on Monday.
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