Chris Christie rose to national prominence in 2010 in part on his reputation for taking on unpopular battles, entrenched interests, and vocal critics at town-hall meetings across his heavily Democratic state.
But the governor’s decision last Wednesday to renominate for tenure the state’s chief justice, Stuart Rabner, a Democrat, has led several conservatives to denounce him for backing down from a fight over judicial nominations and giving up on a campaign promise to reshape the state’s top court. Together with his deference to the New Jersey State Bar Association and his failure to push for tort reform in a notoriously litigious state, the controversy over the renomination opens up a gaping vulnerability in a potential 2016 nomination battle. The governor would face a field of candidates from more conservative states who have been able to tackle these issues with greater ease, and who have done so with great success.
The reappointment of Rabner, who cleared the way for the legalization of same-sex marriage in New Jersey, was to some conservatives a sign of flagrant disregard. The conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III, chairman of the political-action committee ForAmerica, accused Christie of “flip[ing] his middle finger at conservatives” and said the governor is assuming, erroneously, that conservatives will be willing to overlook the issue if he mounts a presidential bid in 2016. “He is divorced from reality,” Bozell said in a statement.
Christie also drew the ire of Daryn Iwicki, the director of Americans for Prosperity’s New Jersey branch, who called his move “disastrous news for taxpayers” and predicted it would have “untold consequences on the state for years to come.”
The Rabner reappointment was part of a compromise Christie reached with state-senate Democrats that put an end to a simmering war over judicial nominations. It allowed Christie to nominate a Republican judge, Lee Solomon, to a seven-year term on the court in exchange for Rabner’s renomination. Rabner, a friend of Christie who served as his deputy in the U.S. attorney’s office, has been chief justice since 2007. With tenure, he will remain on the bench until 2030.
On the campaign trail in 2007, Christie said none of the state’s supreme-court justices, including Rabner, had the traits he would look for in selecting a justice. “On the New Jersey Supreme Court right now? No,” he said in response to a question about whether any of the justices fit his criteria. “I want someone who is extraordinarily bright, and I want someone who will interpret laws and the Constitution, not legislate from the bench.”
Bill Palatucci, a senior adviser to Christie, cautions against a rush to judgment. He points out that Rabner, who was appointed to the bench by Democratic governor Jon Corzine, has had to recuse himself from a number of cases over the past seven years, and Palatucci says some conservatives are jumping to conclusions. “People should hold their views on the chief justice until we get a longer track record and until we see where he comes down on many issues,” he says.
The New Jersey Supreme Court, which since the late 1960s has amassed increasing powers, has long been the object of conservative ire. Conservative legal scholars say that the court, which is deeply involved in the state’s education and housing decisions, is the root of New Jersey’s fiscal problems. Steven Malanga of the free-market Manhattan Institute called it “the court that broke New Jersey”; others, like the conservative Federalist Society, have emphasized that remaking the court is a prerequisite for addressing the state’s nagging budgetary problems — including, right now, the $2.7 billion budget shortfall that is causing the governor major political headaches. They had high hopes that Christie would do so.
New Jersey has an idiosyncratic system for supreme-court appointments under which justices are appointed by the governor for an initial seven-year term and may then be reappointed for tenure. Governors have for decades operated under a gentlemen’s agreement to maintain a political balance on the seven-member court, ensuring that there are no more than four members of one political party.