During His Group Hug Jump, Chris Christie Technically Wasn’t New Jersey’s Governor
Chris Christie and former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda talk on the sideline before an NFL wildcard playoff football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015, in Arlington, Texas. Brandon Wade / AP Photo
The state’s constitution puts Kim Guadagno in charge in his absence.
When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was spotted joining in a triumphant but “super awkward” group hug following the Dallas Cowboys’ 20-24 victory over the Detroit Lions on Sunday, he wasn’t technically the governor of the Garden State at that very moment while jumping for joy with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and others in Texas.
Kim Guadagno, New Jersey’s lieutenant governor, was the state’s acting governor.
According to New Jersey’s constitution, the state’s lieutenant governor becomes the acting governor when the sitting governor steps outside of the state. That provision was approved by New Jersey voters in 2005 as part of a constitutional amendment that created the No. 2 position.
Guadagno, the state’s first lieutenant governor, has filled in the Christie plenty of times before.
Last August, Guadagno approved legislation mandating cardiopulmonary resuscitation training for New Jersey high school students. In October, she announced that New Jersey would be receiving federal grants to help small businesses tap into the state’s export market.
Most of the time, the acting governor doesn’t attract many headlines.
According to a January 2014 feature on Guadagno in New Jersey Monthly:
When Christie is absent, usually no one notices—except in December 2010, when a severe winter storm moved into New Jersey and both Christie and Guadagno were out of town on family vacations, he in Disney World and she on a long-planned cruise in Mexico. On that occasion, the president of the state Senate became the acting governor, as was the routine before the office of lieutenant governor was created by constitutional amendment in 2006.
Last October when she was serving as acting governor, Guadagno was hospitalized after a bicycle accident.
Christie thinks that the law is outdated because current telecommunications technology can keep him in touch with official matters in Trenton or elsewhere in the Garden State when he’s away.
And if Christie makes a 2016 White House bid, as many political observers anticipate, he’ll be out of state a lot more.
“I’m the governor when I’m in New Hampshire. I’m the governor when I’m in Iowa. I’m the governor when I’m in Texas. I’m the governor when I’m in South Carolina,” Christie said at a news conference in September, according to New Jersey’s 101.5 FM. “I’m the governor—and I don’t think there’s any confusion among anybody in the state about who the governor is. I don’t really think people think Kim is the governor when I’m not here,” he said.
New Jersey Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon thinks the acting governor rule needs to go as well and has proposed a constitutional amendment scrapping it.