For a while there, you couldn’t walk out into the parking lot of nearly any diner or bar in Monmouth County without tripping over the bagmen with sacks of bribe money for local politicians.
There was so much bribe and kickback money floating around, in fact, that briber Tony Spalliero had to give bribee and then-Marlboro Mayor Matt Scannapieco advice on what chemicals to put in with the money when he buried it so the cash wouldn’t rot.
You just couldn’t make that stuff up.
Then along came U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie, who believed there were a lot of rotten apples in New Jersey politics and made it his mission to get rid of them.
Since George W. (Shrub) Bush appointed him to office in 2002 — the only decision Shrub ever made that I can call a stroke of genius— Christie has won convictions against 130 elected and appointed officials in this state, and didn’t lose a single case.
He took out so many corrupt Monmouth County politicians and hangers-on that we began to wonder if there’d be anybody left to turn the lights out at town hall when he was finished.
Christie’s reputation for bringing solid cases was so fearsome that most of the people he indicted just pleaded guilty because they knew they didn’t stand a donkey’s chance at the Kentucky Derby of winning against Christie and his team in court.
Others, like disgraced former Keyport Mayor, felon and now resident of the Big House John Merla, maintained their innocence until the eleventh hour but threw in the towel before Christie could slaughter them in front of a jury.
Those who actually took a chance in court against Christie discovered that sometimes, nightmares happen in broad daylight.
And Christie certainly didn’t confine himself to Monmouth County. He took out former New Jersey State Senate President John A. Lynch, a state kingmaker and one of the most powerful legislators in New Jersey. He took out former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, whom nobody thought could be touched, and was cocky right up until the moment a federal jury convicted him of fraud and the judge sentenced him to 27 months in prison.
Christopher Christie reminded me of an old Wyoming joke I heard one time about a game warden trying to bust an old coot who was fishing down at the lunker pond with dynamite. Instead of throwing out a hook and a worm, the old codger would just light a stick of dynamite, throw it in the water, and when it went off, the shock wave and concussion would kill a whole bunch of fish, and they’d just float to the surface.
The game warden went undercover and somehow wangled an invitation to go fishing with the old coot one morning.
They got to the middle of the lake, the old coot started lighting sticks of dynamite and throwing them in the water, and big lunkers commenced floating to the surface.
At which point, the game warden pulled out his badge and told the old coot he was under arrest for fishing with explosives.
The old coot just smiled, lit another stick of dynamite and handed it to the game warden, who looked at the rapidly burning fuse with horror.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” the game warden shrieked.
“Well, you can keep talkin’, in which case it’s gonna be a short conversation,” the old coot said. “Or you can wing that stick of dynamite in the water and we can get back to fishin’.”
When Christopher J. Christie went fishin’in the pond of New Jersey politics and set his sights on corrupt lunkers, he went fishin’ with dynamite. And while he didn’t blow all the corrupt lunkers out of the pond, because there are just too many of them, he made a darned serious dent in the population.
And now he’s announced that he’ll resign his position as of Dec. 1. Maybe Christie figures the incoming Democratic administration would be loath to keep a Republican like himself around (which would be a bad decision on the part of the Obama administration), or he’s looking to expand his horizons.
There’s a lot of talk that Christie will run against. Gov. Jon S. Corzine next year if Corzine is still in New Jersey because the Obama administration came to its senses and did not appoint him secretary of the Treasury. Considering Corzine’s ineffectiveness and sagging popularity, Christie just might give him a run for his money.
When Christie was appointed, there were a lot of people who said he was underqualified because his background was in fundraising and corporate law, and he had never led a criminal prosecution or tried a case.
Those people underestimated Christopher J. Christie. They certainly shouldn’t underestimate him if he runs against Corzine and, who knows, he just might make a good governor.
But we should all hope that whoever the Obama administration names to replace Christie as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney is as dogged and determined to stomp out corruption in government as his or her predecessor has been.
There are still a lot of corrupt politicians out there, and I don’t want them to start getting comfortable. I don’t want them to stop looking over their shoulders and worrying that the bagman handing them a sack full of dirty money is either a) wired, or b) an undercover operative for the FBI or the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
I don’t want people like John Merla and Matt Scannapieco and John Lynch and Sharpe James and Anthony Palughi and Paul Zambrano getting out of prison and deciding to come back home, where — absent an aggressive U.S. attorney — they can do it all again.
You don’t think that could happen? Well, stranger things have been known in the annals of New Jersey politics. And even if those guys are out of the picture for good, there’ll be lots of candidates waiting to take their places at the trough.
And before you know it, there’ll be dozens of political reprobates burying bags of money by the light of the moon, and you won’t be able to walk through the parking lot of a diner or bar without dodging an army of bagmen and pols waiting for their taste.
I think we’re gonna miss Christopher J. Christie when he’s gone.
Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].