New Jersey Governor Chris Christie responded to a report from Jon Ward of the Huffington Post during a press conference Tuesday. The report from Ward said that Christie declined a request by Mitt Romney to make an appearance at a rally with him this past Sunday night. Christie said that Romney called to ask about the Hurricane Sandy situation as it approached the state. The audio of the call is embedded in the post courtesy of Matthew Keys from Reuters.
“I told Governor Romney at that time that if the storm landed as predicted that it was going to be catastrophic to New Jersey and unprecedented,” Christie said. “I said to him, ‘Listen, Mitt, if this storm hits the way I think it’s going to, I’m off the campaign trail from here to Election Day.’ And he said to me, ‘Chris, of course. That’s what you have to do. Do your job, don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of things.’ So all this other noise, I think, is coming from know-nothing, disgruntled Romney staffers who, you know, don’t like the fact that I said nice things about the President of the United States. Well, that’s too bad for them.”
“He told me last Sunday night that he expected no other political travel or help from me over the course of the remaining time between then and the election, if in fact the storm hit the way it was projected,” Christie continued. “If it missed us, I would have been happy to go out on the road and help him. But it didn’t.”
Millions of New Jersey residents were left without power from Hurricane Sandy, which turned into a superstorm when it merged with arctic air and a front from the West. A major disaster area designation was declared by President Barack Obama for New Jersey. Christie described the response from the federal government, saying it “has been great. I was on the phone at midnight again last night with the president personally,” Christie said. “The president has been outstanding in this, and so the folks of FEMA, Craig Fugate and his folks have been excellent.”
According to Politico, insiders from the Romney campaign were supposedly unhappy with what Christie had to say about Obama. They said that it was “over the top.” A source from the Romney campaign told Ward that the governor should have gone to a rally held in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, which is just 20 minutes from Trenton.
“You can’t tell me he couldn’t have gone over there for a night rally,” the source told Ward.
