WINNERS
Chris Christie
The governor gave talks at Drumthwacket this week to senators and assembly people about the importance of GOP unity. Whatever back channel rumblings among them about not liking a prez candidate ram-rodded down their throats, Republicans showed up in Parsippany on the governor’s command to back Mitt Romney. Christie helped raise $1 million for the cause.
Mitt Romney
“Romney and New Jersey, Perrrrfect Together.” Getting his butt kicked in polls by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Romney found refuge here Monday in the political embrace of New Jersey Gov. Christie, who assembled an army for him at a successful fundraiser.
Nicole Davidman
The New Jersey GOP fundraiser and Michael Drewniak fiance is parlaying her abilities honed as a statewide Christie cash-generator into national Romney World.
Jeff Chiesa
With the less than smooth departure of Paula Dow, the governor’s chief counsel – and close confidant going back to the U.S. Attorney days – stands at the ready to become the state’s new attorney general.
Michael Cunniff
Commander of the Air Force’s 108th Air Refueling Wing, Cunniff was tapped by the governor to replace Glenn Reith on an interim basis to lead New Jersey’s National Guard.
LOSERS
Dick Codey
The popular former governor and potential 2013 challenger to Gov. Christie saw his car and state police security driver wrenched away from him and front office retaliation against a relative on the public payroll on the command of Christie. Immediate losses now don’t mean the wily Codey won’t have the last laugh.
Tony Mack
Under a Memorandum of Understanding between the city and the state division of Local Government Services, the state will now control nearly all hiring within the City of Trenton, including filling six open positions in the cabinet of the mayor. Mack also has lost the authority to fire cabinet members without first checking with the state and can no longer pay overtime, grant raises and promotions or assign employees in an “acting” capacity.
Thomas Nast
Lawmakers had no end of fun taking a detour from the economic miseries of the present to excoriate the long-dead cartoonist for scribbling ethnically insensitive 19th Century cartoons.
Christie adversaries
Word on the street is part of the front office’s calculation behind putting Chiesa in as attorney general is for him to employ what he learned on the job as an aggressive frontline member of Christie’s U.S. Attorney’s staff.
Richard Whitten
A former chief of staff to Newark Councilman Darrin Sharif, Whitten admitted to a federal judge this week that he evaded income taxes by claiming scores of phony exemptions and failing to file an individual income tax return.
New Jersey
The state lost former Assemblywoman Carol Murphy and former Senate President Frank McDermottt, two respected public servants.
