Fat Man walks....

Christie heads for the exits looking for a legacy — and quoting Churchill

In his farewell address, he also quotes from Einstein and Ulysses.

By RYAN HUTCHINS

Chris Christie got his last word — for now.

The outgoing New Jersey governor, once among the Republican Party’s biggest stars — a man relentlessly pursued by donors to make a presidential run — spent his farewell speech to the New Jersey legislature trying to prove he has a legacy worth bragging about.

He hands power to Democrat Phil Murphy next week after eight tumultuous years with just 5 percent of the New Jersey public saying it will miss him. But Christie is likely to write a book and carry on in the public spotlight — and clearly thinks history will remember him fondly.

Christie’s 8,500-word farewell address featured quotations from Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” and made no allusion to his failures or the moments that cast a pall over his time in office. He made no mention of the cloud that hung over his administration after the Bridgegate revelations, his failed presidential run, his complicated ties with Donald Trump or last year’s state government shutdown.

“I ran to be different,” Christie told lawmakers. “I ran to talk bluntly. I ran to shine lights on all of New Jersey’s real problems. I ran to offer tough but achievable solutions. I ran to be a governor who did not just mark time. I ran to win. And I ran to be a governor of consequence.”

In his 87-minute State of the State address, he said he had much to look back on: He closed a $13 billion budget gap in his first two years, then took on the “insatiable beast of public employee pensions and platinum health benefits.” He says he kept the greedy hands of liberal lawmakers off taxpayer money, persuading Democrats to go along with a cap on property taxes. He improved the schools in Camden, shored up the local government in Atlantic City and kept property taxes in check across 565 municipalities.

Much of his speech was met with applause, a good portion of it bipartisan. In some surreal moments, Christie waxed poetic on his years in office and the people around him.

He thanked Steve Sweeney, the Democratic leader of the state Senate who became one of his biggest allies in the Legislature, even if the two had cross words over the years.

He thanked George Norcross, a millionaire insurance executive and the boss of the South Jersey Democrats, for being “my partner.” An open admission of their alliance might have been unthinkable seven years ago.

A new poll this week found that just 5 percent of the state’s residents believe they will miss Christie when he’s gone, and 13 percent said they view him favorably. He became one of the least popular governors in the nation's history last year; his approval rating landed at 15 percent after he was photographed sitting on a closed state beach in the middle of a government shutdown.

Some say they’ve had enough Christie to last a lifetime.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the ass,” Analilia Mejia, head of the liberal group New Jersey Working Families Alliance, said of the governor before she attended the speech.

Still, Democratic leaders in the state Legislature had nothing but kind words for the parting governor, who spent much of his speech recalling bipartisan efforts to take over Atlantic City and enact the pension and health benefits reforms that helped catapult Christie to the top of the national GOP.

“What you heard today is what is possible when two parties are willing to work together,” Sweeney, who once called Christie a “rotten prick,” said after the speech.

Even state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, a now-82-year-old grandmother whom Christie once suggested the press “take a bat” to, seemed to put aside her distaste for the governor.

“For a minute there I almost thought I was going to miss him,” she joked to reporters. “You can laugh, it’s OK.”

Portraying himself as a tough-talking former U.S. attorney who took on unpopular issues to do what needed to be done for a struggling state, he said he squared off with the public-sector unions and won. And he said he vetoed more tax hikes “than any governor in modern American history.”

And Christie offered some stern advice for Murphy, and the next Legislature, which has gained Democrats while the governor held office.

The new governor and lawmakers, he said, must work together to ensure a key piece of his first-term property tax laws get renewed. And they also must focus on the pension system, which he had once claimed to have fixed. It remains in deep trouble. He said the only thing that can save it is enacting further curbs on employee benefits, changes recommended by a bipartisan panel he had appointed.

“Let me assure all of you of one other thing: No matter what you do, unless it involves complete capitulation, you will be vilified by public union leaders,” Christie said.

Murphy, who continues to have a chilly relationship with the governor, briefly appeared at the back of the Assembly chambers an hour before Christie’s speech. He was greeting lawmakers in the majority leader’s office and taking selfies with those who asked.

“Just passing through here,” Murphy, appearing caught off guard, told inquiring reporters.

Asked whether he was staying for Christie’s speech, he said, “No, I am not.”

Hours later, he issued a frosty statement.

“Today, Governor Christie painted a sunny picture of a state in good standing,” he said. “Unfortunately, New Jerseyans have long known that we’re in a dire state of fiscal crisis: providing unnecessary tax cuts to millionaires and generous corporate welfare, while costs incurred by everyday residents — from college tuition to transit fares to health care premiums — have skyrocketed.”

“Together, one week from today,” he said, “New Jersey will turn the page to a bright new day.”