FOX News Projects a Christie Win

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – In an April 19 story about Gov. Chris Christie’s payroll, The Associated Press reported erroneously that he is spending nearly $2 million more on salaries a year than did his predecessor, former Gov. Jon Corzine.

Treasury Department figures show the correct higher amount is about $440,000.

Because the AP had incomplete figures for all those on Corzine’s payroll – some were paid by other departments but still worked for the governor – the AP also erroneously reported that twice as many people in Christie’s office earn $100,000 or more than they did in Corzine’s.

Treasury figures show 34 people making $100,000 or more in Christie’s office, compared with 24 for Corzine in April 2009.

Corzine had a payroll of $8.43 million for 118 people, not $7 million, according to Treasury figures. Christie has 117 employees, including himself, with a payroll of $8.86 million per year. Unlike his multimillionaire predecessor, Christie collects the $175,000 salary allowed under the law.

Based on those payroll figures, the average annual salary for Corzine staff in April 2009 was $71,440; the average under Christie is $75,726.

Contrary to what most folks might believe, the story here isn’t the disparity between the administrations and their salaries. No. The story here is that the Associated Press didn’t do any of their homework in publishing the initial story. And for New Jerseyans, the larger story here is uncovering even more of the half-truths from the Corzine administration. Here’s a guy who had no connection to the average New Jerseyan and was thrown out of office a few months ago. Yet, as time goes by and our state takes the common sense approach to balancing our budget, we are still uncovering the type of “politics” garbage that we all hated about Corzine and his crew.

Come on – how could the Corzine administration legitimately not have included these “mobility” (i.e. de facto) Governor’s office members in their original figures? That’s why Corzine isn’t Governor any more – New Jersey doesn’t want the double talk or the double speak any more.

And can someone at the Associated Press please learn a lesson from this story? How hard would it have been to look at the data behind the information submitted by the Corzine administration versus the information submitted by the Christie administration? Any high school student can master that level of “research” yet the public shouldn’t expect this from the Associated Press? Unacceptable.

Well, once again we have a situation where the Associated Press did almost no fact checking once the information was put in front of their biased little faces. Either that or they blatantly wanted to produce a story that was heavily negative against Governor Christie. Anyway, here’s the response coming out of the Governor’s office to the Associated Press’ unbelievably inaccurate story:

An Associated Press story late today made several false statements and faulty assumptions about the Governor’s Office payroll costs under Governor Chris Christie when comparing it against payroll of the prior administration.

The AP story falsely stated that Governor Christie’s payroll was nearly $2 million more than that of the prior administration. Payroll and staff reports on both the Governor’s Office website and given to the Asbury Park Press as part of an OPRA request show the total salary of all employees to be $8.9 million for 117 employees.

The AP story erroneously reported that the Corzine Administration salary total was only $7 million. In fact, there were a large number of employees not included in the Corzine Administration numbers. Adding those employees – so-called “mobility” personnel on loan to the Governor’s Office from other departments – would bring the total salaries to more than $8.3 million for the Corzine Administration. The difference covers at least a dozen of these “mobility” personnel utilized during the Corzine Administration, with a total salary of more than $1.1 million between them.

In contrast, the Christie Administration included and identified by name all its employees – including approximately 15 people on mobility from other agencies – when it posted the administration salaries two weeks ago on the Governor’s Office website, which was also the identical information provided to the Asbury Park Press at the same time.

“We have gone to great lengths to be open and transparent in all regards, including in the reporting of salary and personnel,” said Press Secretary Michael Drewniak. “In the AP’s haste to get out of the gate first, it did so with a story that was half-reported, full of errors of fact and omission and despite administration warnings that it was wrong. We hope the AP will retract its story.”

The AP story also reported that the Corzine Administration had only 17 people earning salaries of $100,000 or more. In fact, there were at least an additional nine employees earning more than $100,000. Again, the story failed to include “mobility” employees or seek to verify all 2009 salaries in the Corzine Administration.

Also, in comparing the total salary numbers between the administrations, the AP story failed to note that Governor Christie receives a salary of $175,000, as allowed by law. His predecessor declined a salary due to his independent wealth.

The story also doesn’t take into account the new position of Lieutenant Governor, which has no budget. The Governor’s Office provides some staff and resources to support the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, which by statute does not include any staff.

Finally, Governor Corzine was unmarried during his term and, therefore, had no staff for a First Lady. The First Lady, Mary Pat Christie, has two staff members in the Office of Protocol.

Wait, so when you compare apples to apples (which you really can’t do because this Governor is taking a salary, this Governor has a wife, and this Governor has a Lieutenant Governor) it turns out that Corzine still remains the king of reckless spending?! WOW, I’m shocked! (sarcasm)

While I wouldn’t run the numbers myself, I’d assume that if you add up how much MORE it would have cost to run the Corzine administration with all of these additional expenses, his budget would have been in excess of Christie’s $8.9 million total Governor’s Office budget. But why would any of the mainstream media sources want to actually run those numbers anyway? Idiots…

The final score - Rider over Monmouth

Of course, the referees weren’t the reason for the Hawks dropping the lead in the last few minutes of the game. An empowered Rider offense combined with a strong full court press defense to put some severe pressure on the Hawks. The full court press has been tough for the Hawks to combat this season and when Rider brought it out today the defensive strategy helped to foul out two of the Hawks’ leaders.

Here’s a brief recap of the game from the Associated Press:

WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. — Justin Robinson scored 13 of his 19 points in the second half as Rider rallied for a 70-63 victory over Monmouth (N.J.) on Saturday.

The game, originally scheduled for 7 p.m., was moved up to 2 p.m. because of an impending snowstorm.

The Broncs (8-5), who trailed 31-27 at the half, used a 16-5 run to turn a 46-41 deficit with 9:39 remaining into a 57-51 lead with 5:10 left.

That run was capped by three consecutive layups by Jhamar Youngblood, who played two seasons for the Hawks (3-9) before transferring and sitting out last season. Youngblood scored 14 of his 16 points in the second half.

Will Campbell scored 27 points to lead Monmouth, including 22 in the second half. Travis Taylor scored 20 for Monmouth, including nine during a 13-2 first-half run that turned an 8-2 deficit into a 15-10 lead.

Will Campbell definitely had a great game today. As the Associated Press story above reports, he scored 27 points – which also ties him for a career high. Not bad for a Sophomore; Campbell is absolutely one of the foundations on which Head Coach Dave Calloway will build the future of his team. As a fan of Monmouth basketball, that sounds great to me!

Another great storyline that played itself out during the game was the return of Jhamar Youngblood to the Monmouth University campus. Youngblood played a few seasons at Monmouth before transferring to Rider. I’m not sure of the reasons why he left the team and went to Rider, but I do know that there was a vocal section of fans at the top of the lower level across from the benches who were dogging the kid out all game. That’s what happens when you leave one team and go to another, I guess. It was definitely entertaining to watch. Almost as entertaining as listening to the fans on our side of the arena go after the referees! Seriously, though, one of the referees was absolutely horrendous.

The Monmouth team is much better than their record would show. I look for a strong showing from the Hawks in the coming weeks as 2009 comes to a close. Before I close up this post with thirty-something pictures from the game, I want to give two quick shout outs to Coach and GGL for coming along to the game! Oh, I’m experimenting with different functions on my camera and which ones are the best for taking action shots. You’ll see that some of the pictures are crisper than the ones I took at the Monmouth vs. UPenn game, but that other pictures are darker in tone. I’m working on it…

The final score of the MU vs. FIU game

In my view, the Hawk players of the game were #10 Will Campbell, #25 Travis Taylor, and #5 Whitney Coleman. Taylor, in particular, was dominant for most of the night. The FIU team played aggressively with a few minutes left on the clock and I’m sure that their aggressive play with help them in future games. However, the Hawks managed to not just to win, but to win by 29 points and nearly broke the 100 point barrier in their first game of the season! It really was a great win for the basketball team and, as an alumnus of the university, it was great to see such strong (and vocal) student support. That’s the type of experience that many of my fellow alumni and I never had the opportunity to get while we were undergraduates, but I like that the current generation of students have this great facility and a great team to cheer on!

And on that point, there are a bunch of Monmouth University alumni from the late 1990’s/early 2000’s that have some degree of bitterness towards the university for a variety of reasons. As someone who was always aggravated that the college completely botched my graduation back in the spring of 2003, I have to admit that I was very impressed with the production tonight. It all went off perfectly and the entire show made me slightly proud to be from Monmouth. And for those of you that know me, you know that this statement means something else coming from my mouth! For those of you who are friends with me on Facebook, you can check out over 50 pictures from the game.

I can’t wait for the big game against Seton Hall this Sunday afternoon – if you’re in the Monmouth area you should check it out!

Mainstream Coverage of the Monmouth victory over FIU: Miami Herald | The New York Times | Asbury Park Press (PDF Download)

The Associated Press and CNN are calling Republican challenger Chris Christie the winner of the New Jersey governor’s race, based on exit polling.

The actual results are still pretty close: Christie’s ahead 49% to 44% with 81% of the precincts reporting. But Christie is doing extremely well in Republican strongholds in Ocean, Monmouth, Morris and Somerset counties, while holding his own against Gov. Jon Cozine in key swing counties, including Bergen and Middlesex counties.

Christie would become the first Republican to win statewide office since Christie Whitman, who also defeated an incumbent Democrat, Jim Florio.

And there you have it. Republican voters in New Jersey have had enough of dealing with the cross-talking and ultra-liberal Jon Corzine and he’s lost his job because of it.