{"id":5320,"date":"2015-06-30T11:48:33","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T15:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=5320"},"modified":"2015-06-30T12:09:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T16:09:55","slug":"its-official-christie-launches-2016-presidential-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2015\/06\/its-official-christie-launches-2016-presidential-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Official: Christie Launches 2016 Presidential Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gov.<\/a>

Gov. Chris Christie announces his run for the presidency. (Credit: News12 New Jersey)<\/p><\/div>\n

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie launched his presidential campaign Tuesday in Livingston, the Essex County community where he grew up and attended high school.<\/p>\n

Christie, who was introduced by high school friends and came onstage to make the announcement as Bon Jovi\u2019s \u201cWe Weren\u2019t Born to Follow\u201d blared over the Livingston High School gymnasium\u2019s loudspeakers, leaned heavily on themes of family and his hometown roots during his speech \u2013 a break from the governor\u2019s signature tough talk on policy issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything started here for me,\u201d Christie told the gathered crowd in an ad-libbed speech that was delivered without a script or teleprompters. \u201cThe confidence, the education, the friends, the family and the love that I\u2019ve always felt for and from this community. When I decided to make this announcement, there wasn\u2019t any choice, I had to come home, and Livingston is home for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He described his parents\u2019 relocation to Livingston from Newark, and how his father took a job in a Breyer\u2019s ice cream factory after his grandfather died suddenly, cutting short his father\u2019s college aspirations. The anecdote introduced themes of hard work and compromise that continued throughout the remainder of Christie\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica is tired of hand-wringing and indecisiveness,\u201d Christie said. \u201cWe need to have strength, decision-making and authority back in the Oval Office, and that is why I am running for President of the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two-term governor touted his record in New Jersey as a reformer, pointing to a successful effort to remake the state\u2019s pension and benefits system for unionized public employees, the first reform of the state\u2019s educational tenure laws in 105 years and successive balanced budgets following an $11 billion budget deficit during the administration of former Gov. Jon Corzine.<\/p>\n

In Washington, \u201cboth parties have stood in the corner and held their breath,\u201d Christie said. \u201cThis dysfunction, this lack of leadership, has led to an economy that\u2019s weak and hasn\u2019t recovered the way it should. Our friends can no longer trust us and our adversaries no longer fear us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christie called President Barack Obama\u2019s foreign policy \u201cweak and feckless,\u201d warning that, \u201cWe better not turn it over to his second mate, Hillary Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also pledged to \u201cfix a broken entitlement system\u201d in the federal government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe horse is out of the barn, we need to get it back in, and we can only do it by force,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But despite the swipes at Clinton and Obama, Christie repeated his oft-used slogan, \u201cCompromise is not a dirty word,\u201d saying in New Jersey he worked with \u201cour friends in the Democratic party\u201d to push through reform measures against the will of the state\u2019s \u201cmost powerful special interest groups,\u201d referring to New Jersey\u2019s powerful public employee unions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis country needs to work together again, not against each other,\u201d Christie said. \u201cThis is your country too. We are going to go and win this election.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie launched his presidential campaign Tuesday in Livingston, the Essex County community where he grew up and attended high school. Christie, who was introduced by high school friends and came onstage to make the announcement as Bon Jovi\u2019s \u201cWe Weren\u2019t Born to Follow\u201d blared over the Livingston High School gymnasium\u2019s loudspeakers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,2],"tags":[1471,1472,1369,1473],"class_list":["post-5320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brick-elections","category-government","tag-2016-presidential-election","tag-announcement","tag-chris-christie","tag-hillary-clinton"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/christie_announcement.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-1nO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}