Governor Christie, who's in Ohio today campaigning with Mitt Romney, has been criticized lately for traveling out-of-state a lot.

Chris Christie
Governor's Office/Tim Larsen
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Democrats claim the Governor is spending too much time away from New Jersey, and they're also unhappy that all the traveling is costing the state a lot of money for the State Police detail that must travel with Christie.

Before boarding a plane to the Midwest, the Governor said, "If I had a choice to leave the State Police at home I would. I don't have a choice. The State Police sets the policies for when they have to be with me, based upon the threat matrix that they're looking at at the time, regarding my personal safety."

Christie points out former Governor Corzine - and many other Governors - were constantly traveling outside New Jersey.

He says when Corzine "went to the Hamptons every weekend, were you asking if he was paying for that?...Every weekend! I don't think that I travel any more than any other Governors in totality when you look at totality out of the state…The problem is that I get more notoriety for it."

He says this is not really surprising.

"Everything has always been hyper-focused on me- another day at the ranch, and I'm really not worried about it…The fact is when you run the government the way I run the government, when you conduct yourself the way I conduct myself, people are gonna want to take shots. It's alright - I give as good as I get…Lets get used to it everybody, this is politics time, they're all going to play politics - that the way it goes. But I'm certainly not going to change my conduct, based upon their political games."

Christie adds, "I hope that it doesn't descend into pure partisanship because that would be unfortunate. We have lots of things that we need to do…Despite all the press releases that go out at times, fact is we work fairly well together, given our philosophical differences, we work fairly well together…I'm hoping that will continue, and I hope I'm not being naïve in thinking that cause I certainly have a table and I'm always willing to negotiate with people and reason with them."

 

 

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