The Roots of the Christie-King Border War

[Valin]

Contentions:

Jonathan S. Tobin

3/6/12

 

Why exactly did New Jersey Governor Chris Christie join the mob bashing New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly last week over the force’s surveillance policies? Christie’s shot across the Hudson prompted Rep. Peter King to fire back at the governor for “trying to score cheap political points” at Kelly’s expense. That led the notoriously thin-skinned Christie to describe King’s riposte as “ridiculous” and to pull rank as a former prosecutor. All this could be dismissed as just a meaningless exchange between two politicians who love to run their mouths and are intolerant of criticism. It could also be put down as merely the natural instinct of New Jersey politicians to take umbrage at any instance of New York encroachment onto Garden State territory.

 

However, those who have followed Christie’s attempts to ingratiate himself with the Muslim community, sometimes at the expense of law enforcement imperatives, may recognize a familiar pattern in his willingness to bash Kelly’s decision to order the NYPD to gather intelligence across the river in Jersey. Christie and King found themselves lining up with two competing Muslim factions: Christie with extremist groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), who oppose all efforts to investigate homegrown Islamist terror and King with those Muslims like Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, who have taken the position that American Muslims have a responsibility to root out radicals.

 

Christie’s complaint that NYPD personnel should ask permission of the Joint Terrorism Task Force before merely gathering routine intelligence on Muslims in parts of New Jersey which most in the area would consider part of the New York metropolitan area, seems innocuous. In joining the gang tackle on Kelly and then backing it up by claiming he was neutral about whether the matter ought to be made the subject of an investigation by New Jersey’s attorney general, the governor is pandering to groups like CAIR and the American Muslim Union–and not for the first time.

 

(Snip)