EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. | Republican Chris Christie won New Jersey’s closely watched governor’s race Tuesday, ousting an unpopular Democratic governor in the solidly blue state and delivering an embarrassing setback to President Obama.
In his victory speech, Mr. Christie, 47, vowed to change the way business is done in a state plagued by political corruption and struggling to regain its footing after being hammered by the economic recession.
“Tomorrow, we are going to pick Trenton up and turn it upside down,” the former prosecutor told cheering supporters in a reference to the state’s capital.
With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Christie led Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine 49.2 percent to 44.5 percent. Independent candidate Chris Daggett, who had garnered only about 5.5 percent of the votes, was the first to concede late Tuesday.
Mr. Corzine in his concession speech to supporters at the East Brunswick Hilton, said he might be retiring from politics but he would not stop being a voice for important Democratic causes such as health care, education and organized labor.
“At the end of the day, elections are not about the people who are running,” Mr. Corzine said. “It’s about the choices we make.”
Low turnout in Democratic strongholds appeared to have hobbled the Corzine campaign and helped break the party’s grip on New Jersey, which hadn’t gone Republican in a statewide race in a dozen years.
The Christie victory will be interpreted as a rebuke of Mr. Obama and a blow to his ambitious agenda in Washington. Mr. Obama raised the stakes for the White House in the race by campaigning five times with Mr. Corzine in the Garden State.
Most voters said Mr. Obama was not a factor in how they cast their ballot, according to a CNN exit poll.
The exit poll showed that 60 percent of voters said Mr. Obama did not figure into their vote, 20 percent said their vote was cast in opposition to the president and 19 percent said it was to support him.
“It’s a game-changer,” said Assembly member Sheila Oliver, a Democrat, who is in the running for the job of speaker and finds herself contemplating the previously unthinkable reality of working with a Republican governor.
She blamed the national economy for souring voters on Mr. Corzine.
“You just have an angry electorate,” Mrs. Oliver said.
A surge of mail-in ballots spurred talk of election fraud in the tight race for New Jersey governor that was still too close to call after polls closed Tuesday.
Mr. Christie, insisting he was not worried about shenanigans in the vote count, said his campaign had more than 300 volunteer lawyers monitoring the process and by noon Tuesday already had lodged more than 600 ballot challenges.
“I think we will have it in hand,” Mr. Christie said outside the Golden Dawn Diner in Hamilton Township, the last stop of the campaign tour.
New Jersey has a reputation for corruption, but it has largely faded as a campaign issue in the governor’s race.
Republicans complained Tuesday that Democrats were paying for automated calls to voters promoting Mr. Daggett, a trick the Democratic State Committee acknowledged paying for but said was legal.
Concerns about lax standards in authenticating more than 140,000 mail-in ballots arose after the New Jersey Democratic Party sent a letter to election officials suggesting they drop plans to verify voter signatures on the absentee ballots.
Election officials said they disregarded the request.
Signatures on mail-in ballots were being compared with signature cards and voters’ names and addresses on mail-in ballots were being checked against voter registration records, said New Jersey Division of Elections spokeswoman Susan Evans.
“The county election officials are committed to protecting the right to vote and the integrity of the election,” she said.
Election officials distributed about 185,000 mail-in ballots and received 141,674 completed mail-in ballots under a new absentee voting law that expanded options for voting by mail. New Jersey has allowed “no excuse” absentee voting since 2005.
About 235,000 mail-in ballots were submitted in the presidential election last year.
Turnout appeared light across the state. Some Republican-leaning districts reported heavier traffic at the polls, mirroring recent surveys that showed Republican voters much more energized than Democrats. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 700,000 voters in New Jersey, but most voters - more than 2 million - are registered independents.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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