Phone Home, Governor Christie

For all the criticism about how well New York City did or didn't handle the snowstorm of December 26, 2010, at least Mayor Moneybags was on the job, cold and all.

In New Jersey, neither the governor nor the lieutenant governor could be found:

New Jersey will remain in a state of emergency throughout rush hour Monday as crews try to clean up still-treacherous roads, acting Gov. Stephen Sweeney said.

“We really want people to stay off the roads and give us a chance to clean them up,” he said from Gloucester County, in a part of southern New Jersey which wasn’t hit as hard as the northern side of the state. “We were hammered…This was a very difficult storm to deal with.”

Sweeney, a Democrat and president of the state Senate, declared a state of emergency Sunday evening and activated the National Guard. While Gov. Chris Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno are out of state, Sweeney is filling in as the state’s chief executive. He has been in touch with the governor’s top aides and cabinet officers, but not with Christie himself.

Christie is on vacation with his family at Disney World in Florida, and Guadagno is in Mexico with her family, said spokesman Michael Drewniak. Guadagno is the state’s first lieutenant governor, a position created by a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2005 to fill in for a traveling or otherwise out-of-commission governor. Drewniak declined to answer why both executives were out of state simultaneously.

...

Drewniak, Christie’s spokesman, said the governor was in “constant contact” with his staff.

“The chief of staff and chief counsel have in turn been in regular contact with the acting governor throughout to be sure that emergency and other services are in full operation,” Drewniak said in an e-mail. “The world is not coming to an end. We are a northeastern state and we do get snow — sometimes big snows like this — and we will get through it just as we always have.”

The governor's staff was in touch with acting governor Sweeney the governor, but the governor could not be reached.

Hmm...when was the last time I heard a lame excuse like that by a Republican chief executive?

Oh, yeah, it was over Labor Day and had something to do with Mark Sanford hiking the old Appalachian Trail.

Well, people are taking notice that Christie was nowhere to be found.

Even the usually sychophantic Politico has an article about this story entitled Christie at Disneyworld.

What's that old saying about how "When the going gets tough, the tough get going!"

The Chris Christie version is "When the going gets tough, Governor Christie goes to Disneyworld!"