EMILY’s List Puts Chris Christie “On Notice” : Chris Christie Is The Wrong Choice For New Jersey Women and Families

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, announced it is putting Governor Chris Christie “On Notice.”

Those "On Notice" meet two special criteria. First, they've amassed appallingly anti-woman, anti-family records. And second, there is major Democratic female talent waiting in the wings.

“Chris Christie’s record is right wing and indefensible,” said Stephanie Schriock, President of EMILY’s List. “He’s anti-choice, anti-equal pay, and doles out billions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations while hammering working families with massive cuts to education and healthcare. Christie is a GOP extremist plain and simple, and New Jersey families need to know he’s not on their side. With the help of the EMILY’s List community — now two million members strong — voters are going to get to know the real Chris Christie: wrong on the issues, and wrong for New Jersey.”

Here’s a Top Ten List Christie won’t be reading on David Letterman anytime soon. Why Chris Christie is wrong for NJ women and families:

1. Christie is anti-choice, and has decisively blocked access to reproductive healthcare for women in New Jersey. He vetoed a budget bill that would have given $7.5 million dollars to family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood, and has implemented funding cuts that led to the closure of six family planning clinics.

2. He vetoed equal pay legislation. Many times. And he referred to attempts to eliminate wage discrimination in government contracts as “senseless bureaucracy.”

3. Christie’s budget cuts targeted poor and working families and included: $46.5 million taken from Tuition Aid Grants, a college aid program for students from low-income families, $537,000 from the Wynona M. Lipman Child Advocacy Center in Newark for abused children, and $10 million from Legal Services, which provides much needed legal aid for low income individuals.

4. Christie vetoed a minimum wage increase which hurt working families all across the state.

5. But he approved a record $1.57 billion in ineffective corporate tax cuts. He’s willing to give millionaires and billionaires a break at the expense of struggling families, who have even more trouble accessing healthcare and education because of his budget cuts.  

6. Christie used a state helicopter for personal travel. The helicopter costs $2,500 an hour to operate.

7. Christie is known as one of the most anti-union governors in the country and has worked tirelessly to dismantle workers rights in New Jersey. He supported a bill that could have destroyed collective bargaining and has unapologetically referred to union leaders as “thugs.”  

8. Under Christie’s watch, New Jersey ranks 48^th in unemployment which is unsurprising considering Christie’s regressive economic policies. Voters disapprove of his handling of jobs and the economy, top priority issues for the upcoming election.

9. Christie praised the infamous Ryan Budget, the regressive anti-family legislation that would have ended Medicare as we know it, cut food assistance for struggling families, and defunded Planned Parenthood. Voters across the country rejected the Ryan Budget last November.

10. Christie is a right-wing Republican. And he wants to be your President. He has national ambitions and a relentlessly anti-woman, anti-family record, a dangerous combination that means we have to expose his extremism now, and prevent him from trying to take his regressive agenda nationwide. His positions on everything from reproductive healthcare and equal pay to workers rights prove that he just doesn’t have the same priorities as the electorate.  

During the 2011- 2012 election cycle, EMILY’s List helped elect an historic number of candidates – the only pro-choice Democratic woman governor in the country, 19 new women to the House, six Senate incumbents, and three new Senators – all the first women to represent their states in the Senate. And this cycle, women we’ve helped elect include the first Hindu and first female combat veterans to serve in the House, the first openly gay Senator, and the first Asian American woman to serve in the Senate. With a community that has quintupled since 2010 – now more than two million members strong – EMILY's List is one of the largest political action committees in the nation. Since its founding in 1985, EMILY's List has worked to elect 100 pro-choice Democratic women to the House, 19 to the Senate, 10 governors, and over five hundred women to state and local office. In the 2011-2012 cycle, EMILY's List had the largest number of members and donors in our 28 year history, and raised a record-breaking $52 million dollars.