How it will play out is anybody’s guess. Even 2016 was a surprise for
Christie, who reflects now on an anecdote from the campaign trail that
reveals the larger political landscape of our recent history: Christie’s
wife (and fellow Blue Hen) Mary Pat was campaigning door-to-door in New
Hampshire when a woman invited her into her home, poured her a cup of
tea, gushed over her husband’s record and kindly reminded her that her
family would be voting for Trump. When asked why, the answer was simple.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “we don’t need another politician.”
“He was destined to win,” Christie says now. “It was beyond reason—it was emotion.”
And it’s that emotion that propels both politics and politicians, he
believes. Conservatism, like liberalism, is about being true to the
things you believe in your heart, he said. And when asked what advice he
would give students and future public servants, he echoed those
sentiments, telling them to “put into action what’s in your heart.”
“Keep your ears open. Get as many points of view as you can. Listen
to as many points of view as you can. Show up. Help people,” he advised.
“The cream rises to the top.”
It was advice he once received at UD from professors like the late
Jim Soles, who “cared about his students in class and out.” In fact,
when Christie first ran for governor in 2009, one of the campaign phone
line volunteers was none other than Dr. Soles, talking to constituents
in his deep Southern accent and asking them, “Who ya’ll votin’ for?”
Then there was Jim Oliver, now the Emma Smith Morris Professor Emeritus
of Political Science, an “incredibly serious dude who taught me a lot
about listening because he was a good listener, and you wanted to listen
to him.” There was also Jim Magee, Judge Hugh M. Morris Professor
Emeritus of Political Science, “who encouraged you to think, to really
think,” and whose civil liberties class was Christie’s “first law school
class years before I ever went to law school.”
“At UD, you make friends for life,” the former governor said,
speaking to both the audience and to Magee, who was sitting in the front
of the auditorium. “And it’s not just the other students, it’s the
faculty, too.”
Of course, one student would forever change Christie’s life. Mary Pat
Foster, who ran as secretary on Christie’s successful UD class
presidency ticket, would re-emerge from a study abroad trip to London
and Paris at the Deer Park, sporting a new bob haircut and stirring new
feelings in her old friend. They went on their first date the next
night, in February 1984, and have been together ever since.
On his trip back to campus this fall, Christie paused on the steps of Memorial
Hall and texted his wife a photo of The Green at sunset, accompanied by
an endearing caption: “Where it all began.”
The National Agenda series, presented by the University’s Center for Political Communication, has been exploring the theme “Direction Democracy” this fall. The
next program in the series on Wednesday, Nov. 20, will be John Della
Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of
Politics. He will speak on “Measuring Millennials.”
A video of the Nov. 7 program with Christie is available online.
Article by Artika Casini; photos by Kevin Quinlan
Published Nov. 7, 2019
