Chris Christie’s Democratic opponent is officially using the “weight-card” against the New Jersey governor in her campaign to unseat the Republican.
“Now I don’t know about you, but seeing Chris Christie frolicking on the beach is not going to drive me to go the shore,” opponent Barbara Buono said in a video posted on YouTube. She made the comments as she criticized Christie for appearing in videos promoting the Jersey shore during an event last week.
Buono’s comments come after she refused to rule out making Christie’s weight a campaign issue like Christie’s 2009 Democratic opponent, former Gov. Jon Corzine. In one ad, Corzine’s campaign accused Christie of throwing “his weight around.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked Buono in April if she would run a campaign like that. “Does that work in Jersey?” he asked. “Taking on the guy’s weight?”
“I’m going to run a campaign on issues,” she responded.
Repeatedly asked by Matthews if she’s not going to use Christie’s weight, she responded: “I’m not going to comment on another campaign and what they did.”
Christie responded to Buono’s comments on Tuesday by telling reporters, “I think that it’s unfortunate that Sen. Buono has decided to go down the same path as Gov. Corzine did in making comments derisively about my physical appearance.”
He referenced her appearance on MSNBC.
“You know she was on Chris Mathews’ show months ago and he asked her flat out if she would refuse to run the same type of ads that Gov. Corzine did four years ago when he said, ‘I was throwing my weight around,’ and she refused to answer that question,” Christie said. “And now I think we know why because of the comments that her own campaign put out.”