New Jersey Gov. and potential Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie courted Latino and women voters on Wednesday by criticizing the GOP for being unwelcoming to them.
In a speech at the Latino Coalition Business Summit, Christie said the Republican Party does not always sound “very welcoming to new members.” Instead, Christie attempted to unite the different groups by emphasizing common American values.
“Our country has been built on the idea that men and women all over the world look to America as a place where there were no limits on their dreams,” he said. “That the only limitation would be the goodness of their soul, the greatness of their idea and the level of their work ethic.”
He also touted his own popularity among diverse voters, noting that he received 51 percent of the Latino vote in his re-election for governor, 56 percent of the female vote and 22 percent of the black vote.
Thorn Mejias, a civil engineer living in Virginia who attended the summit, said he believed Christie would be able to appeal to a wide demographic.
“I don’t think he necessarily courts the Latinos per se in New Jersey. I actually believe when he says that he tries to represent all the people that voted for him or not,” he said.
But Lizette Delgado-Polanco, vice chair of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, said Christie “is delusional if he thinks he has support from minorities or women.”
“In New Jersey, he has seriously undermined women’s health services, perpetuated the gender wage gap, waffled on tuition equity for DREAMers, and ruined our state economy with his misguided priorities,” she said. “In truth, Chris Christie has no credibility, and considering the mounting costs of his other scandalous behavior, it is hard to imagine anyone less appealing to voters of any kind, especially minority women.”
Christie additionally emphasized his leadership potential and spoke about steps a future president should take.
The governor blasted “overwhelming” regulation of small businesses and the Dodd-Frank Act, which he said was responsible for the closing of 41 percent of community banks across the country.
“The next president should sign an executive order on the first day freezing any new regulation as we begin to look back at the mountain of regulation that were put in by this past regulation, and then have the task of getting rid of that regulation as we can,” he said.
Christie also critized teachers’ unions as the main culprit for impeding progress in education, saying they have prevented longer school hours and innovation while demanding lifetime health care, he said.
“Kids need a union as good as they are, and they don’t have it,” Christie said.
Published in conjunction with 