By DEREK HARPER Staff Writer
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As Atlantic City’s declining casino economy entered freefall this summer, Gov. Chris Christie has stayed away from both the city and broader discussions of the resort’s future.
And while the governor has embarked on a tour of some
of the state’s seaside resorts, Atlantic City has been conspicuously absent from his itinerary.
The Governor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Christie’s absence and silence is significant, because throughout his first term he invested a significant amount of political capital in the resort’s resurgence.
Christie took office in January 2010. After a little more than a year in office, he signed legislation in February 2011 at the under-construction Revel casino that enacted sweeping changes to the state’s gambling and tourism laws.
The state also placed wide swaths of Atlantic City under state Tourism District supervision, established a new marketing organization for the resort, and specified that money from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority would be used only on Atlantic City. The state Economic Development Authority also restarted the stalled Revel casino with $261 million in tax incentives.
And then after making these changes, Christie and state leaders repeatedly vowed to protect Atlantic City’s casino monopoly until at least 2016.
The governor’s most recent public appearance in the resort was part of a whistle-stop bus tour last November that stopped in Somers Point and Atlantic City during the waning days of his 2013 re-election campaign.
After rallying with a packed hall of supporters in Somers Point, he traveled to Formica Brothers Bakery. There in front of about 100 onlookers, Christie touted the Tourism District changes and said there were visible improvements halfway though the five-year state commitment.
But the city’s casino industry continued to slide, with gambling revenue declining to $2.9 billion in 2013, from a high of $5.2 billion in 2006.
The Atlantic Club Casino-Hotel closed in January, and in July, the Showboat Casino Hotel, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino and Revel Casino-Hotel each warned they may close their doors by the end of the summer season.
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Christie’s lone recent comments on Atlantic City came last month, after Senate President Stephen Sweeney acknowledged there had been talks about voting to end the resort’s casino monopoly in 2015.
“I’m happy to have that conversation with him. That’s all I’m committed to,” the Star-Ledger of Newark reported Christie as saying after he met with tourists on the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk. “If he wants to start the conversation, it’s a good thing.”
Atlantic City’s problems may affect Christie’s presidential ambitions. Daniel J. Douglas, the director of the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, pointed out that at least five potential Republican presidential candidate have been governors.
"Job loss in an important part of New Jersey’s economy is not something that candidate Christie will want to brag about in Iowa and New Hampshire," Douglas said.
Locally, officials downplayed Christie’s absence.
“The reality is if there was a magic solution, if the governor had it, he’d be here,” Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, said.
The problem does not lie with Christie, Whelan said, as much as it does with the expansion of gambling throughout the Northeast. Even though nongambling revenue has grown in Atlantic City, Whelan observed that the decline in gambling revenue far outpaced that.
“There is a lot of jumping up and down, but not a lot of forward motion,” he said.
Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson, a Republican, said that Christie has been the strongest advocate for the resort in decades.
Like Whelan, Levinson said the saturation of casino gambling is to blame, and said the way forward is for Atlantic City to diversify its offerings. While the Atlantic City Alliance initially stumbled, Levinson praised its more recent events.
“The governor has done more for Atlantic City in a term and a half than the last two, three governors put together,” Levinson said.
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