Last Tuesday, most students who care about New Jersey politics were sitting in their dorm rooms, monitoring the national news as votes rolled in to give Republican Chris Christie the win over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine.
Junior Ricky Diaz was in the front row listening to Christie’s victory speech after taking the semester off to work for the Republican’s campaign for governor.
“I’ve never experienced a more energetic event,” Diaz said. “Victory night was huge.”
Diaz got up at 5 a.m. and spent the day tracking the election results. The pre-election polls showed Christie had the edge, but Diaz said the Christie camp knew it would be close. Corzine’s campaign, Diaz said, had more resources, including more money and experience, with many staff members who served as former campaigners for President Barack Obama and White House advisers.
“For ever one person we had, they probably had ten people,” Diaz said. “We were outspent by $20 million. … It was really a David vs. Goliath-type situation.”
But Diaz said the Christie camp remained confident.
“In a larger picture, we knew our core message was what voters cared about,” he said. “We knew people would vote for issues like taxes, jobs, the economy.”
Diaz got involved with the campaign over the summer when he interned for Christie, saying that instead of taking a typical summer job, he wanted to do something that would help New Jersey. Diaz began to work on the Web site with a deputy campaign manager, and at the end of the summer he was asked to stay on and take the semester off from school.
“I decided to do something different,” Diaz said. “When else do I have the chance to do something like that? … It was the best decision I ever made.”
Diaz worked as a statewide campaign director, managing Christie’s online presence and working on Web videos and the Web site and its content, among other tasks.
“We were able to target a specific demographic of people who would be receptive to Chris Christie's message … and target our message to them through creative ways like Twitter, Facebook, online ad services, videos, e-mail,” Diaz said. “We used the Internet in interesting ways to rebut these bullshit claims (from the Corzine campaign).”
Diaz said he worked about 12-hour days in the summer, but as Nov. 3 approached, his workload increased.
“As Election Day got closer, we got hotel rooms (near the campaign headquarters),” Diaz said. “… Leading up to election day I worked 20, 21-hour days.”
Diaz got to get out of the office with statewide bus tours, including a final 21-county trip that “was made up of about 81 stops,” he said. Even there he was working: “I was live blogging from the road.”
Diaz said his work on the campaign “opened my eyes and ears.”
“I tried to learn as much as possible,” he said. “It wasn’t about doing what I wanted. … It was taking every little piece … and treating everything as an opportunity. If you’re able to do that while keeping your eye on a larger goal, in this case getting Chris Christie elected governor in New Jersey, that’s huge.”
And he’s optimistic about what his generation can accomplish.
“We were young — every single staffer was under the age of 30,” he said. “We had the energy and could outwork Barack Obama's team. It was eye-opening to see what a group of strong, young people can do. … And to see it all culminate on victory night, that was pretty cool.”
