WATCH: Jon Stewart fondly slams Chris Christie over New Jersey's special election

(Image credit: Daily Show)

last updated 8 January 2015

Jon Stewart had a New Jersey Moment on The Daily Show on Wednesday night. You may not know it from his fancy suits and "bourgeois pronunciations," Stewart says, but at heart he's just a "simple Jersey boy." After waxing poetic about the Garden State, Stewart gets down to politics: Gov. Chris Christie's (R) big decision on how to handle replacing the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.).

Stewart starts out by noting that Christie had three options: Name an interim senator to fill out the rest of Lautenberg's term, have voters elect a new senator in already scheduled November 2013 elections — when Christie is up for re-election — or spend millions on a special election earlier this fall. He then expresses confidence that Christie won't choose option three, because in 2009, he ruled out holding a costly special election if, hypothetically, Sen. Lautenberg died.

Of course, Christie opted for the third option, scheduling a special election three weeks before his own re-election bid — a race he's expected to easily win. What's more, the conventional wisdom is that he did this so he wouldn't appear on the same ballot as presumptive Democratic Senate nominee Cory Booker. In other words, Stewart says, he's wasting at least $12 million in taxpayer dollars in a "self-serving, corrupt abuse of power."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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