WASHINGTON — (CNN) Chris Christie on Wednesday signed anti-tax activist Grover Norquist’s pledge to not raise taxes — and attempted to make it a wedge issue with fellow Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush.
Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform, announced Christie’s signing and praised his record as New Jersey governor.
The group also noted that Christie joins a list of many GOP presidential candidates who have signed the pledge, including Sens. Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Sen. Rick Santorum, Dr. Ben Carson, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
But Christie also sought to highlight a candidate who has not signed — Bush.
In an interview on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Wednesday, Christie touted his tax record and hit at Bush.
“It’s what I’ve done in New Jersey under much more difficult circumstances politically than certainly Gov. Bush did in Florida with a Republican legislature,” Christie said.
Bush has repeatedly been asked about his refusal to sign the pledge, including earlier this month at the Koch brothers’ summit in California.
“I actually have the benefit of having a record where I cut taxes every year …19 billion dollars’ worth of taxes,” Bush said at the event. “I don’t have to sign pledges. It’s in my core, it’s who I am. You know, I just think, why don’t we just be who we are, say what we believe, do what we said we’re going to do?”
In 2012, all the Republican presidential candidates signed Norquist’s pledge, except former Utah Gov. Jon Hunstman, who ran as a moderate.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has also signed the pledge — which has created headaches for him in his home state. This summer, the governor managed to push through a plan in the legislature that would avoid explicitly raising taxes through fees, drawing ire from some opponents for his adherence to Norquist.
Christie and Norquist have also sparred in the past, with the anti-tax group writing New Jersey lawmakers in 2014 opposing Christie’s budget proposal that increased some taxes. But early this year, the group also highlighted Christie’s pledge to veto tax hikes in his State of the State.
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