New Christie scandal??

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

It is too complicated (or more accurately, doesn't lend itself to 1-3 sentence summery) to get major coverage from the national media.  However, it will contribute to a general concern in voter's minds about Christie being extremely corrupt, even if said voters can't articulate any reason other than bridgegate.  It is sort of like how the Romney campaign's internal polling/focus groups (that were conducted before they nuked Gingerich) found that many likely Republican primary voters knew that Gingerich had some sort of marital issues and a number of them were concerned about these issues in a vague sort of way.  However, few (if any) of them could articulate the specific details of Gingerich's marital issues that concerned them, it was more of a general sense that something was very wrong.  I suspect it'll be like that with Christie's scandals. 

People will have a vague sense that Christie has serious corruption issues and it will end up affecting a number of folks' votes.  However, few will be able to elaborate beyond "Bridgegate" and the broad strokes of that scandal (which is a major problem for Christie in part because Bridgegate can easily be explained in a few concise sentences: "Christie wanted a Mayor to endorse him.  The Mayor did not endorse Christie.  Christie retaliated by shutting down a bridge between NYC and NJ which caused massive traffic jams in one of the busiest parts of the country).  One of the most important tests for determining a scandal's likely impact is whether you can explain it in 1-3 concise sentences in a way that clearly illustrates the core issue.  There's also the fact that bridgegate plays right into people's worst pre-existing perceptions of Christie ("He's really just a glorified New York bully"), but I digress.