You'll miss me, Jersey! And with that, Chris Christie's just getting warmed up

The first time I asked Gov. Chris Christie a question we were 2,000 miles from New Jersey. I was a year into my first newspaper job in southeast New Mexico. Christie, just eight months into his first term, was there to stump for Susana Martinez's campaign for governor. 

Noting the candidate's law-and-order record, Christie played up the Jersey shtick that worked so well for him.

"We invented pay-to-play," Christie joked to a crowd that treated him like a celebrity.

And then I asked the unoriginal question he'd gotten plenty already: You here to lay the groundwork for a presidential run?

No, Christie told me. Come on, he'd miss being with the New Jersey reporter trailing a few paces behind him, he said with a laugh before he pushed past to work the crowd.

More than seven years later, the governor and I sat in two sofa chairs separated by a coffee table in the ornate parlor of the governor's mansion in Princeton, just weeks before he was set to leave the Jersey political stage he dominated like no other.

It's the same house where Iowa businessmen met to try and draft him for president, where Mitt Romney asked for his support, where he spent some nights in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and where he huddled with senior staff after Bridgegate exploded on the national scene, when he said he was unsure who knew what or who he could trust.

Yeah, a lot had happened. He pushed his priorities and won some battles with a Democratic Legislature. Christie eventually ran for president and lost. The polls say he's really unpopular.

Proud and feisty, blunt and still fighting, Christie isn't making any apologies. And his last battle as governor is to argue that he has accomplished things that will benefit the state for decades to come.

To the critics he says got too personal and never gave him a fair shake -- and perhaps the voters as well -- Christie had this to say:

"They're gonna miss me when I'm gone."

And, as always, he spoke his mind:

• He grades himself as a B+ governor (with "A moments") and thinks people will come to the same conclusion.
• He says he doesn't care about his bad poll numbers, but blames them on the media -- mostly the New Jersey press and other "know-nothing voyeurs" -- who he said attacked him mercilessly after Bridgegate with a "floodgate" of negative stories and attention.
• He concedes that scandal over closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge changed the course of his administration and political career because he lost "the benefit of the doubt."
• He "absolutely" believes he'd be president if Donald Trump didn't enter the race.
• He told Trump to knock it off when he slammed Christie on Bridgegate during the GOP primary.

In the final days, Christie says he'll leave Trenton with a sense of calm.

"We were gonna swing for the fences," he said. "I had no interest in being a small bore governor with tiny accomplishments that wouldn't offend, but probably wouldn't impress either. I wanted to be a governor of consequence and do big things."

That includes pension and health benefits reform for public workers, a 2 percent arbitration cap for police and firefighters aimed at keeping property taxes from soaring, the state's higher education merger, an expansion of charter schools and bail reform. In his final year, he has focused on opioid addiction.

"I think when people look back at it and when they compare what other governors have done before me, let's say in the last 40 years. I don't think that there's anybody who's done more of consequence over the last 40 years," he said.

"Are there things that I would have done differently? Of course. But I've got to tell you, Matt, I'm sitting here with you with 19 days to go, I don't have any major regrets," Christie said. "I did it the way I wanted to do it and I was myself the whole time."

The top button of his shirt undone, Christie was relaxed for much of the interview. He spoke to me just before one of those you-know-your-time-is-soon-up-in-Trenton moments: Posing for a photo shoot that will be used for the official gubernatorial painting that will hang in the Statehouse once a renovation he engineered is done. 

He believes he doesn't get enough credit to decide to invest in cities like Camden, which witnessed a turnaround in violent crime and development, and Newark, which has made progress in schools.

"And again, I think unexpected from a Republican governor, right?" he adds.

Other governors had tried to merge the state colleges and Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, talked pension and health care reform three years before Christie won his first election.

"Right, but he didn't get it done. Think about it. He didn't get it done," Christie said, slapping his hand down on the table four times to emphasize his point.

"You had a governor who was willing to not give in on the principle, but always willing to negotiate the particulars," Christie said.

But why after once being the GOP's favorite to take back the White House was he instead talking to me in back in Jersey, where an overwhelming majority say they're happy to see him go?

"You're missing the bigger point. I took risks and the risks didn't work out," Christie said.

"You could decide not to run for president because you want to sit around and protect these (poll) numbers that you guys talk about all the time," he said. "When a risk doesn't work, people perceive it as a failure, right? If I had won (the race) for president, we wouldn't have to worry about this."

He added: "It doesn't bother me nearly as much as you all think it should - or wish it did."

His approval rating was positive more than halfway through his first term, then Sandy slammed the state. Two other governors and the New York City mayor grappled with the aftermath. But Christie got the spotlight. He was the face of the recovery.

"Is that Mr. 78 percent out there?" Christie said President Barack Obama asked him in the early 2013, when the governor was at the White House to negotiate Sandy relief.

"Yes, sir," Christie responded and then was asked to come inside the Oval Office.

"I walk in and he looks at me and goes, 'What's it feel like? What's it feel like to be 78 percent?" Christie recalled. "I said, 'I have no Goddamn idea.' He says 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I don't feel any different today than I felt when I was at 40 or 30.'"

And while it's inevitable nobody gets to hang onto rock star status, Christie's slide was as drastic as his height of popularity.

"I exhausted people. And that's part of what happened here, too," he said.

"I'm relentless. I know myself," he said. "I never stop. It drives my family crazy. And so, I know that. And I know that people get tired of that after a while. 'Ugh, him again. Enough.' I know. I get it."

But that's losing sight of the other stuff that made him a governor of the state unlike any New Jerseyans had seen. Like the flight on Cowboys owner Jerry Jones's private jet (and that hug with Jones in the owner's box), his time in New Hampshire and Iowa, or endorsing Trump?

"Those are all non-substantive reasons. Cause I didn't change. I just made a choice in the presidential election," Christie said.

"That's why those things don't bother me in the end. They're much more of an obsession of folks in the media and the know-nothing academics that you guys call all the time on speed dial, who literally have never done anything in politics," he said. "But you guys somehow give them credibility ... as if they've actually done anything or know anything about what it's like to sit in this chair -- they're voyeurs. As are you."

Beachgate, spawned by the NJ Advance Media photo of him outside the governor's beach house during the state shutdown, didn't help his standing in the state.

"You guys took that picture to make me look bad," he said, pointing his finger.

It was the only time when we spoke that Thursday at Drumthwacket the governor got visibly agitated. Perched up in the chair, he leaned forward to blast the "ridiculous story ... done purely to hurt" him.

And of course, there's Bridgegate.

"What Bridgegate did was deprive me of the benefit of the doubt - that's all," he said. "That's a big thing. But that's what it did."

He said there were four years of "pent-up frustration from the media who love to chip away at politicians and diminish them," yet "they couldn't with me" until then. The dam broke because he lost the backing of many of his supporters who previously praised him for his brash demeanor.

"When you're tough and you're fighting, and pushing all the time ... people love that as long as it doesn't stray over a line, that they draw somewhere, that goes from that to bullying," Christie said.

"And I think people viewed that conduct of having gone over the line, and they blamed me for it even though everyone has proven I had nothing to do with it," he said. "The part that I think is grossly unfair, that there was a rush to judgment and that rush to judgment turned out not to be borne out by the facts."

But the damage was done and the rest fell like dominos. Just months after a landslide victory, he entered his second term with little political capital to push for more reforms, and others in the GOP -- most notably Jeb Bush -- saw an opening in the presidential race, which deprived him of money and support in his White House bid.

Then a year after he racked up big wins for GOP governors across the country as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, only three -- Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Paul LePage of Maine and Larry Hogan of Maryland -- backed him for president. 

Christie said he "will be eternally grateful, for the rest of my life," to those three, who he said "had the guts to stand up and endorse somebody in that race and endorse me," Christie said.

"And I will always have a real sense of disappointment that the other governors didn't endorse me, or at least endorse someone in that race," he said. "If I had a nickel for every time one of them said to me 'Let me just wait another month to see how everything falls out and then I'll make a decision,' and then they never did."

Angry that Bush, I pressed, entered the race, then?

"I'm not angry at anybody," he responded.

"I think it's very presumptuous to be angry that someone else decided to run for president," he said. "I just never ever believed that Jeb could win and I don't know why anyone ever believed Jeb could win."

It's because of the Bush name, he said.

"It worked for him in raising all that money. But it made the money a nonstarter. It just didn't matter," Christie said. "But if I had that money or someone else? It would have made a huge difference."

He called the presidential race "incredibly exciting" and "at times very discouraging."

"(The) stakes are exciting. The issues you're talking about are exciting," he said. "And ultimately frustrating at times because the reaction I would get from people and Mary Pat got this from going door to door, you know, they'd say, 'Oh gosh, you're Governor Christie's wife? We love him. He's so smart. He's so direct, he's so blunt. We love him. We're voting for Trump. But we love your husband. He's amazing.'"

Christie said he has no doubt he would have won if not for the blunt-talking Trump's decision to run. 

"It's incredibly frustrating to think to yourself, 'Wow, if this guy were not in the race, we'd win this thing,'" Christie said, reflecting on some internal polling from the campaign. "And I absolutely believe if Trump had not gotten into the race I think we would have won."

And when Trump said at a rally Christie knew about Bridgegate the governor said he called him and told him to cut it out: "You know that's not true, so stop, OK? You want to say other stuff about me? Fine. But that's out of bounds. Stop it." Trump didn't do it again, Christie said.

His loss was heavy on the entire family.

"My kids were very emotional. All of them were crying. And, you know, you then have this moment of: Who are you? Are you the person who just lost or are you the father? Like, how are you gonna conduct yourself? You gonna cry with them or are you gonna console them?" Christie said. "I decided, OK, I'm a father before I'm a candidate, so I'm like, go hug your kids, tell them it's gonna be OK."

Christie doesn't regret his decision not to run in 2012, when lots of Republicans, including Nancy Reagan, encouraged him.

He says he wasn't ready.

And as chaos continues in Washington, Christie says the decision to dump him as Trump's transition chair - and throw his plans in the trash can - was a dumb one.

"I can only tell you who ultimately executed on it and that was (Steve) Bannon, (Reince) Priebus and (Jared) Kushner," he said. "They were the three guys in charge and they were the ones who ultimately made that recommendation to the president. And I think they ill-served him by doing it."

Christie says he relishes some of the friendships he's made because he was governor: Bono texts him on his birthday and holidays. Jon Bon Jovi and his wife are close friends with Christie and Mary Pat. And there's King Abdullah, who hosted he and his family as a guest several years ago. 

"And I know there's some people in the media who mock that, 'Oh, he's friends with King Abdullah.'" Christie said.

"Well, all I can tell you is that when he's in town he calls me and we go out to dinner," he said. "So, like I don't know how you define a friend. But like, if somebody comes from Amman, Jordan into New York and he's there for a few days, and you're one of his phone calls for dinner? I think that means he's probably your friend."

And then there's the trappings of the office. "It's not bad not having to park (your car). I'll miss that," he joked.

"No one in this state's political history has had a run like I've had in the last 16 years - no one," he said, reaching back to his time as U.S. attorney. "Maybe I'll never have another job that is as exciting and challenging as those two."

He has one last opportunity to make his case in a public forum: Tuesday, in a State of the State/farewell speech. A week later, at noon, he'll be ex-Gov. Chris Christie. 

As this last-time-as governor interview wound down, Christie wasn't saying what his next gig will be. But I suggested that it better not be boring, or he'll go crazy. Yes, he agreed, he likes the action that came with this job. 

"I took the kids last week to see Hamilton," Christie said.

"When Aaron Burr did the scene in 'The Room Where it Happens,' you know, bemoaning the fact that it was Jefferson and Madison, and Hamilton in the room where it happens," he said.

"Sarah said to me after the show was over, 'You're gonna miss that, right?' I said, 'Yeah, I'm definitely gonna miss that.'" 

Matt Arco has covered Chris Christie for the better part of 6 years. He may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or Facebook.

COMING MONDAY: Read the transcript of the interview.