Parsippany, N.J. Now this was a Jersey party. A Bruce Springsteen cover band blasted riffs by the stage. The open bar was mobbed. Ties were loose, and the Seton Hall College Republicans couldn’t stop dancing. The polls had closed hours before, and the crowd milling by the empty podium in the hotel ballroom was electric. It looked like their man, Republican Chris Christie, would soon be declared the 55th governor of New Jersey. “The numbers I’m seeing, town by town, county by county, are very encouraging,” said state senator Joe Kyrillos, Christie’s campaign chairman, to cheers. Surveying the scene, and standing on the risers in the back with his hands in his pockets, was Tom Kean Sr., the venerable Republican who served as governor of the Garden State from 1982 to 1990. With crinkled eyes and a wide smile, Kean leaned in and remarked on how “a lot of things have changed in a year.” Oh, how right he was. Last year, President Obama won New Jersey handily, coasting to a 15-point victory over John McCain. Last night, just before Tuesday turned into Wednesday, Christie, a former federal prosecutor, won a hotly contested gubernatorial race against incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, by more than 100,000 votes in a heavily Democratic state.

“I know the national implications,” said Kean. “Obama’s main implication is that he came in here so often. If he gets blamed, so be it.” Jay Webber, the Republican state chairman, agreed. “When President Obama came in here on Sunday to campaign for Corzine in both Newark and Camden, after numerous previous visits, he began to own also the failures of a failed governorship.” Yet both men said that Christie’s victory was not some simple knee-jerk reaction to unpopular policies in Washington. Remember, they said, something like a Chris Christie win doesn’t happen in these parts too often. And when it does, said Kean, it’s best to appreciate the real reasons why such a campaign succeeded.

Until last night, a Republican hadn’t been elected governor of New Jersey in over a decade. And the state GOP’s last big win came in 1985, when Kean was re-elected in a landslide with over 70 percent of the vote. Kean said that’s Christie’s message in 2009 echoed his own from the 1980s.

“Christie’s got the old message that resonates in this state — that if you really want to create jobs, then you have got to cut some taxes, you’ve got to show that people can afford to live here, you’ve got to help people own their own home, and you’ve got to have the kind of economy that’s going to flourish,” said Kean. “That message really brought the middle class to Christie and helped lead independents to break toward the Republicans.”

Christie didn’t try to conceal his social-conservative views, but he didn’t go out of his way to broadcast them, either. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who stopped by the Parsippany hotel late last night, emphasized that point. “Chris Christie didn’t hide,” said Steele. “He didn’t try to dress it up differently. He didn’t try to be Democrat-lite in a Democratic town. He said, ‘This is who I am.’ People respected that.”

As the hour grew late, cell phones and faces lit up around Christie headquarters. Kean, also a former university president, mingled with student volunteers. Another former GOP governor, Christine Todd Whitman, chatted with friends near the side of the ballroom. Reporters pounded cups of coffee, trying to type over the sounds of the raucous crowd boogying to the B Street Band (not a typo) from Asbury Park. Then independent gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett appeared on the two screens besides the stage. As he conceded, boos could be heard — since Daggett, a former Kean-administration official, had siphoned off some Christie support. In the end though, Daggett received only 6 percent of the vote, well down from his poll numbers in September and October.

Just before 11 o’clock, the crowd leaned over the barrier separating the press from the party, trying to watch Corzine’s concession speech on the local TV crews’ monitors. “Is it really over?” one asked me. Joy, and a bit of disbelief, spread like wildfire. The band started belting out Springsteen’s “Glory Days.”

Then, some twenty minutes later, silence. Christie’s running mate, Kim Guadagno, a sheriff from Monmouth County, appeared on stage with her sons. Beaming in a blue suit, she said that her husband, a judge, “was somewhere in New Jersey working.” The crowd let her know that she wasn’t alone. Christie, she said, was an “honest man,” an “honorable man,” who would help to take back the Garden State. The cheers began again, balloons everywhere.

Soon Mary Pat, Christie’s wife, and his four children appeared besides Guadagno. Then Christie himself appeared, just as the band launched into “Born to Run.” It might as well have been a Boss concert. The place was rocking. Trenton pols in dark suits whirled signs and kissed their wives. The College Republicans started dancing again. Even some members of the media stood up to admire the scene, pens and notebooks down, just for a moment.

Christie stood at the podium for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the raucous applause to die down. His lips were tight, his head bent slightly downward, his eyes up. It’s a look I’d seen on Christie before — after his third debate, when he told me that he was going to win. He pointed to his father, with whom he locked eyes for a few seconds. Finally, he spoke. “New Jersey, we did it!”

“Yes we did!” yelled back the crowd. “Yes we did!” It was reminiscent of Obama’s “Yes we can!” yell from last year — but more about accomplishment than mere hope.

As he spoke, the crowd seemed more excited than Christie, who was low key and seemingly in quiet shock. He looked again at his father and at Kean while describing his childhood in Livingston and Newark. “The foundation was laid in Livingston,” he said, recalling his public education. Those days were important, he said, but enough about the past. “This election was about the future of the state we love.”

Continuing down the path we’re on is not possible, continued Christie. “We’re in a crisis,” he said. “Tomorrow we begin to take back New Jersey. . . . We’ll pick Trenton up and turn it upside down.” More cheers. Then came the only (slightly) awkward part of the speech, when Christie indulged in a bit of 19th-hole finger-wagging. Corzine, he said, had run a “negative, personal campaign” filled with allegations of corruption and ads alluding to Christie’s overweight frame. “In the face of a $30 million onslaught that consisted almost exclusively of negative personal ads against me, my family, and friends, the people of New Jersey decided that enough was enough.” All of that is true, but it was an unnecessary diversion.

Regardless, the governor-elect finished up strong. He spoke about the themes that Kean told me had worked so well for Christie all along: reducing taxes, downsizing government, promoting economic growth, and curbing corruption. He never mentioned President Obama. After Christie wrapped up, he kissed his wife and raised hands with Guadagno. More cheers.

I glanced over at Kean. He looked happy, as did his son, Tom Kean Jr., the minority leader in New Jersey’s state senate. I asked Kean the younger why Corzine and Obama failed to close the deal. “People don’t want rhetoric,” he said. “They want to see government lower taxes and increase transparency.” Hope and change, he added, isn’t just about what one promises, but how one leads.

Indeed. As Christie said last night, “naysayers will say that we can’t lower taxes, that we can’t cut spending, and that we can’t bring back government under control.” Those days, he said, are over. “I’ve worked too hard over my life to give away my integrity. . . . Tomorrow begins the task of fixing our broken state. The campaign we just went through will seem easy compared to the tasks that lie ahead of us to fix our state. We know the challenges we face, and over the next four years we’re going to have our work cut out for us. There are no easy answers to these difficult problems.”

As Christie left, the band started playing “Glory Days” once again. No one seemed to want to leave the ballroom, even long after the candidate had left. Eventually, though, the room emptied. There was work to be done tomorrow.

Before he left, I asked Kean Sr. whether he had any advice for the new governor.

“Take a vacation, because you won’t get one later on,” he laughed.

– Robert Costa is the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow at the National Review Institute.