Thus began the season of Abscam, the elaborate sting that would eventually reel in the mayor of Camden, six members of the House of Representatives, and New Jersey’s senior senator, Harrison Williams, among others. That week, Williams went to ground, and so, while all the other students got pictures in the group yearbook with both their senators, the Jersey kids only got a photo with one—Bill Bradley. “It was an incredible embarrassment,” Christie later recalled. “We were the butt of jokes all week.” In his telling, it was the defining moment that alerted him to “the problem of corruption in New Jersey.”