Democrats Reject Christie Choice for New Jersey's Top Court TRENTON - Democrats voted down one of Gov. Chris Christie's two nominees to the New Jersey Supreme Court on Thursday, handing the hard-charging Republican governor an unusual high-profile defeat. The 7-to-6 vote by the State Senate Judiciary Committee came after members grilled the nominee, Phillip H. Kwon, for six hours over his past affiliation as a Republican and over an improper pattern of cash deposits made by the liquor store that his wife and mother own. But looming larger over the daylong hearing was a belief that Mr. Christie, already seen as having cowed members of the Legislature, was seeking to follow through on campaign promises to rein in a historically activist court, one he has long accused of acting like "a superior branch of government, not a co-equal branch." Mr. Kwon worked for years in the federal prosecutor's office in Newark, under Mr. Christie, and followed him to Trenton, where Mr. Kwon is now the No. 2 official in the state attorney general's office. Senator Nia Gill, a Democrat from Montclair, said she was voting against Mr. Kwon precisely because it was too risky to confirm someone "who a year before was part of the litigation team to advance Governor Christie's agenda" and who would have to be trusted to recuse himself when issues he worked on came before the Supreme Court. Reacting in subdued tones, Mr. Christie called the vote political payback by Democrats. He apologized to Mr. Kwon for his having been "used as a political punching bag." If confirmed, Mr. Kwon, 44, a Korean immigrant, would have become the first Asian-American on the state's top court. Instead, he became the first major nomination by Mr. Christie to be defeated in an up-or-down vote, though others have been withdrawn in the face of opposition. In shades of even higher-profile nomination battles of the past, Republicans criticized the rejection of Mr. Kwon. "We didn't have a hearing," said Kevin O'Toole, himself the son of a Korean mother. We had a lynching. Mr. Kwon presented himself as the embodiment of the American dream, having moved to New York at age 6, and emotionally praised his hard-working parents as "giants to me." His parents put him through college and law school by running a liquor store in suburban Mount Vernon, N.Y. After his father had a series of strokes in 2009 and began losing his eyesight, Mr. Kwon's wife took over his half of the business. Both couples now live under one roof in Closter, N.J. But Democrats focused witheringly on why Mr. Kwon's mother and wife had deposited cash from the liquor store to its bank account in increments of just under $10,000 almost every day for nearly a year - and how much Mr. Kwon knew about it. The $2.2 million in deposits caught the attention of the Internal Revenue Service, and a federal investigation last year ended in a $160,000 civil settlement in December. Currency transactions of $10,000 or more must be reported by banks, and structuring deposits to avoid meeting that threshold is a crime. Mr. Kwon insisted that he did not know about the deposits, learned of them only after his mother told him that they had been flagged by her bank, and told her to stop, which she did. He said his mother had not used the cash deposits to evade taxes. But he could not satisfactorily explain why she had chosen to deposit varying amounts under $10,000 rather than, say, the same round number every day. "It was obviously not a bright number to choose," he said. Mr. Kwon said it was a routine his mother had fallen into because she feared carrying larger amounts in cash. But he said that she nonetheless carried the rest of the money home with her. Senator Nicholas Scutari, the committee chairman, said: "That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. That flies in the face of sense. Democrats also expressed skepticism at Mr. Kwon's registration as an unaffiliated voter last year, after more than a decade as a registered Republican in New York. New Jersey has a long tradition of maintaining partisan parity on the State Supreme Court. If Mr. Kwon were counted as a Republican and not an independent - and if a second pending nominee, Bruce Harris, an avowed Republican, is confirmed - that would give the Republicans four members of the bench to two registered Democrats, as well as a sitting independent, Justice Jaynee LaVecchia, whom Democrats have sought to paint as a Republican. But Mr. Christie, in a news conference after the hearing, scoffed at this reasoning and the partisan labeling that went into it, calling the defeat of Mr. Kwon "a result in search of a rationale." Mr. Christie freely acknowledged that he was trying to remake the court in his image, but added, "I'm just attempting to change it." And he said he was realistic about the prospects, pointing to former presidents whose appointees to the United States Supreme Court had disappointed them. "My experience with most people I've nominated is that they forget fairly quickly," he said.