Chris Christie was wrestling a pine tree, getting a shower of brittle needles as he yanked it through a doorway from his living room into the snow. He triumphantly dumped the oversized trunk in the yard — “Killed it,” he declared — but realized he’d gone out the wrong door, one that was warped and wouldn’t close. Unfazed, Christie shoved it into submission. Watch out, New Jersey. This man’s about to be your governor. This is not a story about how he feels about property taxes, pension reforms or immigration. This is about the kind of person we will all be dealing with the next four years.

We’ve had the patrician governor (Whitman), the stern governor (Florio), the To’eiva governor (McGreevey), the accidental governor (Codey), the gazillionaire governor (Corzine). Now get ready for something we haven’t seen before. We don’t even know what to call him yet. Maybe the pugnacious-irreverent-funny-Don’t-(moderated)-Me governor.

Maybe the bulldozer governor, who — after a blistering campaign and stormy transition — intends to conquer, then rescue, his beleaguered native state. Or have a good time trying.

“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done,” Christie said in an interview. “But I don’t feel the least bit overwhelmed by it.”

The soon-to-be 55th governor of New Jersey is 47, with laughing eyes and a biting wit that constantly shifts targets, which include himself. He sleeps five or six hours a night, rising for a workout as he tries to trim the frame that — along with his fundraising prowess — led George W. Bush to nickname him “Big Boy.”

Christie is less a workaholic than a guy who is always plugged in — addicted to his cell phone, news coverage and professional sports, especially the New York Mets. On big days during the campaign, he wore an orange and blue tie to keep things in perspective.

He is a student of policy, but prefers the limelight over the weeds. He is a born lawyer: decisive, articulate and a master of hyperbole.

While Gov. Jon Corzine hesitated to use the word “I,” Christie’s brand of leadership is sheer force of personality.

Foes call it overdone swagger and arrogance. Christie calls it everyman outrage. Plus he just can’t help himself.

“I’ve had a lot of people, when I’ve been out, come up and say, ‘Give ’em hell,’ ‘Let ’em have it,’ that kind of stuff. I think it’s what people are expecting of me,” he said. “People are going to have to get used to my style.”

CALM AFTER THE STORM

The Statehouse already has whiplash, with Christie slapping at institutions from the state pension system to the powerful teachers union.

“He’s certainly going to be more of an in-your-face governor than we’ve been accustomed to,” said Carl Golden, a key aide to Republican Govs. Tom Kean and Christie Whitman.

Bulldog tactics have backfired on Christie before, and Democrats pummeled him throughout the gubernatorial campaign on his temperament, trying to create an echo of Christie’s rocky start in politics. In the 1990s he was bounced from office as a Morris County freeholder after a single term marred by feuding and lawsuits with fellow Republicans.

“I don’t think personalities really change much, and I think Chris is Chris, with his good side and his bad side,” said former assemblyman Rick Merkt, who was Christie’s running mate in an ill-fated attempt at the state Assembly in 1995, and who challenged him in last year’s Republican gubernatorial primary. “There’s a lot in Chris that could be very positive for New Jersey, but there’s also some of Chris that could be really bad for New Jersey if he allows the ego to take charge.”

As Christie prepares to take the oath of office Tuesday, though, he exudes calm as well as characteristic bring-it-on confidence.

His nerves were so raw the day he became U.S. attorney in 2002 that he came home and fell asleep in his suit, utterly drained. Now he’s relaxed.

“I understand more about politics today than I understood about prosecuting on the day I started as U.S. attorney,” Christie said.

He inherits a state that is bleeding jobs and steeped in public skepticism about politicians. He campaigned on tax cuts and a return to prosperity; his first budget instead could spread pain through cuts to towns, hospitals and other staples of daily life.

Christie figures he has about six months’ grace before voters saddle him, instead of his predecessors, with the blame. This budget — “for better for worse” — will define the change he promised.

“After the first budget, I’ll own it,” Christie said. “I know that there are certain things that won’t go well, just because that’s the way life is. If you let that just destroy your core — say, ‘I guess everything my mother told me wasn’t right, because I lost an election’ — well, then you didn’t have the belief to begin with.”

Christie’s late mother, Sondra, was a driving force. Over and over again, she told him: “You can do whatever you want to if you’re willing to work hard.”

“I guess a lot of parents would say that to their kids,” Christie said. “But she said it so often, and with such conviction, that she really drilled it into my head, and it became part of who I am.”

‘GROUNDED GUY’

Sondra and Bill Christie were living in Newark when Chris was born, the first of three children. The family moved to Livingston, where Christie grew up playing sports, serving as class president and creating a tight circle of friends — friends now marveling that one of their own is about to run the state.

“We break his chops a little bit, just saying, ‘You’re the governor?,’ looking at him laughing,” said Chip Michaels, who along with his brothers grew up with Christie. “It’s crazy. He grew up like everyone else in New Jersey. So to see him as a celebrity, it’s just really odd. But he’s the same guy. He’s a grounded guy.”

That’s the prevailing mood inside the Christie household in Mendham Township, where he is hardly the untouchable chief executive. Taking down the tree eight days ago — a week later than planned — he joked with his wife, Mary Pat, about their first apartment two decades ago. It reeked of neighbors’ cooking and had a tree-topping angel made of cardboard and aluminum foil.

Andrew, 16, was buried in a laptop computer as he awaited the Jets’ first playoff game. Sarah, 13, showed off gold studs in her newly pierced ears. Patrick, 9, nibbled grilled cheese and hurriedly dressed for his hockey game. Bridget, 6, — who has so taken to her father’s security detail that she has been dubbed “Trooper Bridget” — clowned with visitors, at one point announcing out of nowhere: “Teamwork!”

“I’m not the governor to them,” Christie said.

Keeping the kids comfortably in their home and school routines is why the Christies are not moving to the governor’s mansion, an hour’s drive south. After the election, Corzine took the Christies on a tour of Drumthwacket in Princeton Township — a kind gesture that only reinforced the family’s affection for their own house, spacious and perched on a hill perfect for sledding.

There are some changes. Secure phone and computer connections are being installed in the governor-elect’s home office. A trailer parked near the garage is a crash pad for the ever-present State Police.

TOGETHERNESS

The troopers are the biggest adjustment for the children — although they now get to see their father more than during the all-consuming campaign.

“He tried constantly to keep in touch — things like texting with Andrew to make sure he’s doing his homework,” Mary Pat Christie said.

At Patrick’s hockey game, Christie and Mary Pat stood near the ice, shivering and cheering. Patrick’s team, the Randolph Rams, hadn’t won all season.

“C’mon, Pat. Attaboy,” Christie called out, adding sarcastically to the referee: “You lose your whistle?”

The buzzer sounded and the Rams finally had a victory. Patrick and his teammates scrambled off the ice, followed by Chip Michaels, who is the head coach. Christie shook the coach’s hand and offered congratulations.

“Now I know how you feel,” Michaels responded.

Yes, he does. The prosecutor who jailed scores of crooked politicians without losing a case, the conservative Republican candidate who slayed a wealthy incumbent in a Democratic state …

“I’ve had a pretty good decade,” Christie said.

It’s no wonder he thinks he can keep winning. Star Ledger.