Over at Talking Points Memo, a March 20, 2015 opinion piece by Brian Murphy takes a look at ongoing investigations into the deliberately manufactured traffic problems at the George Washington Bridge designed to send a message to a local mayor Christie had targeted.
If you've lost track of what was going on, the article gets into some of the back and forth between officials at the Port Authority and Governor Christie's staff which shows what was happening behind the scenes. A public safety crisis was created by closing lanes at the bridge, causing huge traffic tie ups in Fort Lee; this was definitely not good for kids on school buses or emergency vehicles.
On Monday September 9, 2013, the first of four days of now-infamous lane closures at the George Washington Bridge that triggered paralyzing traffic jams in the town of Fort Lee, N.J., the mayor of that town, Mark Sokolich, placed a phone call to Bill Baroni, the No. 2 executive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The messages between Christie's people at the Port Authority and Christie's staff make pretty clear that that the lane closings were a political maneuver intended to put pressure on the Mayor - a Democrat. What the article goes on to show seems to indicate that it wasn't isolated; Christie's people were also making life difficult for another Democratic Mayor, Jersey City mayor Stephen Fulop, who had declined to endorse Christie at a time when he was trying to burnish his image as a 'bipartisan' figure in preparation for a presidential bid.
What the article by Murphy appears to show is that Christie and his people repeatedly abused the office of governor for political advantage. It might be considered politics as usual, still I can't help but be struck by this one section from the article. When the Mayor of Fort Lee contacted the Christie appointee at the top of the Port Authority over the public safety issues being caused by the traffic jams, the official - Bill Baroni -
...sought guidance from a subordinate: David Wildstein, a former political blogger (and my onetime boss) who held the title of Director of Interstate Capital Projects – a $150,000 a year job created especially for him and abolished following his resignation.
Among officials who worked alongside Wildstein, it was widely understood that he was – as the Bergen Record noted in 2012 – Chris Christie’s “eyes and ears” at the Port Authority. One top New York appointee described him as someone who looked at the agency as a garden; “[Wildstein] was there to cultivate political opportunities.” In that role, it often was unclear to staff whether Baroni was in fact Wildstein’s superior; both took orders from Trenton, and Wildstein was frequently in contact with members of Gov. Christie’s staff.
emphasis added
Read the whole thing. It's a window into the mindset that considers political office as nothing more than an opportunity for personal aggrandizement and ambition - the public interest be damned.
It's chilling when you consider the number of people in the media who were excited about Christie because he looked like he could be that mythical "Bipartisan Uniter" who could knock heads and get things done, like the stereotypical "Man on horseback" riding to the rescue. (The only thing missing from this picture is a horse capable of bearing Christie's weight. I know it's a cheap shot, but I also know if Christie's people thought it would work, they'd do it in a New Jersey minute.) It should be a cautionary tale about media judgement about other such 'leaders'.