Strange, Christie said he didn't know this mayor until recently...
GWB scandal: Fort Lee mayor now says Christie campaign courted him for endorsement
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014
BY MIKE KELLY
STAFF WRITER
Governor Christie’s campaign orchestrated an extensive operation over two years that involved gifts to Fort Lee — including Port Authority funded shuttle buses, snow plowing, pothole repair and emergency radios — to convince the borough’s mayor to offer his endorsement of the governor during his reelection campaign, Mayor Mark Sokolich said in his most extensive comments to date on the George Washington Bridge scandal.
When Sokolich did not offer his endorsement, he says he was punished by paralyzing traffic jams at the bridge that were ordered by Christie’s appointees at the Port Authority during five days last September.
Sokolich’s comments, in a two-hour interview in his office Thursday night, represent his harshest criticism yet of the Christie administration — and the first time he has linked last September’s gridlock to his refusal to break from his Democratic party and endorse Christie, a Republican.
And while Sokolich said he was never told directly that Port Authority help was connected to Christie’s reelection, he said he came to see it as a quid pro quo.
Efforts to gain his endorsement began nearly two years ago and included a personal tour of the 9/11 Memorial plaza in lower Manhattan by David Wildstein, the Port Authority executive who orchestrated the traffic jams.
Sokolich said two cousins, visiting from Croatia in October 2012, asked to visit the 9/11 Memorial Plaza. So Sokolich telephoned the Port Authority, as he had been told by the agency’s deputy executive director, Bill Baroni if he ever needed a favor.
A few days later, Sokolich and his cousins were given a personal tour of the plaza by Wildstein, then the Port Authority’s director of interstate capital projects.
“I’ve been told to be nice to you,” Sokolich remembers Wildstein saying during that tour.
At the time, Sokolich said that he found Wildstein’s comment to be odd. But now, reflecting on Wildstein comments, he said that the brief tour was part of an orchestrated attempt by the Christie administration to court him for an endorsement.
He said Matt Mowers, a political operative for the Christie campaign — who had previously worked in the governor’s intergovernmental affairs office which was the chief liaison to towns — would meet with him and tell him about other Democrats who endorsed Christie.
“What do you think?” Sokolich said Mowers asked him.
Sokolich never said he would not endorse Christie. He said he kept the Christie campaign in doubt because he was afraid that an outright refusal to endorse the governor would delay state approvals for traffic patterns near a $1 billion high rise redevelopment plan in the borough.
“I needed things out of the governor,” Sokolich said, explaining the delicate political tightrope he walked.
Governor Christie’s office said no such relationship ever existed with Sokolich. Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said Friday that Sokolich’s new comments are “a direct and absolute contradiction of his public comments up to this point.”
Sokolich said he was even invited to lunch with Christie at Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion in Princeton. That group included Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who later accused the governor’s administration of pressuring her to approve a development plan in Hoboken whose lawyers were from the law firm of David Samson, the chairman of the Port Authority and a key Christie ally.
An attorney for Baroni, Michael Himmel, declined comment. Wildstein’s attorney, Alan Zegas, did not respond to request for comment. Mowers, now the executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Committee, also did not respond for a request for comment.
Sokolich’s comments, during a two-hour interview with The Record and another interview with Bloomberg News, are his most extensive since those traffic jams last September and, in a few cases, directly contradict his previous statements. But in the interview, Sokolich described a near-continuous effort by Baroni, who left his Port Authority along with Wildstein amid the revelations over the traffic jams in Fort Lee.
“Baroni told me, ‘if you ever need anything, call me first,’,” said Sokolich.
And Sokolich said he duly complied.
As mayor of a densely populated borough with major traffic problems that were often exacerbated when cars and trucks from the George Washington Bridge spilled into local streets, Sokolich said he felt the Port Authority owed something to Fort Lee.
In recent years, the Port Authority purchased shuttle buses for Fort Lee. It plowed snow off some streets, repaired pot holes and even purchased $10,000 worth of emergency radios for residents affected by Superstorm Sandy, Sokolich said.
What Sokolich discovered, he said, was that he was expected to return the favors by endorsing Christie.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/state/Fort_Lee_mayor_now_says_Christie_campaign_courted_him_for_endorsement.html
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