Chris Christie is still gridlocked by Bridgegate scandal two years later
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Version 0 of 1. It’s been exactly two years since the closure of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey caused a traffic apocalypse – and Governor Chris Christie still seems stuck in the jam it created. After costing the jobs of multiple state functionaries, the ever-expanding scandal – inevitably nicknamed Bridgegate – claimed its biggest scalp so far on Tuesday, with the resignation of the CEO of United Airlines. The United executive, Jeff Smisek, had nothing to do with the lane closures. Instead he was caught up in a federal investigation the scandal kicked off into the dealings of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the agency that oversees the bridge and other river crossings and ports around the city. There is not, as yet, any talk of criminal wrongdoing or charges against Smisek or two other United executives ousted on Tuesday. But investigators are focusing on conversations that the United team had with the chairman of the Port Authority board of commissioners, David Samson, a Christie appointee and friend who formerly served as counsel to Christie’s gubernatorial election campaign. At the center of the investigation is a scene that plays like B-roll for a generic television treatment of politics, New Jersey style. There is an Italian restaurant, a political employee in charge of major public concessions, a corporate titan with a $21.7bn company and talk of little favors. Bloomberg News reporters David Kocieniewski and David Voreacos blew the lid off the story when they reported in April that midway through a dinner at the Manhattan restaurant Novita in 2011, Samson mentioned to Smisek and others what a pain it had become to get to his vacation home in South Carolina since United had stopped flying direct from Newark to Columbia. Smisek, in turn, had come to the dinner to press his case for concessions for a $600m extension of a rail line to Newark airport, and for a new hangar to maintain wide-body jets at the airport, Bloomberg reported. After the dinner, United resumed its Newark-Columbia flight, and the Port Authority approved the hangar and a study of the rail extension. Samson, 76, has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. But his decades-long career as a politically connected New Jersey lawyer, and a former state attorney general, has crumbled. He resigned from the Port Authority last year. He retired in April from his eponymous law firm, Wolff Samson, which immediately changed its name. A message left for Samson with the current firm, Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi, was not returned. For observers of the Republican presidential campaign, the remarkable ability of the Bridgegate scandal to continue to gobble up gold-plated careers looks a bit ominous for the governor, who saw his favorability rating drop by double digits after the scandal broke. In national polling averages of the race for the Republican nomination, Christie currently sits just outside the top 10, with 2.4% support. Christie’s argument for staying in the race is that his qualities as a candidate will overcome his temporary – now 20-month-long – slump in the polls. But the renewed focus on Samson could point to deeper problems with a Christie candidacy. Peter Woolley, a professor of comparative politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, said the Smisek resignation had elevated what had been a local scandal to the national eye. “In terms of the national public opinion, this episode with Jeff Smisek makes Bridgegate have a legitimate national profile,” Woolley said. “Bridgegate has really been a local story. But when you have the resignation of a CEO of an international corporation with a very high profile, I think that gives Bridgegate a national prominence that it didn’t have before.” A spokesperson for Christie told the Guardian on Wednesday that Samson was no longer an advisor to the governor. Christie had stood staunchly by Samson, through each turn of the screw. At a news conference announcing Samson’s resignation from the Port Authority in March 2014, Christie thanked the outgoing commissioner “for his service and for his friendship”. “I have every faith and trust and confidence in David’s integrity, as do people on both sides of the aisle in this state, over the course of the last 40 years that he’s been involved on and off in public life,” Christie said. “And so I have complete confidence that he’s acquitted himself in a way that was appropriate and ethical.” The executive director of the Port Authority, Patrick Foye, disagreed last year in an interview with the New York Daily News, saying that Samson did not have the moral authority to lead the agency. Woolley said that even New Jersey residents following the Port Authority scandals might not be following the story of Samson’s role, and his connections to the governor. In any case Christie’s challenges as a presidential candidate, Woolley said, are bigger than one past associate. “Christie’s numbers nationally are really abysmal,” Woolley said. “I’m not sure they’re abysmal having anything to do with Bridgegate, but I think that this is one more weight that he’ll have to carry in this campaign in the next several months.” |