Matt Katz - American Governor: Chris Christie’s Bridge to Redemption

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Copyright 2016 by Matt Katz

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Threshold Editions Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Threshold Editions hardcover edition January 2016

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Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Jacket design by Ariana Dingman-Grabec

Jacket photograph Kena Betancur/Getty Images

Author photograph by Avi Steinhardt

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Katz, Matt (Reporter), author.

Title: American governor / Matt Katz.

Description: First Threshold Editions hardcover edition. | New York : Threshold Editions, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015044712 | Subjects: LCSH: Christie, Chris. | GovernorsNew JerseyBiography. | New JerseyPolitics and government1951 | Presidential candidatesUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC F140.22.C47 K37 2016 | DDC 974.9/044092dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044712

ISBN 978-1-4767-8266-9

ISBN 978-1-4767-8268-3 (ebook)

For Deborah.

The best thing that ever happened to me was falling in love with a Jersey girl.

I worked the cones actually, Matt, he said. Unbeknownst to everybody I was actually the guy out there. I was in overalls and a hat.... You really are not serious with that question.

I really was serious with that question.

Christopher J. Christie, the fifty-fifth governor of the state of New Jersey, loomed from behind a massive wooden podium in the ornate ceremonial meeting room of his office at the state capitol in Trenton. His predecessors lined the walls in oil paintings, gubernatorial ghosts that warned of mediocre political fortune. Just one governor of New Jersey had gone on to become president of the United States: Woodrow Wilson. That was in 1913, exactly one hundred years ago.

Christie was poised to recapture the White House for New Jersey. He had just won a landslide reelection as a Republican in one of the most Democratic states in the country. He had come to personify New Jersey not just in the political sphere but also as a national cultural figure, as likely to pop up on E! as on FOX News. And he was beating all the other Republicans in the polls for the next presidential election in 2016and even tied with Democrat Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic candidate. Years of buzz about his political future had now turned into a full-on clarion call to every pragmatic Republican through the land: Christie had arrived to save the GOP. Exit polls showed that he knew how to win over independents, women, and the majority of Latinos.

Today was Christies first press conference back at the Statehouse after his reelection win. He was cocky and combative, as always. So when Christie deflected my question, it was just the kind of mocking sarcasm we were all used to.

CHRISTIES PRESENCE, ALREADY physically large, was magnified by the high perch he took behind the podium, above the reporters who sat packed together, shoulder to shoulder, laptops running hot on our thighs, eye level not with Christie but rather with the state seal.

A disembodied horse head was pictured at the center of that seal. Liberty and Prosperity, it read.

There was a fireplace behind the podium, but it was never lit. Plainclothes state troopers and top Christie staffers were stationed around the room like sentries, expressionless and seemingly wary of our existence. The room was cold, always, and the wifi was poor, usually.

Reporters shall raise their hands. Permission must be sought before a follow-up can be asked. Keep the questions short. And reading off a notepad, computer screen, or iPhone invites mockery.

With no applause, the governor busted through a tall wooden door next to the fireplace. All right, all right, he began. Good afternoon, everybody.

A half hour into that press conference, he called on me.

The scandal that I asked him about had been brewing for months. Something bizarre about access lanes from the little town of Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge. Word was that the governors people had closed the lanes to cause massive morning traffic jams for five consecutive days that gridlocked commuters, school buses, and ambulances. Apparently (and this sounded impossibly preposterous) the traffic jams were created to seek revenge on the Fort Lee mayor, who hadnt endorsed Christies reelection.

This was December, and the lanes closed back in September. Christies Democratic opponent in the election brought the incident up during a recent debate. She said it showed that Christie and his people were a bunch of bullies.

New Jersey seemed to like the bullying, from the time he instructed the media to take the bat out on a seventy-eight-year-old state senator (he meant it journalistically, he later explained) to the time he went after congressional Republicans for blocking billions of dollars in relief money for the biggest natural disaster in New Jersey history.

So when I asked him, Governor, did you have anything to do with these lane closures in September outside the GW Bridge? his I worked the cones made the crowd, his senior staffersand maybe a few reporterslaugh.

This was not my first time getting Christies sarcastic shivafter all, I had been covering him for three years at this pointso I persisted. The governor likes to grapple, and challenging him sometimes draws out better answers, ekes out some more truth-telling. And I wasnt peddling some cuckoo conspiracy theory herethis bridge thing was now the subject of hearings in the state legislature. Documents were being sought. Articles had been written. This was, without question, a news story.

The governor didnt think so. He did not want to be talking about what I was asking him to talk about. He was going to shut this down right now, and he planned to never hear about it again.

Christie stood by the explanation that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge, had already given: The lanes were closed for a traffic study. He went on to say that he was instructing the Port Authority to review that entire policy of having three dedicated lanes for Fort Lee. Because Ive sat in that traffic, he said, before I was governor. He looked at me and winked. He no longer sat in traffic; for him, as governor, they shut down part of the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan.