With Wildstein claiming in his plea that the GW Bridge stunt was all because Mayor Sokolich didn’t endorse Christie for re-election, it occurred to me to take a closer look at how the endorsements for Christie and Buono played out in real time.
Democratic elected officials who are Christie backers, including Burlington City Mayor Jim Fazzone, Manville Mayor Angelo Corradino, Chesilhurst Mayor Michael Blunt, Harrison Mayor Ray McDonough, Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long and all eight members of the Harrison City Council.
Buono received the endorsements from multiple liberal groups and scored the Republican Spotswood Mayor’s endorsement.
June was a very good month for Christe endorsements:
Democratic elected officials who are Christie backers, including Burlington City Mayor Jim Fazzone, Manville Mayor Angelo Corradino, Chesilhurst Mayor Michael Blunt, Harrison Mayor Ray McDonough, Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long and all eight members of the Harrison City Council.
From July through September, there were but two Democratic Mayors that had yet to endorse that made any public comments.
The first was Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop. He’d been elected on May 14th and sworn into office on July 1st. On August 1, Fulop penned/published Endorsements Hardly Matter. (Obama’s endorsement of Jersey City incumbent Mayor Healy didn’t help him.) Then, HuffPo, August 9 Fulop undecided as to endorsing either Christie or Buono.
The second was Hoboken Mayor, Dawn Zimmer. August 20th NJ Com report
“I don’t expect to be endorsing,” Zimmer said, according to Portnoy.
In response, the Hoboken mayor wrote that Christie has “done a great job for NJ & Hoboken.” She then noted that she has her own re-election fight on Nov. 5.
Later, Zimmer wrote on Twitter that she’s “very glad” Christie is governor.
October 10, NJ.com: Jersey City Mayor Kinda Sorta in For Buono
Just don’t expect to hear Fulop say Buono’s name.
“I’m a lifelong Democrat and when I get in the booth, I’m going to vote Democrat and that means the whole Democratic ticket,” Fulop, 36, told The Jersey Journal yesterday.
There seems not to have been any published reports about Mayor Sokolich either not endorsing either candidate or endorsing Buono. Not until months later when Sokolich was interviewed about the GW Bridge stunt did the question of his endorsement get media attention. As Bob Somersby noted in February 2015, Sokolich Pretty Much Changes His Story. His recall as to if or when he’d been asked to endorse Christie was fuzzy, but he didn’t deviate from saying that he didn’t publicly state that he wouldn’t endorse Christie nor that he had publicly endorsed Buono.
It is to be recalled that when the GW Bridge began blowing up, that Fulop and Zimmer went public with their Christie issues. 1/14/14 NY Daily News report
“Within the past hour, I have received phone calls … all of which cancelled the meetings on the 23rd,” wrote Fulop’s secretary, Nancy Warlikowski, to the mayor. [Mayor’s July documentation]
Fulop, who in separate conversations had told Christie’s staff that day he was endorsing Buono, began to suspect payback when he couldn’t even get his calls returned.
Note: Jersey City population: 257,342; Hoboken population: 52,572; Fort Lee population: 35,014.
Now note the timeline:
July 1 – Fulop takes office. Meetings with Christie staff scheduled.
July X – Fulop alleges that he informed Christie staff that he would endorse Buono
July Y – July 23 – Christie staff canceled those meetings.
August 1 – Fulop Op-Ed; “Endorsements don’t matter”
August 9 – Fulop declines to endorse Christie or Buono.
August 20 – Zimmer declines to endorse Christie or Buono, but adds that Christie is great.
Sure looks as team Christie had been leaning on Fulop and Zimmer for endorsements. But once those two declined to endorse either candidate, they left them alone and engaged in major retribution against the mayor of the smallest of the three cities who also appears not to have endorsed either candidate. Retribution that not even Mayor Sokolich was able to understand in real time. Nor did Fulop or Zimmer, neither of whom endorsed Christie before the election. Even if team Christie had tunnel vision to get a landslide win, why such a huge effort to attack Sokolich?
Now check this out from the Boroni and Kelly indictments
[Page 7] #9 …between March 2011 and August 2013 Wildstein had separate discussions with Boroni and Kelly about how they could use the Local Access lanes as leverage against Mayor Sokolich. [emphasis added]
Would Sokolich’s endorsement of Christie’s re-election in 2013 have been of concern in March 2011? Sounds ridiculous. Was there anything that could have been of issue to team Christie in March 2011? Possibly:
In January 2011, Ft. Lee lost its effort to have the [Tucker] suit dismissed. Ft. Lee and Tucker settled the dispute that June. FRLA [developer] would develop The Modern on the eastern parcel and Tucker would develop Hudson Lights on the westen parcel. The original decision by the [Ft Lee] Planning Board to approve the FRLA plan [for the whole site] had delayed the project by over a year and cost money to litigate. Wisely IMHO, Sokolich and/or the Board chose to settle and move forward after losing the first round in the suit.
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FRLA got its remaining ducks in a row and broke ground in October 2012. Tucker, for whatever reason, was slower to act. Exactly when Kushner Real Estate Group (NJ) and Ares Management came on board as partners is unclear, but it may not have been until sometime in 2012. The financing had been projected to be in place by May 2013 but that was delayed. By August, word was that Tucker/Kushner/Ares was near completion on the financing and it was reported on September 17, 2013 (seven days after the reduction of the Ft. Lee toll booths from three to one) that the funding had been finalized.
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