In the snowballing farce loosely known as his career, Chris Christie figures his only path to redemption is to out-Trump his political hero for spite and pettiness – but he needs help in selecting his targets.
With the Port Authority capital budget finally nailed down – and with minimal input from a governor emasculated by Bridgegate – Christie cranked up the bile after his speech before the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Thursday by attacking Sens. Loretta Weinberg and Bob Gordon for helping PA Chairman John Degnan secure $3.5 billion in funding for a new bus terminal.
“All they do is make noise and most of them do nothing,” Christie told Politico. “Especially the ones that have been yapping the most about the Port Authority are nothing but big talkers, like Sen. Weinberg and Sen. Gordon, who accomplish very little. And all they do is create problems and not solutions. But she’ll continue to storm into the meetings and carp away in her normal manner. She’s relatively useless, as far as I’m concerned about getting things done.”
OK, some problems with that.
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First, he has been out of town for most of the three years that Weinberg met with the commuters, attended the board meetings, stood up to the New York board commissioners, and helped with the planning process.
As Veronica Vanterpool of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign told the Middletown Times Herald-Record, “Prior to Loretta, there really wasn’t an advocate for the bus terminal and the 230,000 people who use it every day.”
Or just ask Degnan, Christie’s PA Chairman who had been fighting a very lonely battle against a hostile New York governor to fund this project.
“If you ask me what role Loretta and Gordon played, I’d say they were indispensable in the effort to get Gov. Cuomo to honor the commitments he made to me in March and to Gov. Christie last September,” Degnan said . “As far as I’m concerned, they should name the bus terminal after Loretta.”
Christie is also clueless that Cuomo’s antagonism was fueled by Christie’s prolonged absence and silence. Yet this is what tumbled out of Christie’s mouth Thursday: “I want to publicly acknowledge what an extraordinary public servant Andrew Cuomo is and what a great partner he has been with me.”
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That sounds like Trump crediting Vladimir Putin for solving the Syrian crisis.
As Weinberg said of Christie, “This poor man is really living in an alternate reality.”
Degnan put it this way: “Cuomo ultimately agreed to a plan that included the bus terminal – kicking and screaming. But Cuomo is no advocate of the terminal.”
Yes, the governors were partners in kneecapping every legislative effort to reform the Port Authority and erase the oversight authority in both states, because Christie hated losing his patronage pit. Weinberg led that battle, too. At 82, nobody does it better.
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