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WASHINGTON—New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen, Anne Hathaway and Shaquille O’Neal were among the high-wattage celebrities shortlisted as potential ambassadors for an advertising campaign last summer to trumpet the storm-ravaged state’s return as a tourist destination.
But a U.S. federal probe will now explore how a roster of the state’s most famous celebrity faces was set aside to let Gov. Chris Christie and his family star in the $4.7-million “Stronger Than The Storm” campaign, aimed at bringing out-of-state beach hordes back to the Jersey Shore.
The probe into possible misuse of federal aid money for a barrage of ads that coincided with Christie’s ultimately successfully 2013 campaign for re-election as state governor was announced Monday, opening a fresh front in the swarm of political storms confronting the front-running Republican presidential hopeful.
MWW, the advertising firm behind the Jersey Shore campaign, denied the doling of political favours, saying Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi and others were unavailable for the project, leaving Christie as the next logical choice.
The confirmation of a new federal audit of the disaster funds channelled into radio and TV ads featuring Christie came amid the formal launch of dual state investigations looking deeper into the dirty tricks scandal dubbed BridgeGate.
Last Thursday, Christie, who has denied all knowledge of the scheme to order up traffic problems on the George Washington Bridge as political payback against a local mayor, fired two senior aides implicated in the scandal.
The measure of the damage to his political brand is not yet clear. A Monmouth University poll on Monday suggested 80 per cent of Jerseyites expect more of Christie’s inner circle to be fired over the scandal.
But poll respondents were evenly split on whether the governor has come entirely clean.
But with concurrent investigations widening, state Democrats were pushing to combine the efforts of both levels of the New Jersey state assembly to get to the bottom of the story.
“The issue has grown and the unanswered questions have multiplied,” said Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a state Democrat, in a statement.
“This involves the abuse of power, risks to the public safety, harm to interstate commerce and a possible coverup. We need to combine the resources of both houses of the legislature to get to the full truth.”
Playing God with traffic flow — as some have described the scheme to impose gridlock on one of the world’s busiest crossings — is undoubtedly infuriating to those caught in the maelstrom. But the four days of slowdowns on the George Washington Bridge may not actually be illegal under federal law, according to many U.S. legal analysts.
“There isn’t a statute that generally says you interfered with interstate commerce and that’s a crime,” Stephen Ryan, a former assistant U.S. attorney, told BuzzFeed. “We don’t have that law.”
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