Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer (right) with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (left) and former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (center) in the days after Hurricane Sandy.
The mayor of Hoboken said Sunday she got a “direct message from the governor” that Gov. Chris Christie would hold up Sandy aid unless she approved a development project, as the head of the New Jersey Assembly’s Bridgegate investigation said he’d widen the probe to include her allegations.
Mayor Dawn Zimmer said when Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno warned her that millions in Hurricane Sandy relief for her city were tied to the approval of the Rockefeller Group’s proposal, she made it clear the message came straight from Christie.
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“The fact is that she came, the Lieutenant Governor pulled me aside and she said, essentially, you’ve got to move forward with the Rockefeller project. This project is really important to the governor. And she said that she had been with him on Friday night and that this was a direct message from the governor,” Zimmer said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Zimmer kept a diary describing the meetings and shared pages with the Daily News.
Zimmer (left) chats with Christie after the press conference.
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“Embarrassed to say — but I found myself breaking down last night on the plane,” she wrote, saying that in addition to being upset about her father, “I was emotional about Governor Christie. I thought he was honest. I thought he was moral. I thought he was something different. This week I found out he’s cut from the same corrupt cloth that I have been fighting for the last four years. I am so disappointed — it literally brings tears to my eyes.”
She described the encounter with Guadagno in a ShopRite parking lot. “She pulls me aside with no one else around and says that I need to move forward with the Rockefeller project. It is very important to the gov,” she wrote. “The word is that you are against it and you need to move forward or we are not going to be able to help you.”
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She wrote that she voiced her objections and got a blunt response.
Zimmer kept a diary of her interactions, sharing some of them with the Daily News.
“Are any other towns being required to develop in exchange for help with the flooding, I asked,” she wrote. “’I know it’s not right. These things should not be connected — but they are,’ she says. ‘If you tell anyone that, I’ll deny it.’”
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Christie’s spokesman has flatly denied the allegations, noting that Zimmer publicly praised the governor in the past.
Zimmer said she didn’t speak out about the May conversation sooner — a point that Christie backers have used to question the credibility of her story — because she didn’t think she’d be believed and was afraid of further jeopardizing her Sandy funding.
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Within the entries, Zimmer penned details about her request for $127 million in aid for Hoboken, but how the city only received $342,000, as well as the ‘threat’ from Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.
“I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I really didn’t,” she told CNN. “Looking back, I probably should have come forward, but ... if I came forward, no one believes me, I’m going to put Hoboken in an even worse position.”
The project in question was a three-block redevelopment effort including a 40-story office tower by the Manhattan-based Rockefeller Group, a global real estate business, which has close ties to Christie.
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Hoboken requested $127 million in Sandy recovery funds and got only $342,000, according to Zimmer. Christie’s camp said the city actually got some $70 million, but Zimmer said Sunday that was flood insurance money that had nothing to do with the recovery funds controlled by the governor.
“They were holding our Sandy funds hostage in order to get, push through and expedite the Rockefeller project,” she said. “They’re playing games with the numbers and it’s a deflection.”
More entries from Zimmer's diary.
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Assemblyman John Wisniewski, who is leading the probe of the closing of lanes onto the George Washington Bridge, said he’d also examine Zimmer’s charges.
“We have to give the allegations serious thought, because it is a pattern that we’ve heard time and time again throughout New Jersey. The committee needs to look at the facts, hear her story, look at the emails and consider where we go next,” he said. “It’s something the committee has to consider as part of the overall investigation.”
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He said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” it was tough to buy Christie’s claims that he was in the dark about the Fort Lee lane closures until emails from his aides ordering up “traffic problems” were reported in the press.
In the pages, details of the confrontational exchanges were described.
“It’s hard to believe that he knew nothing until Jan. 8,” he said. “We’re going to look to see who else in his office knew. We’re going to follow the trail where it leads, step by step.”
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But during the same NBC program, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the investigation a “partisan witch hunt” and called for Wisniewski to step down.
“When you announce before you’ve even investigated you don’t believe the subject of the investigation or the person who’s the ultimate focus of the investigation, it would seem to me that the assemblyman has an ethical obligation to step down, to recuse himself,” he said. “He’s no longer an impartial arbiter of the facts. He’s announced he doesn’t believe Gov. Christie.
“The person conducting the investigation has now announced the conclusion of the investigation, that he believes the governor is not telling the truth,” Giuliani went on. “Clearly it’s a partisan witch hunt.”
Giuliani, a steadfast Christie ally, insisted the scandal could actually end up helping Christie if he runs for president.
“He’s given an example of a leader taking responsibility,” he said. “He’s given a textbook case of how to handle it. Stand up, answer the questions, hold people accountable, make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
edurkin@nydailynews.com
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