The guy every lovesick political journalist in the Northeast Corridor thinks should be the next president of the United States apparently created a week's worth of severe traffic jams in early September in a fit of political pique, if this Wall Street Journal story is correct:
Early on the morning of Sept. 9, an official of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey appeared at the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge and looked out over a traffic jam he helped create, according to people familiar with the matter.(Emphasis added.)
The official, according to these people, was David Wildstein, who was hired in 2010 as the authority's director of interstate capital projects by an appointee of Gov. Chris Christie.
The previous day, a Sunday, Mr. Wildstein called two bridge officials and ordered them to shut off two local access toll lanes for drivers headed across the bridge from Fort Lee, N.J., into New York City, the people familiar with the matter said.
According to these people and authority correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the closures were made without notice to police, emergency officials or officials on the New York side of the Port Authority's leadership. As previously reported, the closure triggered large traffic jams for a week in the borough on the New Jersey side of the bridge....
People familiar with the matter and some local officials ... believe it was a gesture aimed at the borough's Democratic mayor, who had declined to cross party lines to endorse Mr. Christie for governor two weeks earlier.
The mayor, Mark Sokolich, said he believed the intent was "punitive" in a letter sent to Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, Mr. Wildstein's boss, asking for relief from the traffic jam in September....
Petty, vindictive, thuggish -- yeah, I'm so looking forward to Chris Christie having his finger on the nuclear button, aren't you?
