HOBOKEN — Mayor Dawn Zimmer made what she said was a difficult decision this weekend and decided to do an interview, appearing on MSNBC Saturday morning, alleging that top state officials suggested to her that her city did not get more aid after Hurricane Sandy because she stalled on a development project pushed by the head of the Port Authority, David Samson. Samson was serving as a private lobbyist to the Rockefeller Group, which — as first reported by the Hoboken Reporter in this article in 2009 — was quietly buying up buildings in uptown Hoboken for a massive residential and commercial development. (See links below for related Reporter stories, and this story about Zimmer and Rockefeller.)
As recently as this past week, Zimmer maintained in an interview with the Hoboken Reporter that she wasn’t sure that the aid had been withheld as political retribution from Christie, saying in the Reporter story that she still hoped to receive more Sandy aid. She also discussed other aspects of the situation (see cover story, being distributed this weekend).
Apparently, by Saturday, she decided to come forward with new information about state officials and the aid.
Over the weekend, Zimmer provided MSNBC with emails and even her personal diary entries from May of 2013 documenting Hoboken’s situation, saying she was disappointed to find that Christie was “cut from the same corrupt cloth” as many other politicians.
Zimmer was asked by a TV reporter why she didn’t come forward right when this happened. She said it was difficult.
Zimmer said her town, which was flooded by Sandy, deserved more aid.
According to the MSNBC story online, excerpted here:
Two senior members of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration warned a New Jersey mayor earlier this year that her town would be starved of hurricane relief money unless she approved a lucrative redevelopment plan favored by the governor, according to the mayor and emails and personal notes she shared with msnbc…In an exclusive interview, Zimmer broke her silence and named Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, Christie’s community affairs commissioner, as the two officials who delivered messages on behalf of a governor she had long supported…Constable and Christie – through spokespersons – deny Zimmer’s claims.
“Mayor Zimmer has been effusive in her public praise of the Governor’s Office and the assistance we’ve provided in terms of economic development and Sandy aid,” Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak wrote in a statement. “What or who is driving her only now to say such outlandishly false things is anyone’s guess.”
In her diary entry from last May, Zimmer wrote, “I was emotional about governor Christie. I thought he was honest. I thought he was moral. I thought he was something very different. This week I found out he’s cut from the same corrupt cloth that I have been fighting for the last four years.”
The project was an unusual development, long covered by the Hoboken Reporter, in which the Rockefeller Group of New York City wanted to convert a series of buildings uptown into residential and commercial property. Rockefeller had been quietly buying up the buildings.
Samson had been in the news at the end of the week as someone who might lose his job over Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal.
For related stories, see links below.