The Mayoral tag team of Jersey City’s Steven Fulop and Hoboken’s Dawn Zimmer against Gov. Chris Christie in the aftermath of the Bridgegate scandal wasn’t necessarily a Hudson story, but the national media coverage put the two Hudson County elected officials in the spotlight.
It might not feel like yesterday, but a year-and-a-half ago Gov. Chris Christie and Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer had an open working relationship. She might have not endorsed his re-election, but wasn’t exactly saying don’t vote for him, either:
Even Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who helped Christie and Education Commissioner Chris Cerf make Dr. Marcia Lyles Superintendent of Jersey City Public Schools, had a working relationship with the governor. Fulop, like Zimmer, failed to endorse the Christie’s re-election, but at one point had nice things to say:
All that went away once the national media drew Fulop and Zimmer into a partisan political battle more about destroying Christie’s odds of becoming President than anything else, which they seemed happy to oblige.
Yet what many thought was the beginning of the end for Republican Gov. Chris Christie turned out to be the beginning of a Republican-heavy attack against Zimmer.
CNN called Zimmer’s allegations that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno tried to strong-arm her into allowing a Christie ally to develop in Hoboken, “full of contradictions,” though the conclusion of the saga awaits as the U.S. Attorney’s Office continues to investigate, per The New York Times.
Guadagno’s future remains uncertain as well, though The Record reported in September that she had been issued a subpoena from the New Jersey Attorney General on “Hoboken issues.”
Meanwhile, Fulop has staged a proxy battle against Christie with his attacks on the Port Authority with, yet again, no clear winner yet.
A $400 million dollar lawsuit and some gridlock of his own on Route 440Â (h/t The Star-Ledger)Â has shown Fulop’s willingness to take on Christie, something that could be a medal of honor in the Gubernatorial Democratic Primary in 2017.
That brings us to present day, where Fulop and Zimmer voiced their displeasure in the Port Authority’s proposal to remove overnight PATH service as part of a larger cost-saving initiative.
With the Port Authority potentially being the biggest political issue in 2015, the Fulop-Zimmer duo doesn’t look like they will be letting up against Christie anytime soon.
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[…] this feud pretty much fizzled out after the first quarter of 2016, which is why it wasn’t as much fun as last year, when Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer was also in Christie’s […]