WebProNews

Tag: Mayor Zimmer

  • Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno Denies Mayor’s Claims

    After accusations by Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer alleging that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie “withheld” relief funds for hurricane Sandy unless she approved a project that the Gov. had slated is still unfounded. Zimmer also stated that the “imposed” threat came directly from Lt. Gov. Guardagno.

    Guadagno denied “whole-heartedly” allegations on Monday that she gave Hoboken’s Mayor an ultimatum to support a redevelopment plan backed by Gov. Chris Christie in order to receive Hurricane Sandy recovery aid.

    “Mayor Zimmer’s version of our conversation in May of 2013 is not only false but is illogical and does not withstand scrutiny when all of the facts are examined. Any suggestion that Sandy funds were tied to the approval of any project in New Jersey is completely false,” Guadagno said at a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday service project in Union Beach.

    Guadagno’s remarks were the first time a senior Christie official addressed the charges Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer first made Saturday on MSNBC and detailed to CNN on Sunday.

    On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Zimmer said Guadagno told her that Sandy relief funds hinged on her support for a real estate development project by the Rockefeller Group. Which she commented came directly from Christie.

    “She said that to me, that this is a direct message from the governor,” Zimmer said.

    Although Guadagno doesn’t deny the conversation with Zimmer back in May when the Lt. Gov. was touring a grocery store in Hoboken. But says she remembers Zimmer arguing that Sandy recovery aid and redevelopment were the same issue, according to the source close to Guadagno, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

    “Kim remembers in their conversation that she was talking about redevelopment and making investments in Hoboken. She remembers Zimmer pressing Kim for money for Sandy. Kim remembers saying you can’t tie the two together,” the source said. “And she remembers Zimmer continuing to press and showing her a map of the city and pressing for aid for Sandy.”

    Guadagno remembers it as a “friendly conversation,” the source said. “Zimmer was laser-focused on getting Hoboken money for Sandy recovery and that is not the role Kim Guadagno plays in the administration,” the source said.

    Lt. Gov. Guadagno cannot talk about Sandy – because apparently she was personally affected by the hurricane.

    “Kim can’t talk about Sandy,” the source said. “She can’t do it.”

    And Guadagno returned to Hoboken twice after that May conversation, spending hours with Zimmer, but she never brought up the conversation then, nor did she indicate that she was upset about the implications, the source said.

    Guadagno’s source also revealed that Zimmer’s comments Saturday and Sunday are a change from what she told CNN on January 11. She said then that while she wondered whether Sandy aid funds were being withheld because she didn’t endorse the governor’s re-election, she concluded, “I don’t think that’s the case.”

    “I don’t think it was retaliation and I don’t have any reason to think it’s retaliation, but I’m not satisfied with the amount of money I’ve gotten so far,” Zimmer told CNN then. She did not mention her concerns about the redevelopment project.

    Image via YouTube

  • Chris Christie: Is He Going To War With MSNBC?

    Strong allegations from Hoboken’s Mayor Dawn Zimmer (D), which aired on MSNBC Saturday morning, had New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) office slamming the network as overtly “partisan.”

    Zimmer, in an interview with MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, claims the Governor’s administration withheld millions of dollars in Hurricane Sandy relief money as “leverage” for a redevelopment plan.

    After Hoboken was badly hit by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, Zimmer requested $127 million in aid but received less than $400,000, she said. Zimmer named Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Christie’s community affairs commissioner Richard Constable as the officials who pressured her – twice – to give her approval on the plan, and provided emails, public records, and her own personal accounts to support her claims.

    “I was emotional about governor Christie,” Zimmer wrote in a diary entry dated May 17, 2013. “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.”

    Gov. Christie chastised the network for airing the accusation in his expected “bully” manner, more than aware that an allegation such as this is likely to increase public scrutiny of him and his administration, right behind this month’s Bridge-gate scandal.

    In a statement not long after the accusation, Christie spokesman Colin Reed said that the governor and Zimmer have had a good working relationship throughout both of their tenures. But the first part of his statement focused on MSNBC, and how openly hostile it has been in attacking Christie over the past two weeks.

    Reed also mentioned the discriminating ad that was produced and aired this week by MSNBC’s host Lawrence O’Donnell, which attacks Christie over the scandal initiated by his administration involving lane closures on the George Washington Bridge in September.

    Here’s the full statement from Reed:

    “MSNBC is a partisan network that has been openly hostile to Governor Christie and almost gleeful in their efforts attacking him, even taking the unprecedented step of producing and airing a nearly three-minute attack ad against him this week. Governor Christie and his entire administration have been helping Hoboken get the help they need after Sandy, with the city already having been approved for nearly $70 million dollars in federal aid and is targeted to get even more when the Obama Administration approves the next rounds of funding. The Governor and Mayor Zimmer have had a productive relationship, with Mayor Zimmer even recently saying she’s ‘very glad’ he’s been our Governor. It’s very clear partisan politics are at play here as Democratic mayors with a political axe to grind come out of the woodwork and try to get their faces on television.”

    “Our journalism speaks for itself,” MSNBC spokesperson Lauren Skowronski told Business Insider in response to Christie’s office.

    Image via YouTube