Was Traffic a “Bottom of the Barrel” Issue for the Christie Administration?
Drewniak and McKenna have contradictory views on traffic and politics
Often, it seems, that the most in the weeds arcane details can reveal or suggest larger issues – a world in a grain of sand.
I listened to the testimony of Michael Drewniak yesterday, Gov. Christie’s spokesman.
He made a heroic effort to portray the Gov.’s narrative of betrayal and befuddlement – that’s what spokesperson’s do – but struggled at times with the details and chronology. It seemed he was particularly off stride in responding to questions about when and what he told Charlie McKenna, a point I’ll get back to in a moment.
Drewniak’s notorious fangs were revealed just once, in his refusal to respond to Assemblyman Moriarty’s critical “narrative”.
In those regards, his testimony and how he was treated by the Committee stood in some contrast to the prior testimony of Christina Renna of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Drewniak, the nasty partisan who was the Gov.’s personal long time attack dog and defender, got a more formal, respectful, and deferential posture than the friendly, naive, cooperative, lower level, public service oriented Renna.
Asm. Moriarty and at times Sen. Gill deviated somewhat from that overall approach in how the Committee treated Drewniak, who got little pushback despite the fact that his testimony, starting with his opening statement, was provocative, basically portraying the investigation as partisan and asserting his own and the Gov.’s honor and innocence.
Drewniak’s testimony revealed not only the highly partisan “us v. them” worldview of the Administration, but a seemingly implausible role limited to passing along factual information and making an awful lot of assumptions about what others did with that information.
Back to McKenna –
Drewniak walked back several portions of his testimony on the chronology of McKenna and he could not recall critical details on his interactions with McKenna. Given that Ms. Renna also was flummoxed and dissembled somewhat with respect to Mr. McKenna, I went and read his Mastro interview after the hearing and came across this gem, which, among many other things, contradicted Drewniak’s “bottom of the barrel” characterization of the traffic issue.
Prior to and during the week of the lane realignment (September 9–13, 2013), McKenna had no knowledge of the lane realignment. Had McKenna known about the lane realignment at the time, he probably would have done something to stop it, not for the reasons described in Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye’s September 13, 2013 email, but because traffic jams were simply not good for the Governor. At some point between September and October 2013, there was a major traffic jam on the Garden State Parkway because a contractor was late in completing a project on the highway, which forced certain lanes to remain closed for several hours longer than expected during the morning rush. The traffic jam was reported in the press and when McKenna learned about it, he called New Jersey Department of Transportation (“DOT”) Commissioner Jim Simpson that day, asked Simpson what was going on, and emphasized that people were going to be very unhappy with the Governor if they were sitting in traffic. Because traffic jams on State- owned roads were usually blamed on the Governor, this was something that McKenna would have wanted to avoid, especially in the months leading up to the election.
A few things are revealing in this excerpt (and in the curious detail McKenna spouts about the alleged FBI officer’s tip to him on how to on use the Ft. Lee access lanes as a shortcut, clearly a subtle strategy to justify the discredited “legitimate traffic study” cover story.):
1. Note that McKenna, a lawyer, Christie’s Chief Legal Counsel, and former criminal prosecutor at the US Attorney’s Office, has no interest whatsoever in Foye’s allegations of violations of federal and state law. He is solely motivated by public perception and the political and electoral interests of the Gov. Keep in mind that McKenna knew that the Wall Street Journal had this memo.
That just is not credible.
Drewniak also tap danced around this same issue – why was no one looking into Foye’s claim of illegal behavior?
2. Note that McKenna thought traffic was such a significant issue for the Gov., that he had previously personally called DoT Commissioner Simpson “asked Simpson what was going on, and emphasized that people were going to be very unhappy with the Governor if they were sitting in traffic.”
That conflicts with Drewniak’s testimony that traffic was a “bottom of the barrel” issue.
The conflict either suggests that:
a) Drewniak is downplaying the traffic issue to provide an excuse for his lack of curiosity and followup, or that
b) McKenna is using the issue to reinforce his claim of no prior knowledge of the lane closures (or else he would have acted to stop them to protect the Gov. “in the months leading up to the election.” or
c) BOTH of them are using the traffic issue to spin their “narratives” – i.e. cover story.
As IF Stone proved, you can find some amazing stuff in the weeds.
[End note: at his dinner with Wildstein, Drewniak was shown a file with a bunch of emails and drawings. Drewniak “assumed” that this was evidence of a legitimate traffic study. That testimony suggests that Drewniak is incompetent – he’s never seen a real transportation study? – or lying.]