Weeks before a manufactured traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge overtook Fort Lee, N.J., at the behest of aides to Gov. Chris Christie, two people central to the scheme jokingly discussed engineering traffic problems at a less prominent site: the home of a local rabbi.
“We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?” wrote Bridget Anne Kelly, then a deputy chief of staff for Christie.
David Wildstein, a Christie ally at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, suggested that they should think bigger.
“Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed,” Wildstein wrote. (Again, he appeared to be kidding.)
The exchange was revealed in documents supplied by Wildstein as part of an investigation by the New Jersey Legislature.
The exchange is dated Aug. 19. Six days earlier, Kelly wrote that it was “time for some traffic problems” in Fort Lee - in an apparent reference to the plan to close some lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge.
The lanes were initially closed Sept. 9, setting off wide-scale gridlock over several days and, more recently, threatening the political fortunes of the governor, a Republican, amid allegations that the closings were politically motivated.
Though it is unclear why Kelly or Wildstein might have been upset with the rabbi, and though the jam at the rabbi’s house appears never to have happened, the documents lend new context to the highly charged environment in which Christie’s aides operated, an atmosphere of political paybacks where the planned lane closings for Fort Lee could be joked about as a weapon to be wielded against people who irked or defied them.
The exchange began with a picture of the rabbi, who was identified as Mendy Carlebach of South Brunswick Township, posing with a man who appears to be the U.S. House speaker, John Boehner, R-Ohio.
“I think this qualifies as some sort of stalking,” Kelly wrote. “You are too much.”
“He is Jewish Cid Wilson,” Wildstein replied, in a reference to a past candidate for a state Assembly seat. (Wilson’s Twitter page features many photographs with prominent officials.)
Wildstein added that Carlebach “has officially pissed me off.”
Seven minutes later, Kelly raised the prospect of creating traffic problems at the rabbi’s home.
In an interview, Carlebach said he was unsure why he might have drawn the officials’ ire. “I am clueless,” he said, adding that he had not had any “bad interactions” with Christie or any of his aides.
Indeed, Carlebach seems to have been in their good graces, at least initially. Since 2011, he has served as an appointee of Christie on the New Jersey-Israel Commission, a group established in 1989 to promote trade and cultural exchange.
He was among Christie’s guests during ceremonies in New York 10 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Carlebach and three other rabbis, including his father, Yosef, watched from the 21st floor at the unfinished 1 World Trade Center, and he told the website New Jersey Jewish News that the governor “spent a couple of hours mingling with us.”
In 2012, Carlebach was part of a group that traveled with the governor to Israel on an “economic mission” to increase trade between New Jersey and Israel. He also was invited to the governor’s official residence, Drumthwacket, to light Hanukkah candles.
Carlebach said he has been a longtime supporter of Christie, and he was listed as a Middlesex County co-chairman in the Jewish Leaders for Christie coalition, according to an email from the governor’s re-election campaign Sept. 3.
But in the interview, Carlebach, who also has served as a chaplain of the Port Authority Police Department, made a distinction between supporting and endorsing a candidate.
“I never came out publicly and endorsed,” he said. “I am a clergyman. As a policy I don’t endorse, but I support the governor.”
Carlebach said he did not recall whether Christie or any of his representatives asked him to consider endorsing the governor more explicitly.
He recalled meeting Boehner in 2008, most likely at a Republican convention where he worked as a chaplain. He attended another convention in 2012 but said he did not remember meeting Boehner then.
Though Boehner has expressed support for Christie in recent weeks, the two have at times had a fractious relationship. Last year, after a bill to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy did not reach a vote in the House, Christie assailed Boehner’s leadership.
Before the governor’s re-election last November, his campaign aggressively targeted the endorsements of Democratic mayors, religious leaders and other groups in the hopes of running up an impressive margin of victory. A prevailing theory about the lane closings is that they were intended to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, who did not endorse Christie.
Information for this article was contributed by Kate Zernike and Susan C. Beachy of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 02/28/2014