N.J. mayor says aid ultimatum came from Christie

TRENTON, N.J. – The Democratic mayor of a town severely flooded by Superstorm Sandy said Sunday that she was told an ultimatum tying recovery funds to her support for a prime real estate project came directly from Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a claim a Christie spokesman called “categorically false.”

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said she met with federal prosecutors in Newark for several hours Sunday at their request and turned over a journal and other documents.

“I will provide any requested information and testify under oath about the facts of what happened when the Lieutenant Governor came to Hoboken and told me that Sandy aid would be contingent on moving forward with a private development project,” she said in a statement Sunday night.

Earlier Sunday, Zimmer told CNN’s “State of the Union with Candy Crowley” that the message pushing a commercial development by the New York-based Rockefeller Group was delivered by Kim Guadagno, Christie’s lieutenant governor, when she and Guadagno were at an event in Hoboken in May to celebrate the opening of a new supermarket.

“The lieutenant governor pulled me aside and said, essentially, ‘You’ve got to move forward with the Rockefeller project. This project is really important to the governor.’ And she said that she had been with him on Friday night and that this was a direct message from the governor,” Zimmer recalled Guadagno saying.

Christie spokesman Colin Reed issued a statement Sunday saying, “Mayor Zimmer’s categorization about her conversation in Hoboken is categorically false.”

On Saturday, Zimmer said Guadagno and a top community development official separately told her that recovery funds would flow to her city if she expedited the project.