'Vindictive P***K' Chris Christie ACCUSED Of THIRD POLITICAL REVENGE Act [View all]

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Democrats say he shut down urban DMV office because they opposed him

Mayor Chris Bollwage says the closure of his town's motor vehicle bureau office was an act of political retribution from Gov. Chris Christie

* Elizabeth, NJ lost its Motor Vehicle Commission office at the end of 2010, leaving locals without a place for licenses and vehicle tags

* The city's largely poor, black population was left in the lurch, the town's mayor says, because he and two state lawmakers ran afoul of Gov. Christie

* The three Democratic politicians opposed Christie's first election as governor, and later pushed back against a plan to cap property tax hikes

* The 'Bridgegate' scandal sounds familiar now as Elizabeth residents have to go miles away and wait in hours-long lines

* A state assemblyman calls the situation the 'same thing' as Christie's alleged punishment of another mayor with traffic jams in September

* 'There was no logical reason to do it,' he says, 'other than to be a vindictive – I don't want to use the word "p***k" – but a vindictive individual'

Governor Chris Christie has been accused of exacting still more political revenge after his administration shut down the DMV office in a large New Jersey city three years ago – and Democratic politicians say it was because they opposed his tax policies and worked for his Election Day opponent.

'He shut it down, plain and simple, and of course this was political,' New Jersey state Assemblyman Joe Cryan told MailOnline of the Motor Vehicle Commission office in Elizabeth, the fourth-largest city in New Jersey. 'This was complete retribution. ... There was no other possible explanation for it.'

Cryan's district includes Elizabeth. He was former Gov. John Corzine's state Democratic chairman when he ran for re-election in 2009, unsuccessfully, against Christie. Ray Lesniak, Cryan's state Senate counterpart representing the city, had been a top Corzine strategist since the future Democratic governor was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000. And Elizabeth's longtime mayor, Chris Bollwage, got under Christie's skin soon after he took Corzine's job, joining Cryan and Lesniak to publicly oppose what they called a 'flawed' plan to cap the rate of annual property tax increases in New Jersey.


The three Democrats now say closing the motor vehicle bureau in Elizabeth was a way for Christie to crush three political adversaries with a single stroke of his pen. Christie and his insiders, Bollwage told MailOnline, 'are used to getting their way no matter the consequence to constituents and families.'




http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2544378/Vindictive-p-k-Chris-Christie-accused-THIRD-political-revenge-act-Democrats-say-shut-DMV-office-fourth-largest-NJ-city-opposed-him.html