Gov. Chris Christie to be sworn in again, but under cloud of scrutiny
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will be sworn in Tuesday for his second term. The possible presidential candidate begins his second term under a cloud of scrutiny.
A new USA Today poll shows 58 percent of Americans do not believe the governor is telling the whole story in the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal.
The governor will start
his day at the New Hope Baptist Church for a service. He will be joined by his lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, the latest
member of his inner circle to be embroiled in a political controversy.
In his inaugural address, Christie will call for unity saying, "We have to be willing to play outside the red and blue boxes the media and pundits put us in."
His plea comes after Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer produced a letter she sent to the Christie administration, complaining about feeling pressured to support a real estate project in return for receiving Sandy aid dollars.
Zimmer said on CNN, "This letter definitely makes it very clear that I was the one on April 23, sent them a letter, and very clearly said, 'You can't connect the two, and it's not fair'."
But she said Guadagno made the administration's position perfectly clear. Zimmer said, "After she said to me, you know, that you got to move ahead with the Rockefeller Project, I said, 'Is any other town being asked to do development in exchange for help with the flooding?'"
Earlier on Monday, during a Sandy volunteer event, where she declined to take questions, Guadagno flatly denied Zimmer's accusations. She said, "Any suggestion -- any suggestion -- that Sandy funds were tied to the approval of any project in New Jersey is completely false."
Christie aides said the funds requested by Hoboken were actually for future flood control projects, not Sandy rebuilding efforts, and that the city wanted over $100 million -- more than a third of the money available for the entire state.
The cascading accusations come at key time for Christie, as he starts his second term as governor and mulls a run for the White House.
Alexander Burns, senior correspondent at Politico, said, "He was going to have essentially one year between winning re-election and the time he needed to start running for president. And he needed to use that year to sort of run-up the legislative scoreboard in New Jersey. I think we can safely say that those plans are all on hold."
Christie and Guadagno will be formally sworn in at a ceremony at the war
memorial in Trenton, Elaine Quijano said on "CBS This Morning." Christie was to celebrate his inauguration Tuesday night at a party on Ellis Island, but the celebrations were canceled due to inclement weather.