Mike Drewniak, a member of Christie's inner circle, said he hates me and wants to whack me with a lead pipe. Want a peak at the administration's culture. Look no farther. Watch video
Gov. Chris Christie with his former press secretary Michael Drewniak following a one-on-one interview with The Star-Ledger in his inner office at the Statehouse on Jan. 13, 2013. (Star-Ledger file photo) It was still dark when I arrived at the federal courthouse in Newark Monday morning, but I wanted to be sure to get a good seat for the start of the Bridgegate trial. This was going to be delicious.
The judge was a stickler about bringing in popcorn, it turned out. But my spirits picked up when prosecutors charged for the first time that our black-hearted governor has indeed been lying to us all this time, that he knew about this insane stunt from the start.
And then, a surprise: My name came up. And not in a gentle loving way.
One of the defense attorneys in the case read aloud from an e-mail about me sent by Mike Drewniak, the governor's press secretary.
"Hate that f...er," Drewniak wrote to David Wildstein, the chief Bridgegate conspirator. "I want to beat him with a lead pipe...That would put everyone on notice."
Okay then. You may have heard about the sordid culture of the Christie administration. Well, there it is.
"I don't even recall writing it," Drewniak said when I called him later. "You and I had our fights, but they weren't always...I mean, sometimes they were actually constructive. We swore a lot, but so what?"
Let me break that down.
We did curse at each other a lot, and we cursed together about other people, too. I have no objection to that. I use the f-word a lot when I drive, especially in Boston, and when I try to fix my printer.
If the f-word rattles you, you can't cover Jersey politics. You have to go to Minnesota.
The lead pipe bit veered into stranger territory. I recalled the time that Gov. Chris Christie, during an argument over pension benefits, suggested that reporters should use a baseball bat to clobber Sen. Loretta Weinberg, who was 76.
"He needs a little domestic violence training," Weinberg said at the time.
Weinberg's granddaughter, then 11, fired off a letter to the governor that was a model of brevity: "Dear Chris Christie: I want you to stop bullying everybody."
The senator was at the trial, in the row in front of me, and when we talked later about Drewniak she reacted just as you'd expect a grandmother to.
"If you said something like that in a school yard, your parents would be called in, and they'd be told that their child needs therapy," she said.
For Drewniak, that advice comes free of charge. He should probably also work through the text he sent about Wildstein after their friendship soured: "I could claw his eyes out, pour gasoline in the sockets, and light him up."
But if you want an insight into the Christie culture, it comes at the very end of his e-mail.
Drewniak didn't want to beat me with a lead pipe just for the fun of it. He wanted to send a message to other journalists. "That would put everyone on notice," he wrote.
Now we are well into creepy territory. That's the way this administration behaved. That's the culture, arrogant and bullying.
And that explains the Bridgegate scandal in a nutshell.
They went nuts when the mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, refused to endorse the governor, as if he had an obligation to obey their imperial commands.
Keep in mind that the gridlock they created came after he refused to endorse. This wasn't an attempt to pressure him; it was punishment. And it was standard practice.
That's why defense attorney Michael Critchley read Drewniak's e-mail. He wanted the jury to know about the sick culture of this administration, to spread the blame. And he had about 100 examples like this.
Granted, I was disappointed when I shared this story with my six sisters, and two of them sided with Drewniak. But that's family, right?
I've known Drewniak for many years, since his days as a so-so reporter at the Star-Ledger. And beyond that insult, I can't gin up hard feelings about the guy.
Yes, he was consistently obnoxious to reporters, and almost all of us hated dealing with him. And yes, when he left the press job, the governor fixed him up with a high-paying job at NJ Transit for which he is wholly unqualified.
But he would never, ever hit me with a lead pipe... I'm pretty sure.
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.