ELIZABETH – Gov. Chris Christie today emphasized bipartisanship, but Mayor Chris Bollwage, the Democratic leader of the state’s fourth largest city, said he never received an invite to the governor’s Trinitas Hospital walk-around.
“I was not invited,” the mayor told PolitickerNJ.com. “I was an afterthought.”
The mayor said the governor’s office never reached out to him.
He got a reach-out this morning from the president of Trinitas Hospital, to which Bollwage said, “no,” he wouldn’t be in attendance.
If not for intel that trickled to him from within his own party and the hospital’s subsequent text message, “I didn’t know anything about it,” Bollwage said.
The Christie trill of friendly notes from the lectern for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reached the ears of Bollwage with more than an overtone of irony.
“I don’t think he likes to have anyone close to him who disagrees with him,” said Bollwage, who has regularly – in tweets and interviews – criticized the governor, most vocally on Christie’s cuts to Bollwage pet program: the urban enterprise zone (UEZ), and stands on one side of a local party battle.
On the other side stands arrayed the forces of the Elizabeth Board of Education – who backed Christie over incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine in the 2009 gubernatorial election.