New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie unleashed his inner pit bull Tuesday on Twitter after the Legislature shelved his bill to yank millions of dollars in ads from state newspapers.
The measure was dubbed Christie's "revenge" against newspapers that aggressively covered Bridgegate — the investigation that led to the convictions of two allies who conspired to cause a traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge in 2013 to punish a Democratic mayor who didn't endorse the governor for re-election.
The bill would have repealed the state law requiring legal notices to be printed in newspapers, clearing the way for the lucrative ads to move online.
Christie has denied knowing about the bridge scheme in advance and insisted that the bill had nothing to do with Bridgegate, saying it was first introduced in 2010.
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But lawmakers weren't buying it — the measure was put on hold, perhaps indefinitely, on Monday — and neither were hundreds of residents who flooded the state Capitol with angry calls, according to several state news outlets.
Legislative Republicans said the bill could be revived in a later session, but the delay infuriated the famously combustible Christie, who launched a Twitter offensive Tuesday against Democrats who opposed it and big newspaper companies.
The highlights, with explanatory annotations:
(Christie contends that state newspapers make $80 million a year publishing legal notices — a figure disputed by the New Jersey Association of Counties and the state Office of Legislative Services.)
(Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper publisher, announced plans to lay off 426 people at The Record in Bergen and about 50 community papers in the northern part of the state.)
(That one's pretty self-explanatory. "OPRA" is the state Open Public Records Act.)
