Chris Christie teeters on edge of his New Jersey bridge of sighs

In his keynote address to the 2012 Republican national convention, Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, explained his philosophy of life. He learnt it from his mother, the Sicilian "enforcer", as he put it, of his made-in-America Irish-Italian family.

"The greatest lesson mom ever taught me . . . was this one: she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected," Mr Christie told his fellow Republicans in Tampa, Florida. "She said to always pick being respected, that love without respect was always fleeting, but that respect could grow into real, lasting love."

In case anyone did not know it, Mr Christie put the world on notice that night that he was a tough guy. In a world of focus group-tested politicians with blow-dried hair and taut abs, he stood there as an authentic, unapologetic Jersey boy - with the girth and gumption to rival his fictional Garden State contemporary Tony Soprano.

Mr Christie's rise seemed to signal that the New Jersey of The Sopranos, Jersey Shore, Jersey Boys and the enduring Bruce Springsteen had achieved cultural cachet at the national level.

Like Hoboken's Frank Sinatra, he did it his way - and he got results. He kicked off Mitt Romney's 2012 convention, concluded the campaign season by inspecting superstorm Sandy damage on the Jersey shore with Barack Obama, and wound up so popular in the process that he was re-elected last year in heavily Democratic New Jersey with 60 per cent of the vote.

Mr Christie's ability to win over Hispanic and black voters who usually lean to the left made him a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination - and the great hope of more moderate factions of the party in the business community.

But the 51-year-old governor who chose respect over love - and called on his party to do the same in Tampa - is facing shortfalls of both as he wrestles with a scandal that is raising questions about the moral fibre of his administration.

Documents released this week showed what can happen to people in New Jersey who fail to pay sufficient respect to the Christie administration. The emails revealed that the governor's office meted out what amounted to collective punishment last September in a place called Fort Lee.

Fort Lee is a nondescript town on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, which leads to New York and is said to be the world's busiest span for road traffic. But it was a target for Christie loyalists because it is run by a Democratic mayor, Mark Sokolich, who backed a fellow Democrat, Barbara Buono, in last November's election for governor.

Retribution came in the form of an email from Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor's deputy chief of staff, to David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr Christie and an official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the bridge. "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," it said. "Got it," said Mr Wildstein, who ordered the closing of lanes leading from Fort Lee for four days.

The closings were timed to coincide with the first day of school. When asked if he regretted the impact on children, he wrote: "They are the children of Buono voters."

The day after the emails came to light, Mr Christie responded to the resulting uproar during a news conference in the state capital of Trenton that ran for 108 minutes, or six more than Humphrey Bogart needed to navigate all the twists and turns of Casablanca.

Mr Christie said he was firing Ms Kelly and asking Bill Stepien, his former campaign manager and one of the people on the Fort Lee email trail, to step down as a consultant to the Republican Governors Association (chaired by Mr Christie) and to give up his effort to become head of the state Republican party.

Mr Christie maintained he knew nothing of the lane closings before he read about them and accused Ms Kelly of having lied to him about the matter. The governor apologised repeatedly at the news conference and described himself as "embarrassed", "humiliated", "wrong", "stunned", "sad" and "very sad".

Still unclear was who had come up with the idea for the lane closings and how many people had known about them. When he appeared before a state legislative committee on Thursday, Mr Wildstein, who resigned from the port authority in December, spelled his name, confirmed his home town and acknowledged he had no job. But he declined to answer other questions, including about his employment history, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

The US attorney for New Jersey has opened an inquiry into the bridge imbroglio, and Mr Christie's critics in the state are vowing to keep the pressure on the governor. "It strains credibility to say this is a rogue operation in his office," said John Wisniewski, the Democratic chairman of the state assembly committee on transportation, which has been investigating the lane closings and voted on Thursday to hold Mr Wildstein in contempt.

Opinions were also divided over whether Mr Christie's marathon mea culpa suggested he would be capable of restoring his once formidable political brand. During his meeting with reporters, he wound up talking at great length about himself and his feelings, making it hard to avoid the conclusion that the governor with the hankering for respect was taking this Fort Lee thing very personally.

"I am a very sad person today," Mr Christie said at his news conference. "That's the emotion I feel. A person close to me betrayed me. A person who I counted on and trusted for five years betrayed me. A person who I gave a high government office to betrayed me. I probably will get angry at some point. But I gotta tell you the truth. I'm sad. I'm a sad guy standing here."

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