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In September, Adam Schneider, the mayor of the New Jersey shore town of Long Branch, was having trouble with the state utility board. After repeatedly getting the run-around, Schneider decided to instead try his luck with the office of Gov. Chris Christie.

“I’m not talking to any more underlings, and I’m not being delegated to,” Schneider said he told Christie’s aides. In the end, he said, it worked. “I got what I needed.”

Schneider’s call came four months after he crossed party lines to endorse the 2013 reelection of Christie (R), whose performance he admired after Hurricane Sandy. Schneider said that the governor never promised him anything but that he believes he has received “enhanced” access to state officials since the endorsement.

Schneider’s experience is typical of many Democratic mayors, who made clear that they thought endorsing Christie’s reelection bid likely directly benefited their towns in the pursuit of Sandy recovery aid and other state support.

But some critics now say Christie’s success in wooing cross-party support last year masked a sense of fear felt by local officials under pressure from constituents to deliver funds for towns still damaged more than a year after the storm.

State Sen. Barbara Buono, who was trying to build support for her election challenge to Christie, said some Democratic elected leaders privately confided that they did not want to draw the governor’s ire at the time Sandy aid was flowing out of Trenton.

Mayor Michael Blunt of Chesilhurst, a 1,600-person, largely African American town in Camden County, said endorsing Christie was a “no-brainer” after the governor kept a promise to hold a town hall in his community.

“I was a staunch, hard-core Democrat,” said Blunt, a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. “I had to sit down and think about, why am I supporting this party? What is my town getting?”

When Christie’s campaign released its first television ad of the general election, it featured a clip of the Chesilhurst mayor hugging the governor.

In heavily Democratic Essex County, hit hard by flooding from Sandy, Belleville Mayor Ray Kimble told the Newark Star-Ledger in May that he would support the governor’s reelection because he “is going to help the town of Belleville with certain projects we need.”

A few weeks later, Christie visited Belleville for the ceremonial groundbreaking of an $18 million, 137-unit affordable-housing complex for senior citizens, to be constructed largely with state money.

At times, Schneider said, he has found himself cringing at some of the governor’s remarks, particularly on climate change. “He’s reminding me why I’m not going to vote for him as president,” the mayor said.

What has emerged among Democrats in New Jersey is a feeling that those who played ball with the governor enjoy favored status, while others have been shut out or had access curtailed. That is not an entirely unusual dynamic in politics, but it is one that conflicts with Christie’s carefully groomed image as a leader driven only by what is right, not petty politics. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrat-mayors-who-backed-chri
stie-struggled-to-weigh-politics-vs-local-needs/2014/01/18/f3586bf8-7e2d-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html

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