TRENTON — Fifteen months ago, when she was still a relatively unknown staff member in Gov. Chris Christie's office, Bridget Anne Kelly sent out this tweet:

“(Irish singer) Enya is the only thing that made the 2 hours of traffic tolerable today.”

Despite Kelly’s aversion to traffic, she apparently had no problem causing others to sit in it.

It was her more recent reference to traffic that has put Kelly at the center of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing controversy that has reverberated across the nation.

In what some are calling a “smoking gun” that foreshadowed apparent political payback to the Fort Lee mayor for not supporting Christie, Kelly sent this now infamous eight-word email to Port Authority executive David Wildstein on Aug. 13:

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

What followed was the closing of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge from Sept. 9-13.

Suddenly, a Christie staffer who was only a household name in her own household — a diminutive blonde-haired mother of four from Ramsey — was the next subpoena target of Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) as his Transportation, Public Works and Independent Authorities Committee attempts to find answers to the bridge controversy.

Described by someone who worked directly with her as “competent,” “pleasant” and “a good mother,” Kelly, 41, a $140,000-a-year deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs, suddenly found herself on the bad side of a governor known for his fiery temper.

Bridget Anne Kelly

“I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge,” Christie said in a statement today without naming Kelly.

According to the governor’s website, Kelly became a senior staffer in April and previously was director of intergovernmental and legislative affairs, where she oversaw the “day-to-day operations of the Christie Administration’s outreach efforts to elected officials at all levels of government, faith-based and community organizations and trade associations.

"Bridget joined the Christie Administration in 2010 as Director of Legislative Relations where she managed the Administration's relationship with the 120-member Legislature and their legislative staff," according to the website.



Kelly was a legislative aide to Assemblyman David C. Russo, a Republican from Bergen County, where Fort Lee is located, and became his chief of staff in 2002.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-9th Dist.), whose district also includes Fort Lee, said he knows Kelly from her days as an aide to Russo and doubted she was the architect of lane closures that caused traffic headaches but also hampered public safety efforts, according to local officials.

“I don’t know who the person is that gave the ultimate order,” Pascrell said,. “ ... When you see the emails, she didn’t just wake up one morning and decide, ‘Let’s screw up the traffic in Fort Lee.’”

Kelly came to Trenton in 2010 after Christie beat then-incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine. She had coordinated Christie’s strong showing in Bergen County for the governor’s campaign. Attempts to reach Kelly today were unsuccessful.

Kelly, whose maiden name is Daul, graduated from Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md., with a bachelor of arts degree in political science.

On a Mount St. Mary’s Class of 1994 reunion blog five years ago, she noted that she had two daughters and two sons born between 1996 and 2006 and was living “only across town from where I grew up, and three of the kids are at the grammar school that I attended.”

Her Twitter page was largely benign, with retweets of political figures and pictures of her children. Her last tweet that wasn’t a retweet was a year ago, when she wished her son a happy 13th birthday.

The page went dark later today.

Kelly’s August email set off a string of emails and events that stunned even hard-gristled New Jersey political veterans.

“Today actually shocked me — and I thought I was beyond that,” said state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen).

“This is pretty shocking,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, who described the email as “a smoking gun.”

Harrison said she was stunned that otherwise smart people put what they did into emails that could be retrieved, and said the episode cuts against the image Christie had cultivated among New Jerseyans as different brand of politician.

“This comes across as kind of petty seventh grade politics: ‘You didn’t support me for class president, so I’m gonna get you,’” she noted.

And if you really want to rile up New Jerseyans, have the residents of the most-congested state wait in more traffic.

Said Harrison: “Now, when you sit in traffic on the George Washington Bridge, you wonder, ‘Who pissed off the governor today?’”

The Record contributed to this report.

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