Christie returned to New Jersey last week as a blizzard blew through the East Coast but faced a heap of criticism for returning to New Hampshire to campaign on Sunday during the state’s recovery. | AP Photo GoFundMe campaign offers mops for Christie

A New Jersey resident is launching a campaign to help Gov. Chris Christie clean up his mess.

Stockton University graduate Kiyle Osgood has created a GoFundMe campaign to send mops to the governor’s mansion.


“Instead of staying in the state and being a leader during a record breaking Blizzard, our govener [sic] has abandoned us for his presidential campaign,” Osgood writes. “For his own personal gain, he abandoned the people that he promised to govern and lead. This is unacceptable of a leader and an embarrassment to the people of New Jersey. Lets join together by raising funds to Mop up the mess we have in Trenton.”

Christie returned to New Jersey last week as a blizzard blew through the East Coast but faced a heap of criticism for returning to New Hampshire to campaign on Sunday during the state’s recovery.

At a stop in New Hampshire, a woman asked the governor why he was campaigning there instead of helping with the damage from the storm.

He maintained that that the recovery was already done and disputed her claim that there was flooding “all over the state.” “I don’t know what you expect me to do. Do you want me to go down there with a mop?” Christie said. “The fact is that we had all the roads cleared, we had New Jersey transit back up and for the people who did sustain some flooding, we had folks on the ground to evacuate them if they needed to be evacuated. No one needed to be evacuated.”

At a press conference in Trenton on Tuesday, Christie reiterated that were was some flooding but dismissed criticism that the blizzard was anything like Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged through the state in 2012. “I heard that characterization on television a number of times: this was worse than Sandy,” he said. “I mean, this was not even a fraction of Sandy. And so no, you know what I’ve said to the folks down there all along is we did our jobs and we’re going to continue to do our jobs.”

The governor later clarified on Wednesday that his mop remark “was a joke” and apologized. “But it was a joke and I wish that most people would look at it that way,” he told Boston Herald Radio.

The crowdfunding campaign has raised $360 as of Wednesday afternoon — about a third of its $1,000 goal. The GoFundMe page has been shared more than 2,000 times, and the money raised will go toward sending “as many mops as possible” to Christie.

One person donated $5 to the campaign. “$5 for 5 mops from the dollar store,” she wrote. “They would help out about as much as Christy! [sic]”

Not all donations will go toward mops, though. “If you would like to have the $ go towards some other major need as a result of this storm, you can say so in your donation comments,” Osgood noted.