From the Sopranos to Boardwalk Empire, Frank Sinatra to Snooki, it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction in New Jersey. Not least in Fort Lee, a dormitory town that lies almost under the shadow of the George Washington bridge, where the ambitions of New Jersey governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie have been dealt a serious blow.

A few miles to the west is a roadside bar proclaimed as the original home of Tony Soprano's Bada Bing! club. The fictional Sopranos boss may have provided a template for the tough-guy style of leadership that Christie embodies, but even Tony would probably never have dreamed up a scheme for petty retribution like the one that Governor Christie's office implemented last September.

In an apparent bid to punish Fort Lee's Democrat mayor, Mark Sokolich, for his refusal to endorse Christie's re-election bid, Christie's aides caused five days of traffic chaos on the George Washington bridge to Manhattan, with thousands of commuters inexplicably delayed.

Emergency services caught up in the chaos reported that the hold-ups had contributed to the death of one patient in need of emergency care.

In damning email correspondence made public last week, Christie's aides and political appointees merely congratulated one another on their handiwork. "Is it wrong that I am smiling?" asked one. Those smiles are now grimaces over a stunt that appears to carry huge political costs for no discernible gain.

At Tony Soprano's Bada-Bing – used as a location in the series though actually named Satin Dolls – bored-looking Russian women in bikinis clustered around heavy-set Italian-American men to the sound of 70s rock. Their minds aren't on politics, pointed out the manager.

"Sure there's a connection," said one customer, Mike. "It's a local Jersey thing. They're big guys who talk a lot about respect. You could say the fictional Tony Soprano paved the way for Governor Christie." But it's not yet clear who Christie aides were looking to punish. In an alternate reading, the snarl-up was not designed to punish the amiable Sokolich but New Jersey senate leader Loretta Weinberg, whose district is in Fort Lee, because she blocked Christie's supreme court nominees.

On Thursday, Christie offered a meandering, 107-minute TV apology denying any knowledge of the scheme and pronouncing himself shocked that three of his aides and appointees at the agency that administers the crossings should have engaged in such a plan.

However, a daily drip of revelations suggests that efforts to cover up the stunt reached deep into the governor's circle. Christie, who has been riding high in the polls as a rare, moderate Republican drawing diverse political support, may have been badly damaged. Whatever his political future, Sokolich told the larger-than-life governor last week: "You've just made New Jersey the brunt of every political joke for the next 25 years."

In this predominantly Korean and Japanese dormitory town, residents last week were split over whether to accept Christie's lengthy mea culpa and view the dismissal of three senior aides as a show of leadership or a display of weakness in which loyal aides are made to accept blame. "He's like a five year-old child – an adult baby," said administrative aide Sasha Lagranskaya. "It's upsetting because it's inconceivable he knew nothing about this."

Documents released on Saturday appear to show that officials loyal to Christie went to elaborate lengths to obscure the true motivation for the snarl-up by trying to make it appear to be part of a traffic flow study. A local teacher, who as a state employee declined to be identified, said that even if Christie had no knowledge of the plan it was typical of his bombastic style of politics. His lengthy denial had served only to accentuate the allegation. "There's an undertone of bad politics and corruption. It's punitive. New Jersey looks bad enough as it is."

Others, mindful that Christie represents the state's best chance for the top political office since Woodrow Wilson a century ago, said they were inclined to accept the governor's explanation. "I genuinely believe he had nothing to do with it," said state employee Steve Goldstein. "He promptly got rid of his overzealous underlings and issued a mea culpa." Even if people think he had anything to do with the affair, Goldstein added, "then they would also see that he's highly detail orientated".

The release of August-dated emails calling for "traffic problems in Fort Lee" came as Christie, who was re-elected last year in the heavily Democratic New Jersey with 60% of the vote, appears to be gaining momentum as the 2016 frontrunner who appeals to crucial Hispanic and black voters.

With timing that political commentators describe as odd, the "Bridgegate" correspondence came to light hours after the release of passages from the memoirs of former defence secretary Robert Gates claiming that Hillary Clinton told President Obama that she only voted against the 2007 Afghan troop surge for political reasons.

In a bad week for the 2016 frontrunners, both appeared to be playing into images they would sooner shed: Clinton as a political animal who will do what she needs to do for power; and Christie as thin-skinned and heavy-handed who has faced prior accusations of vindictive behaviour. But the question of why his administration constructed an elaborate punishment for a seemingly insignificant slight remains unanswered. "I am who I am, but I am not a bully," Christie said in his address. But the Republican party leadership has been notably slow to come to Christie's defence, suggesting that while he may be popular among voters, he's lacking key political support.

Still, Christie represents a rare conservative politician able to cross the political gulf that divides America. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, President Obama came to visit and he counts New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen as a friend. But with the episode now under federal investigation, wider attention is being paid to controversies that have gone largely unnoticed beyond New Jersey.

More than 1,000 state prisoners escaped in Christie's first 29 months in office after New Jersey handed over inmates to privately run halfway houses. His administration spent from a $60m federal fund earmarked for Hurricane Sandy recovery on re-election advertising. He's been accused of spending lavishly on trips and hotels only loosely connect to state business.

Long-time Fort Lee resident and businessman Robert Sisti said Christie had betrayed his own tough-guy values with the exhibition. "If you do something wrong, apologise and that's it. Don't take up two hours of TV time giving a speech about how you didn't know. Stand up. Be a man."

To make matters worse, Sisti says, Christie followed up with a trip to Fort Lee to apologise in person, snarling the town in traffic. "By harping on makes you look guilty. I would have more respect for him if he said, 'Okay. I knew about it. It was a vendetta.' But now he looks like a liar who doesn't even have control of his own people."