NEW YORK — With many streets still unplowed, New Yorkers are griping that their billionaire mayor is out of touch and has failed at the basic task of keeping the city running, while New Jersey’s governor is taking heat for vacationing at Disney World during the crisis.
The fallout against two politicians who style themselves as take-charge guys is building in the aftermath of the Christmas-weekend blizzard that clobbered the Northeast, with at least one New Jersey newspaper noting Gov. Chris Chris tie’s absence in a column headlined: “Is Sunday’s storm Christie’s Katrina?”
Across New York, complaints have mounted about unplowed streets, stuck ambulances and outer-borough neighborhoods neglected by the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“It’s foolishness”
“When he says New York, he means Manhattan,” said Hayden Hunt of Brooklyn, a borough of 2.6 million people where many streets were not cleared for days. “He’s the man in charge. . . . It’s foolishness.”
Bloomberg, a third-term Republican-turned-independent who is occasionally mentioned as a long-shot presidential candidate, spent the first day after the storm on the defensive, testily dismissing complaints and insisting the cleanup of the nearly 2-foot snowfall was going fine. But he later adopted a more conciliatory tone.
On Wednesday, as stories began to surface about people who may have suffered serious medical problems while waiting for ambulances, the mayor was his most apologetic, without actually apologizing.
“We did not do as good a job as we wanted to do or as the city has a right to expect, and there’s no question — we are an administration that has been built on accountability,” he said.
The city sanitation commissioner promised that every last street would be plowed by this morning.
Christie, meanwhile, has not been heard from publicly since he left New Jersey on vacation with his wife and four children. His spokesman, Michael Drew niak, said the governor — who has also been mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate — has been briefed while in Florida and that emergency services have functioned well across the state.
Christie’s absence at the same time his lieutenant governor was also out of state left New Jersey’s Senate president to deal with the storm, which stranded thousands of travelers and left highways strewn with stuck and abandoned cars.
“They’re both entitled to a vacation, but not at the same time,” said Sen. Dick Codey, a Democrat who was acting governor for 15 months after Jim McGreevey resigned in 2004.
Angry air travelers
Meanwhile, New York’s transportation system was operating closer and closer to normal. Most subway service knocked out by snowdrifts on elevated tracks resumed. The metropolitan area’s three major airports had their busiest day since the blizzard, and more stranded passengers managed to fly home.
But some lashed out. About 100 people surged the Qatar Airways ticket counter at Kennedy Airport after airline representatives tried to persuade them to take a bus to Washington, after days of waiting for flights to take them back to Southeast Asia.
In the aftermath of the storm, many have noted the contrast with Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, who has been on the streets with a shovel, clearing sidewalks and freeing stuck ambulances.
The criticism may not pose much danger to Bloomberg’s future because he insists he won’t run for president in 2012 or any other public office. But he still has three years left as mayor, and it could dent his reputation as a manager.
As for Christie, it remains to be seen how his being absent during a crisis could affect his political career.
