Regina M. Egea served as the chief of staff to the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. [1] [2] She was appointed in December 2013 [3] and resigned in April 2016. [4] She is the president of Garden State Initiative, a public policy think tank based in Morristown, New Jersey, which was founded in 2017. [5]
Egea is a native of Monmouth County and attended St. Rose High School. [6] She graduated from Montclair State University with a bachelor's degree in business and managerial economics [7] and holds a master's in Business Administration in Marketing from Fordham University and from the International Executive Program at the International Institute for Management Development. [2] Egea was a Senior VP of AT&T. [8]
From 2003 to 2008, Egea sat on the Harding Township, New Jersey Board of Education. While on the Board, she successfully conducted the search for a School Superintendent in 2007. [9] In 2008 she was elected to the position of Committee Member in Harding Township (the only female member) and was Deputy Mayor from 2010 to 2011. [10] [11]
She supported the Jersey Battered Women's Shelter in 2013 and is a current member of the Board of Trustees of the Harding Kemmerer Library. [12] [13] She sat on the Harding Township Board of Education from 2004 to 2008. [14] [15]
In 2009, Egea became policy adviser to the 2009 Christie campaign for governor. She became Chief of Staff to the State Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff. In 2012, Egea became a member of Board of Trustees of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority. Egea became Director of the Authorities Unit of the Governor's Office. In December 2013, Christie chose her as chief of staff to replace Kevin O'Dowd, who he nominated to be the new state Attorney-General. [2] [16]
Egea became the subject of increasing media scrutiny in January 2014. [17] [18] [19] [20] and is one of several New Jersey state employees within the governor's administration who was subpoenaed by the New Jersey Legislature panel investigating the Fort Lee lane closure scandal. [21] [22] Egea, who had learned of the lane closures on September 13, 2013, after their reversal [20] and later assisted Bill Baroni (former Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) to prepare for his testimony for the same committee, was not accused of wrongdoing. She testified on July 17, 2014. [23] Her testimony indicated that she had contact with the governor about the matter and had deleted numerous telephone text messages regarding it, but could not recall when she had done so. [24] [25] Phone records subpoenaed from AT&T show that there were 12 additional texts sent between Egea and Christie. An interim report by the state legislature said that the governor's office could not provide the content of any of the nine sent by Egea and three by the governor. [26] The content of the texts remains controversial in trials related to the lane closures. [27] [28] In a June 2016 ruling, a federal judge said that the subpoena requests for Egea's phone records were too broad; the hearing did not clarify its whereabouts. [29]
Egea is founder and president [30] of the Garden State Initiative, a think tank addressing economic and fiscal matters in the state of New Jersey.
William E. Baroni Jr. is an American Republican Party politician and law professor. He represented the 14th legislative district in the New Jersey Senate and General Assembly. In 2010, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie named Baroni to serve as the Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Christopher James Christie is an American politician and former federal prosecutor who served as the 55th governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018. A member of the Republican Party, he was the United States Attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008 and a Morris County commissioner from 1995 to 1997. He was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and 2024.
William Stepien is an American political consultant who served as the campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign beginning in July of that year. A member of the Republican Party, he was the White House Director of Political Affairs in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018.
William "Pat" Schuber is an American Republican Party politician who served as Mayor of Bogota, represented the 38th legislative district in the New Jersey General Assembly and served 12 years as the Bergen County Executive
David Samson is an American lawyer who served as New Jersey Attorney General under Democratic Governor Jim McGreevey from 2002 to 2003. He served as the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) from 2011 until his resignation on March 28, 2014 in the aftermath of the Fort Lee lane closure scandal. Samson is a partner and founding member of the law firm Wolff & Samson from which he resigned in April 2015, and had been an ally of Governor Chris Christie.
Dawn Zimmer is an American politician who served as the 38th mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey. As president of the Hoboken City Council, she became acting mayor after incumbent Peter Cammarano's resignation on July 31, 2009 following his arrest on corruption charges. Zimmer is the first female mayor of Hoboken. She was first elected mayor in a special election for the balance of Cammarano's term on November 6, 2009 and was re-elected mayor for another four-year term in November 2013. In 2012, 2013 and 2014, she was ranked #3, #4 and #5, respectively, on The Hudson Reporter's list of the 50 most influential people in Hudson County.
The George Washington Bridge Plaza, also known as GWB Plaza or Bridge Plaza, is the convergence of roads and highways around the George Washington Bridge toll plaza in Fort Lee, New Jersey, United States. The plaza is located north of and parallel to Fort Lee's Main Street. The surrounding busy area is characterized by a mix of commercial and residential uses and an architectural variety that includes parking lots, strip malls, houses, gas stations, mid-rise office buildings and high-rise condominiums. Just to the east is Fort Lee Historic Park, Palisades Interstate Park and the bridge's western tower.
Chris Christie took office as the 55th Governor of New Jersey on January 19, 2010, began his second term on January 21, 2014, and left office on January 16, 2018.
The Fort Lee lane closure scandal, better known as Bridgegate, was a political scandal in the U.S. state of New Jersey in 2013 and 2014. It involved a staff member and political appointees of then-governor Chris Christie colluding to create traffic jams in Fort Lee, New Jersey by closing lanes at the main toll plaza for the upper level of the George Washington Bridge.
David Wildstein is an American businessman, former Republican Party politician, and the founder and editor-in-chief of the New Jersey political news website New Jersey Globe. A former mayor of Livingston, New Jersey, he served as a senior official in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey during the administration of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie until 2013, when Wildstein resigned in the midst of a scandal involving traffic lanes closures. On May 1, 2015, he pleaded guilty to two federal felony counts of conspiracy as part of a plea agreement, but his conviction was later overturned.
Bridget Anne Kelly is the former deputy chief of staff to the Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, known for her participation in the Bridgegate scandal.
Charlie McKenna is the former Executive Director of the New Jersey Schools Development Authority and former Chief Counsel to the Governor of New Jersey.
Kevin O'Dowd is a New Jersey public servant and political figure who served as Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie. He was considered, but not formally nominated, for the position of Attorney General of the State of New Jersey.
Michael Drewniak was press secretary to the Governor of New Jersey. He was appointed by Governor Christie to New Jersey Transit and started on April 1, 2015, at a newly created position. He has extensive management and strategy experience. In May 2016 he was named acting director of the agency.
Philip Kwon is deputy counsel for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a previous nominee for the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Marc-Philip Ferzan is an attorney, currently serving as Senior Managing Director at Ankura Consulting Group. He was formerly the director of the Governor's Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, from November 2012 until resigning in July 2014. The position was created by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 to coordinate relief and recovery efforts in face of the effects of the storm on the state. After resigning, he became lecturer at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.
Christopher S. Porrino is an American trial lawyer who served as the Attorney General of New Jersey from 2016 to 2018. Porrino is currently a partner of Lowenstein Sandler, and chair of the firm's Litigation Department.
William J. Brennan, known as Bill Brennan, is a former firefighter, lawyer, gadfly and activist. He was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor of New Jersey in the 2017 election.
Kelly v. United States, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the 2013 Fort Lee lane closure scandal, also known as "Bridgegate". The case centered on whether Bridget Anne Kelly, the chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who was running for reelection at the time, and Bill Baroni, the Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, improperly used lane closures on the George Washington Bridge to create traffic jams as a means of retaliation against Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, when he refused to support Christie's reelection campaign. While lower courts had convicted Kelly and Baroni on federal fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions in its May 2020 ruling, stating that such charges could not apply as "the scheme here did not aim to obtain money or property", and remanded their cases back to the lower courts.