As Bridgegate book closes, two characters prepare to move on

The incendiary careers of an unlikely pair of politically precocious, baseball-besotted former Livingston High School friends in their mid-50s sputtered out recently — one in a federal courtroom in Newark, the other on the sands of Island Beach State Park.

David Wildstein, 55, an acerbic former blogger identified in headlines as the Bridgegate scandal's "mastermind," avoided incarceration but got a $20,000-plus fine, three years of probation, and 500 hours of community service for his shameful role in a putrid little plot to deploy traffic jams as instruments of partisan revenge.

Also described as Gov. Christie's go-to guy at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Wildstein copped a plea in 2015, became the star witness in the 2016 trial that resulted in the convictions of two of his associates, and was sentenced July 12.

Wildstein's onetime schoolmate and patron, Christie, 54, denied all and was never directly implicated, much less charged, in connection with the bizarre bit of skulduggery, which transformed the George Washington Bridge into a national symbol of the belligerent depths of Garden State politics.

But Bridgegate did begin the end of a heady era when an asthma attack, such as the one requiring Christie to be hospitalized briefly in 2011, could set off a national media frenzy about the impact of the Republican governor's health on his bright political future.

That was then. Christie's campaign for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination — he launched it at Livingston High — floundered. His maneuvering for a choice post in President Trump's White House (be careful what you wish for?) has so far proven similarly ineffective, and the former Republican supernova has gone from among the most popular to among the least popular governors of New Jersey ever, as measured by public opinion polls.

Then, along came Beachgate.

On July 1, the Christie family relaxed in the sun on a section of the Jersey Shore that was off-limits to the rest of us due to a state budget stalemate the governor and his Democratic adversaries had precipitated.

Photographs taken from a small plane showed the rotund governor in a beach chair and were seen by many as an image of Christie giving the people of New Jersey a defiant middle finger.

A Christie-in-his-chair meme and other merciless mockeries, some as damaging (and effective) as the man's own command of social and other media had been, continue to metastasize online.

The governor used his formidable communications skills to retroactively dis Wildstein after Bridgegate broke wide open in January 2014. He described the man his administration appointed to a $150,000 patronage job at the Port Authority as a truth-challenged oddball, even criticizing Wildstein's behavior in high school, where one teacher had accused the bespectacled, unathletic, and portly teenager of being "deceptive."

"We didn't travel in the same circles," Christie famously said. "I was the class president and athlete. I don't know what David was doing at that time."

Actually, Wildstein was the student statistician for the Livingston High baseball program, for which Christie was a captain and a star catcher.

But the numbers geek also apparently was acquiring future combat chops: On the Friday before the 2014 Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford — an opportunity for Christie to bathe in the comfort of a flattering spotlight — Wildstein had his attorney release a headline-snatching letter.

Without citing specifics, the missive asserted that the governor (his denials of any participation in or awareness of the scheme notwithstanding) had contemporaneous knowledge of the GWB lane closures.

Christie got booed the next day at a Time Square event to promote the big game, and the narrative that had been so professionally stage-managed during dozens of statewide "town halls," starring the governor as a fearless truth-teller, continued to unravel.

Three years later, in his statement at sentencing, Wildstein claimed that he and his two associates (whom his testimony helped convict) had "put our faith in a man who neither earned nor deserved it."

(Christie's spokesman, Brian Murray, followed up with a statement describing Wildstein as "a liar who admitted … that he fabricated evidence of a relationship with the Governor that never existed," and as the person who concocted the scheme "all by himself and then coerced others" to participate.)

Described as "dangerous" and akin to "cancer" by defense witnesses in the trial of his associates, Wildstein in the end drew praise from federal prosecutors for his candor, and for a level of cooperation so diligent and exhaustive it sounded almost … heroic.

But humility was perhaps the most memorable quality Wildstein showed at his sentencing.

"There should be no doubt that I deeply regret my actions at the George Washington Bridge," he said.

"It was a callous decision. It was stupid. It was wrong. I violated the law and I am profoundly sorry."

With Christie facing five long months of what is likely to be a fruitless lame duck-dom during what, if not for Bridgegate, might have been his first year in the White House, the mean memes and subterranean approval ratings seem likely to continue.

Wildstein, meanwhile, seems to have transformed himself; he's dropped nearly 100 pounds, lives in Florida, enjoys kayaking, and has begun writing for the stage.

If this were a scenario for a movie, one might be tempted to call it Revenge of the Nerd.