New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who many consider to be the leading candidate for the 2016 Presidential election, has been under fire recently, for what democrats are calling “bridge-gate.” The scandal, involving the closing of two lanes on the George Washington Bridge has caused uproar from some, and forced Christie to fire two of his top aides. But I am here to say that “Bridge-Gate” isn’t a big deal.

Before I go into the facts, I just want to ask why do we keep naming different scandals with the ending –gate? Water-gate, Obama-gate, among others, now including Bridge-gate are all names of different political scandals. I can think of plenty of names for this other than that, I mean America, it’s 2014, can’t we be a little more creative than that? How about “Christie’s Closures”, or “The Fort Lee Flunder.’ The media went to the fast lane and picked a simple name “bridge-gate” which is less than climactic.

Now that I got that off my chest, lets dive into the facts. According to reports, in September 2013, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey closed two out of three access lanes that come out of Fort Lee, NJ to the George Washington Bridge, which is reportedly the most heavily trafficked bridge in the world. The lane closures that lasted four days caused massive traffic jams. Cars were backed up for hours in what some said were the worst traffic jam since September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Centers were attacked.

Hundreds of people commute from Fort Lee into New York everyday across the George Washington Bridge. There are usually three toll lanes set aside for the Fort Lee access bridge that connects as an on-ramp of sorts to the bridge. During these four days however, just one lane was set aside for Fort lee. This caused the three lane on-ramp full of cars to be funneling into a one lane toll.

The reason why however was cloudy, which is what caused New Jersey Democrats to look deeper into the matter. On November 5, 2013, Christie was reelected  as governor, and soon after, Democrats accused him of closing the lanes on the bridge because of political measures. Specifically using the closures as reprisal against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing him.

Christie’s staff, as well as his staff in the Port Authority were aware and caused the traffic jam, but it is unknown if Christie himself is involved. There is no evidence pointing toward Christie’s knowledge about the bridge closing, or that he has anything to do with it at all, but his top staff advisors that involved, Bridget Anne Kelly, his former deputy chief of staff who Christie fired is apparently the one who started the idea. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” she said in an email to a Port Authority Official.

The only problem that Christie has is that he dismissed the scandal and said that it wasn’t a big deal. He also said that the lane closures weren’t political and he didn’t think his staff was involved. All these have come out as lies. Whether Christie knew about the scandal or not, this is the only thing that would get Christie in to any amounts of trouble. No criminal charges will be filed on the matter reported by the Washington Post.

That being said, Chris Christie will see no long term affects from the little jam in his political staff, this will soon blow over, as all things do. “Bridge-gate” is another one of those “mountains out of mole hills” that the media makes to try to make some money. The lane closures did frustrate the commuters from Fort Lee, but nothing technically “illegal” happened. This is why Christie has nothing to worry about, besides possibly a few less votes from Fort Lee, if he decides to run for President in 2016.