Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Dispatches: It was all about Jersey

Dispatches is up — on the election. The column already has generated a comment, disagreement from the right (from someone calling himself MotherRedDog).

And after all of that spin………Obama did campaign for him often and yes the
money was big, and 25 percent of the voters said it WAS a referendum on
Obama…..spinning until you puke won’t change these facts.

I am willing to admit that this is not a good thing for the Obama administration, but to think that 25 percent of voters — not sure where the number comes from, but it’s what he offers — means much is absurd. That is fewer than voted for McCain last time.

In fact, fewer people voted for Chris Christie on Tuesday than voted for John McCain last year. The issue was turnout — a complete lack of faith in the incumbent, mostly deserved, suppressing turnout in urban areas at a time when suburban Democrats bailed on the party.

The evidence just doesn’t support the anti-Obama theory, at least not in New Jersey, where the president continues to poll well.

Define mandate

I’m not a big Mulshine fan, but this column pretty much covers it — at least as far as Christie is concerned.

Voters held Corzine accountable; they will hold Christie accountable, too

The New Jersey electorate held Jon Corzine to his word and held him accountable for the mess the state is in, even if he was not responsible for a good portion of the mess.

That said, it will be interesting to see how Chris Christie, the new governor elect, can pull off his agenda without budget gimmicks and what might happen when it becomes obvious that we cannot lower both state and local taxes, cannot promise to cut waste and shrink government without hurting someone, without angering some constituency that he will need down the road.

Who gets hurt is the question that awaits. Who gets hurt? Because someone will get hurt. It is the only way to bridge an $8 billion gap.

Christie wins, but appears to lack coattails

AP has called it for Chris Christie and the TV news is trumpeting it, but it appears that he has few coattails. Democrats look like they are going to keep their seats in the Assembly, Republicans theirs and, of the handful of local results I’ve seen, only South Brunswick flipped, so we’ll see.

And yet we’re starting to hear the nonsense about how this shows a groundswell for the GOP, something I guess was inevitable.

Painting the Christie win as startling is startling in and of itself, given that Christie was ahead by 20 or so points early, saw the poll-lead evaporate and hung on. By rights, it shouldn’t have been as close as it was.

I suspect the New Jersey vote has little to say what will happen nationally. Consider these numbers from the exit polling:

Obama made himself a major factor in the race by campaigning for Corzine twice in the final weeks of the race — including at two rallies on Sunday. The majority of voters said that their feelings about Obama were not a factor in their vote in the race for governor.

But voters’ feelings about Obama were in sync with the what they did in the voting booths Tuesday. Christie voters strongly disapprove of Obama’s performance; Corzine voters overwhelmingly approve of the president.

Two-thirds of Daggett voters said they approved of the president — perhaps a hint that Daggett’s presence on the ballot hurt Corzine more than Christie.

The New Jersey Republican revolt of the early 1990s didn’t prevent Bill Clinton from winning in New Jersey. And I suspect that the anti-Corzine revolt — which is what this was, an anti-property tax, anti-Corzine vote — will have little impact on the congressional races, as little as they appear to have had on the Legislature.

Results are in our hands, apparently

Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute offers an interesting overview, county by county, of how today’s results may play out — and it appears that Central Jersey is in the driver’s seat.

Another area worth watching is the Route 1 corridor counties (Mercer, Middlesex, Union), especially Middlesex. Corzine won Middlesex by 32,000 votes in 2005. Florio only won it by 1,300 votes in 1993. Voters in this region tend to be independent minded but vote Democratic in most elections. Polling indicates that Corzine is performing nowhere near as well in this region as he did four years ago. [In the past month, both Joe Biden and Bill Clinton have held rallies in Middlesex County.] While all regions of the state have their part to play in this race, this is the one I’m keeping my eye on to tell which way the wind is blowing.

These are Democratic Counties. But, as Murray points out, the gubernatorial race has a different dynamic, due I think to the more diverse mix here — racially, to be sure, but it also is a hodge-podge of rural, urban and suburban towns and poor, working class and rich communities.

If the turnout is large and the Democrats can convince the people not to jump ship as they move up the ballot, Chris Christie may have problems closing the deal.

On a side note, the national coverage of this race seems to have forgotten that it was just a few months ago that Christie was up by more than 20 in some polls and that Corzine was dead in the water. Shouldn’t that factor into the national media’s reading of the results?