Corzine – Hank Kalet

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.

It’s still a numbers game

It’s about numbers, and the most recent number to hit the New Jersey is the registration figure released by Secretary of State Nina Wells (as reported in The Star-Ledger):

New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells said the state has 5.22 million registered voters, down from 5.35 million in 2008 when the presidential race brought a registration surge.

There are still more Democrats than Republicans — 1.77 million to 1.06 million. But Republicans have closed the gap a bit, adding some 5,000 voters since last year. Meanwhile, the number of Democrats dropped by a similar amount.

Nearly half of the voters — 2.51 million — are registered as “unaffiliated.”

It’s not much of a change, especially when you consider last year’s record registration figures. And it seems pretty clear that quite a few of those still registered will be staying home next week. The question is: Which candidate benefits?

It’s about Corzine and Christie, not Obama

I’m getting tired of hearing that a Jon Corzine loss in the New Jersey governor’s race would be an indication of a loss of faith in Barack Obama.

You hear it on cable, in the blogs (especially the right-wing ones) and it pops up from time to time in print: The gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia are bellwethers and can be used effectively as standins for a rerun of the 2008 presidential race or as a preview of the 2010 congressional mid-terms.

In a state where no Republican has won a statewide race in more than a decade, Mr. Christie could be a “bellwether” for a GOP revival in 2010, according to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who stumped with the candidate in the state last month.

Mr. Christie “plays across the state unlike any Republican” in the past several election cycles, Mr. Steele told a gathering of Republican faithful in Pitman, N.J.

“You must be the next governor from this state,” Mr. Steele said. “It is a bellwether in so many ways for the future of our party and the future of our nation.”

The reality is far more complex, at least here in New Jersey, and has little to do with the president’s popularity and everything to do with Jon Corzine’s — or his lack thereof.

Consider the poll numbers and the trends:

Notice anything? Chris Christie has maintained a rather consistent lead since at least April. And if you go back farther, you’ll see that the governor has managed to lead in only two polls all year: a Jan. 12-14 Monmouth/Gannett poll that had him up by 2 percentage points and a Jan. 2-7 Fairleigh Dickinson poll that had him up by 7. Once we hit February, it’s been all Christie.

At the same time, Obama continues to have approval ratings in the 50s (aside from a Rasmussen poll that puts him at 49 percent) nationally and much higher in New Jersey.

Corzine, on the other hand, has some pretty horrid approval numbers — in his case, it might be better to call them disapproval numbers: 37 percent positive and 52 percent negative among registered voters 34-58 among likely voters) in a Monmouth University poll released Sunday.

The evidence, it would seem, just doesn’t support the bellwether meme. But the bellwether meme has nothing to do with New Jersey; it is a national construct that makes good fodder for cable television, which has difficulty getting past their narrow focus on Washington.

The New Jersey governor’s race has played out and will continue to play out on state issues. In the end, it will not be a referendum on Obama, but a referendum on Jon Corzine. The Washington media and the cable TV cranks are just too removed from the ground to understand that.

Another crack in the facade?

There always was a danger in Chris Christie portraying himself as Mr. Clean and basing almost the entirety of his campaign on this image. Allegations like this one and the questions that still surround his hiring of his former boss at the federal Justice Department, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, to a lucrative monitoring contract — should they stick in the public’s mind — have the potential to undercut his reputation, which is all he really has to run on.

One accusation is easily dismissed; a second becomes harder to ignore. If more of these questions are asked, well, then it becomes serious.

Let’s face it, Christie’s two chief virtues always have been his record as a lawman and the fact that he is not Jon Corzine at a time when it is not popular to be Jon Corzine.

He offers little on the budget — the state’s primary problem — offering vague promises to cut taxes and make tough decisions and then waiving off the tougher questions.

Corzine has his own problems — and not because the economy has worsened an already dire fiscal situation in the state. He’s not been nearly aggressive enough in challenging the status quo in Trenton, which has undercut his own promises to right the state’s fiscal ship.

Christie goes into the final three-plus months with a significant edge — those polls — but he’s no lock. He’s a Republican in a state that trends Democratic, running against a candidate with a seemingly endless supply of cash. If the squeeky clean rep gets tarnished, if he is seen as too socially conservative, and/or the public doesn’t buy his budgetary prescriotions, what now appears a foregone conclusion could become an upset.

An LG from the left

It appears that Loretta Weingberg, staunch progressive from Bergen County, will be Jon Corzine’s No. 2 on the November ballot. Weinberg’s “legislative record,” according to The Star-Ledger,

has earned her praise as a champion of women’s issues and progressive causes.

“To progressive voters all across New Jersey, Governor Corzine’s selection of Loretta Weinberg is like adding a jolt of a million volts. We are electrified,” Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s leading gay rights group, wrote to supporters. “He named a legend. It’s a selection that says volumes about his exemplary leadership and his progressive vision of our state.”

In the weeks leading up to the choice, a number of names have been bandied about, the politics of the choice appearing the major point of contention. Does the governor select a black candidate to sure up the black vote for his party? Does he pick a woman? Does he go to a county he absolutely must carry? Chris Christie, the Republican, faced far fewer of these questions — the GOP’s base being somewhat more homogeneous.

But the politics — a woman from Bergen County whose progressive credentials could solidify Corzine’s left flank — are less important than what the lieutenant governor could bring to an administration. What roles might Weinberg or Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno — Christie’s LG pick — play after the election?

I like Weinberg. She has a great track record on the issues I believe are important — health care, civil rights (including the rights of same-sex couples), ethics. She understands Trenton, but has not become entrenched — she had to withstand a challenge from her own party’s leadership to retain her seat two years ago.