Tag: Jon Corzine

Quinnipiac (4/14/-20, registered voters, March 2009 in parens):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 38 (37)

Chris Christie (R): 45 (46)

Undecided: 14 (15)

(MoE: 2.1%)

Strategic Vision (R) (4/17-19, registered voters, no trendlines):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 36

Chris Christie (R): 47

Undecided: 16

(MoE: 3%)

Both pollsters also test Corzine against a variety of lesser GOP candidates, and the numbers are pretty dispiriting – mostly a series of small leads for Corzine, but that’s due to name rec.

It’s the GOP primary where things get funkadelic. Strategic Vision gives Christie a 40-15 lead over his nearest competitor, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. But Q-pac has Christie up 39-24 among RVs and just 46-37 among LVs. I suppose we’d rather face the more conservative Lonegan, but does he have time to pull it out? The primary is on June 2nd. I’m not even sure how big a difference it would make – Q has them tied at 41, even though Lonegan is unknown by 72% of the state.

One interesting side-note: The same Q-Poll (different press release) finds that New Jersey voters approve of gay marriage by a 49-43 margin, a twelve-point shift in favor from two years ago. These numbers aren’t quite like the 14-point margin in favor in neighboring New York, but perhaps Corzine will start pushing this issue nonetheless.

NJ has civil unions, but a state panel found in December that they don’t provide full equality and recommended passage of a gay marriage bill. Corzine said he’d sign such legislation, but he hasn’t made it a signature issue like David Paterson has – yet. Even though only a small plurality supports gay marriage, it might nonetheless make political sense to push it. If Corzine does win, it’ll almost certainly be by a very narrow margin, and Karl Rove showed you can win elections like that by playing hard to issues which sharply divide the electorate, as long as slightly more voters are on your side.

New Jersey is intimately familiar with bitter, partisan races, and if Corzine wants to survive, he might have to wage some serious trench warfare.

• NY-20 (pdf): This morning’s official tally from the BoE gives Scott Murphy a whopping lead of 268. This new number reflects the addition of all the remaining absentees from Columbia County, where Murphy performed well on Election Day and apparently even better among absentees. There are still 1,200 absentee ballots that haven’t been counted because they were subject to challenge; they’ll be reviewed starting Monday.

Jim Tedisco isn’t waiting around for those ballots, though; he’s already asking the courts to declare him the victor. Wait… what? Isn’t he the one who’s behind? (The Tedisco camp has tried to clarify that they were re-filing a motion that they filed on Election Day, to also have Tedisco declared the winner, as some sort of ‘insurance policy.’ OK, that makes me feel much better.)

• CA-10: BigDust broke the story yesterday in diaries: Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, seeing his gubernatorial campaign sputtering and lured by the siren call of a term-limits-free job, has more-or-less confirmed that the rumors are true and he’s jumping into the 10th District special election, where state senator Mark DeSaulnier had already nailed down the ‘establishment’ candidate mantle. (Unlike other frequent job-hopper Tom McClintock, Garamendi actually has the advantage of living in the district.)

• KY-Sen, SD-Sen: The message can’t get much clearer than this. Mitch McConnell is hosting a fundraiser in the state of Kentucky for his fellow senator… John Thune? That’s right; McConnell would rather help a guy from South Dakota defending a safe seat than help his fellow Kentuckian Jim Bunning, who has already been complaining about how McConnell is sucking up all the fundraising oxygen in the state.

• CT-Sen: Chris Dodd may have raised a million bucks last quarter, but only five donors were from his home state of Connecticut. And before you can say “But what about donations below $200 which don’t require detailed disclosure?”, we’ll just point out that Dodd took in under $2,300 total from that category of donors. Sigh. (D)

On the plus side for Dodd, he got a hearty endorsement and a promise of future help from someone a little more popular than him: Barack Obama. “Chris is going through a rough patch,” says Obama.

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes raised $225K this quarter, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot, does it? (D)

• NJ-Gov: Governor Jon Corzine, facing a tough re-election, has another problem: his gross income last year was negative $2.75 million. You’ve got to assume that his overall net worth (once estimated at $300 million) has taken a much, much larger hit, so that calls into question his willingness, if not ability, to moneybomb the race as he did with his last two runs for office.

• TX-Gov: I never thought I’d have to say this out loud, but Governor Rick Perry may not have a winning issue on his hands when he makes veiled secession threats. A Rasmussen snap-poll finds that 75% of Texans would prefer to remain a part of the USA. 18% prefer secession, and 7% just aren’t sure. Not coincidentally, a similar percentage of the Texas state senate (71%) just voted, 22-9, to ignore Perry and accept the $550 million in federal stimulus money to keep their state unemployment trust fund from going broke.

• Words: Here’s a fun time-suck: a website that lets you create a word cloud for most-used words in a particular day, week, month, or year in the Congressional Record, or for a particular lawmaker.

• NJ-Gov: The latest poll of the New Jersey governor’s race shows that things aren’t getting any worse for Jon Corzine, but he is settling into a deep rut. Fairleigh Dickinson finds that he loses 42-33 to Chris Christie, the same 9-pt margin as their previous poll one month ago (41-32). Corzine’s approval rating is 40/49, and he beats even nuttier GOPer Steve Lonegan by only 37-36. There is some good news, though: he’d still win in a Democratic primary, if for some reason senate president Richard Codey or Newark mayor Corey Booker challenged him.

Could An incumbent Democratic governor of New Jersey come back after trailing by double digits in the polls for most of the campaign? It happened once before, when Gov. Brendan Byrne beat Republican Raymond Bateman, despite being down as much as twelve points in September of 1977. “Hopeful” at Blue Jersey does some excellent digging through the archives to tell Byrne’s story. (D)

• VA-Gov: National politics just injected itself into the Virginia governor’s race in a big way, as the GOP-held House of Delegates rejected $125 million in federal stimulus funds that would have extended unemployment benefits. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell supported his party’s callous move.

• AK-Sen: Ted Stevens just filed his exploratory paperwork to get his old job back, by running for senator in 2014 (when he’ll be 91). Don’t actually expect to see Ted 2.0, though; his spokesman says it’s just a receptacle to receive donations that came in after the November election.

• FL-Sen, NH-Sen: In other unlikely comeback news, though, this one appears to be for real: Bob Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has filed the paperwork to run for Senate again… in Florida, where he now lives. This seems odd, since there are political titans jostling for the Florida nomination while the New Hampshire nomination still seems to be pretty much free for the asking. (As an indication of how far down the totem pole the NH GOP is looking, Ovide Lamontagne, last seen losing the 1996 gubernatorial race, is now eyeing NH-Sen.)

• AR-Sen: Mediocre polling and pressure on EFCA seem to have gotten Blanche Lincoln worried, but she may be able to breathe a little easier after her first quarter fundraising haul: $1.7 million, with $1 million of that coming at a campaign kickoff event headlined by Joe Biden.

• MI-Gov: Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson has announced that he won’t seek the GOP nomination for the governor’s race next year. Patterson narrowly led the primary field in a recent poll, so that leaves a wide-open field with a possible advantage to 2nd-place finisher Rep. Pete Hoekstra.

• TN-Gov: State senator Roy Herron entered the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, joining former state house majority leader Kim McMillan and Nashville businessman Ward Cammack. Mike McWherter, son of former governor Ned McWherter, also seems a likely candidate.

• PA-06: We have at least a warm body lined up in PA-06: Doug Pike, who hasn’t held elected office but wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer for a number of years, was an aide to Paul Tsongas, and is the son of Rep. Otis Pike (of New York). A better-known candidate may still crop up, especially if Rep. Jim Gerlach follows through on his likely plans to bail on his increasingly-Democratic seat (Obama won 58-41) and run for Pennsylvania governor instead.

Many of you are aware that New Jersey is one of the two states with high profile Governor races in 2009, and some of you may know that former US attorney and Bush toadie, Chris Christie is the republican frontrunner to challenge Governor Jon Corzine.  And as of now, Christie has jumped out to a pretty big lead (between 10-15 points) based largely on a reputation of a tough prosecutor as well as being undefined and dodging every issue and making statements which are long on buzzwords but short on meaning.

I don’t have to give many examples of what happens when someone who is largely undefined, flies under the radar with a false persona and doesn’t do much other than repeat slogans and more-of-the-same republican talking points gets into a high level Executive office.  But when it is someone who has very questionable and deep ties to many of the worst parts of the Bush administration and has questionable loyalties – even more so in the ever deepening blue northeast – it is more than a local or regional matter.

So, it is time to start spreading the word about who Chris Christie really is – something that I have been doing in bits and pieces for close to 2 years since he first found himself on and then mysteriously off of the short list of US attorneys to be fired and the questionable events surrounding his appearance and disappearance from “the list”.  Oh yeah, his brother was also involved in a securities fraud suit while a top executive at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg while Christie was US attorney in a neighboring district, he somehow got more favorable treatment then all but a handful of the 20 people charged.

But I’ll touch on that a bit below – as the first thing that will give you a sense of what type of republican Christie would be as Governor and why it is so dangerous for him to continue to fly under the radar is an interview that he did with Brian Lehrer just the other day.  I’ll spare you the full 25 minutes here, but there are a few things that must be pointed out.  I mentioned him being the “Jersey Jindal”, and that is because of Jindal’s comments about not accepting stimulus money under certain conditions, and that is precisely what Christie said he would do as well.  Yes, another in league with “those republican Governors”.   Here is the exact quote in context as a short audio clip where he says just that.  

As we are about to make the entire Northeast (save a district here or there) blue, can we really afford to have this petty nonsensical partisan failure of a strategy at a time when there is a tremendous economic crisis in the country (and the state as well)?

His interviews and remarks tend to take on the generic republican “buzzword Mad Libs” template, and he was called on it during the interview.   His response? (audio at the link and transcript here – emphasis mine)

LEHRER: “A number of people want me to follow up again on the back and forth we had about what you would actually cut, because they said you never gave a specific answer to what you would cut, even if you wouldn’t do the same spending policies as Governor Corzine.”

CHRISTIE: “Well listen, I think again, that you know, I know people love to continue to press on that, but the fact of the matter is that Governor Corzine has a responsibility for putting together this budget and my responsibility is to critique what he’s done.”

Um…..for someone who is in the middle of the interview process for New Jersey Governor, he damn well has a responsibility to do more than just critique it.   How about an actual idea or two? other than (as he quotes), “some people are going to have to lose jobs”

That is what we have heard from the republican frontrunner for Governor in New Jersey:  People have to lose jobs and I won’t accept stimulus money.

********************

As I said above, there are a lot of other things about Christie that would make anyone shudder over and above the fact that we know that he wants to be called the Governor but hasn’t done or said anything to show what he would actually do as or why he wants to be the Governor.  While I’ll get into them in more detail over the next few months, here are some of the “highlights”:

• He accepted of disgraced former Mayor Giuliani’s endorsement for Governor, disregarding the fact that Giuliani took public money, tax dollars, intended to help the disabled and the poor and used it to cheat on his wife.  That’s supposed to be the kind of politician Christie hates so much it makes his head spin.  That’s supposed to be the guy Christie puts in jail.
• He awarded a lucrative no-bid contract to former boss and Attorney General John Ashcroft’s firm worth between $28 and $52 million, as well as directed similar monitoring contracts in 2007 to two other former Justice Department colleagues from the Bush administration as well as to a former Republican state attorney general in New Jersey.  If these weren’t questionable enough on their own, why didn’t Christie or Ashcroft want to testify and clear their names in this matter?
• Christie owes his political career to the Bushies, as he was a “Bush Pioneer” in 2000, meaning that he raised over $100,000 for the campaign
• Most interestingly, the story of how he got on and off the US attorney firing list has never been resolved or questioned.  In short, in January 2006, Chris Christie was on a list of US Attorney’s who were being looked at for replacement.  Then, in September 2006, in the midst of a hard-fought US Senate campaign being dominated by accusations of corruption, Chris Christie authorizes a last minute subpoena that plays into Tom Kean Jr.’s political attacks against Bob Menendez.  Miraculously, in November 2006, after the election is over, Chris Christie is taken off the list and allowed to keep his job.

*************************************

Any one of these bullet points is questionable enough.  All of them taken together blow a hole right through the “caped crusader” façade that he has built.  Added to his bobblehead approach to running for Governor, and you have a perfect storm of political incuriosity, party first mentality and questionable ethics.

This country, and the good people of New Jersey, can’t afford to have someone of those characteristics in a position to appoint replacement Senators, act as a fair executive with the people of the state’s interests first and be in charge of the administration of elections – even more so with one of the least reliable voting machines in the country.

• NJ-Gov: Another day, another ugly poll for Jon Corzine. This time, it’s this month’s installment of the Quinnipiac poll. Not much change from last month: Chris Christie leads Corzine 46-37, up a bit from 44-38. This despite 61% of voters not knowing enough about Christie to form an opinion of him!

• KY-Sen: Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson may be the guy on the GOP’s wish list for the Kentucky Senate seat, but he said yesterday that he’s running for Senate only if Jim Bunning retires. (What are the odds on that?) Meanwhile, state senate president David Williams is accusing Grayson and Bunning of being in cahoots to shut him out of the race. Good times.

• CT-Sen: You gotta love Joe Lieberman, always there to lend a helping hand. Lieberman announced that he’s supporting Chris Dodd for re-election, even though Dodd supported, y’know, the Democrat in the 2006 general. As Lanny Davis puts it, “Being a mensch and a friend is more important than carrying a grudge.”

• CO-04: Nice to see that someone can get a job in this economy: Marilyn Musgrave has emerged from months of post-defeat seclusion to take a leadership position with something called the Susan B. Anthony List, apparently a bizarro-world EMILY’s List that supports anti-abortion female candidates for office. (No word on whether Anthony plans to sue to get her name back.) It’s unclear whether this is permanent or Musgrave is staying close to donors until a rematch in CO-04.

• KS-01, KS-04: Mike Huckabee (who overwhelmingly won the Kansas caucuses) is wading into the primaries to fill the two safe GOP seats left vacant by the Jerry Moran/Todd Tiahrt scrum for the open senate seat. He’s endorsing state senator Tim Huelskamp in KS-01 and state senator Dick Kelsey in KS-04. RNC member Mike Pompeo is also expected to run in KS-04, while ex-aide to Sam Brownback Rob Wasinger and businessman Tim Barker are already running in KS-01.

• Maps: Here’s a nice resource to bookmark, from Ruy Teixeira and the Center for American Progress: it’s a collection of interactive maps showing state-by-state 04-08 and 88-08 shifts, along with piles of 08 exit poll data.

• MN-Sen: As if you needed one more reason not to donate to Republicans, the Norm Coleman campaign accidentally made public 4.3 GB of donors’ personal data, including credit card numbers and security information.

Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. (2/25-3/2, registered voters, 1/2-1/7 in parentheses):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 32 (40)

Chris Christie (R): 41 (33)

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 36 (46)

Steve Lonegan (R): 32 (28)

(MoE: ±4%)

Chris Christie (R): 43 (32)

Steve Lonegan (R): 15 (15)

Rick Merkt (R): 1 (5)

Brian Levine (R): 2 (0)

(MoE: ±6%)

Jon Corzine seems to be joining neighboring governor David Paterson in a race to the bottom, losing steam as the state’s economy falters. He trails US Attorney Chris Christie by 9, compared with a 7-point lead in January (prior to Christie’s announcement of his candidacy). These numbers are consistent with Corzine’s mediocre approve/disapprove of 40/46.

Christie still must get through a primary, most prominently against former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan, who seems to be running to Christie’s right. I have to wonder if Corzine’s best hope would be to spend his buckets of money now to make sure that the wingnutty Lonegan wins the primary (a la the Dems’ gaming the system in the 2002 Riordan/Simon primary in California)… otherwise, he’ll be digging a lot deeper into his pockets, and having to bank on economic recovery, in November.

UPDATE: Ooops, look like we never got around to reporting Quinnipiac‘s last poll of this race from 1/29-2/2, which had Christie up 44-38. We have enough information now that Pollster has some trendlines up, and the results ain’t pretty.

It’s NJ, so I question the polling, as always, but. . .

While few New Jersey voters know much about him, former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, a Republican challenger, leads Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine 44 – 38 percent in this year’s Governor’s race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This reverses a 42 – 36 percent Gov. Corzine lead in a November 19 poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

In this latest survey, Democrats support Corzine 72 – 10 percent while Christie leads 86 – 7 percent among Republicans and 49 – 24 percent among independent voters. Men back the Republican 51 – 32 percent while women go Democratic 42 – 38 percent. Black voters back Corzine 68 – 9 percent while white voters back Christie 52 – 32 percent.

As far as I can tell, Corzine hasn’t started his TV blast on broadcast yet (it would have to be on NYC and PHL networks), so I’m starting to wonder if he’s considering backing out entirely. Maybe this would be an easier race for a fresh Democrat?

Rasmussen (1/13, likely voters, no trendlines):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 40

Chris Christie (R): 42

Other: 5

Undecided: 13

(MoE: ±4%)

I remain convinced that this race is not like the last however many statewide races in New Jersey, where a not especially well-liked Dem beat a much less likable Republican. Perhaps Corzine can be saved by his money and Obama and Biden campaigning for him. Perhaps.

And maybe Christie will sputter once he hits the trail in earnest – this is his first real run for office, apart from an election some years ago as a Morris County freeholder. (A “freeholder” is New Jersey’s term for a county legislator.) Then again, Christie Whitman’s entire elective experience before beating Jim Florio in 1993? Somerset County freeholder.

UPDATE: Another poll, this one from Monmouth University (1/12-14, registered voters, no trendlines):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 38

Chris Christie (R): 36

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 45

Steve Lonegan (R): 29

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 41

Rick Merkt (R): 27

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 44

Brian Levine (R): 27

(MoE: ±4.8%)

Levine (whom we did not canvass in our look at FDU’s recent poll) is the supposedly moderate Republican mayor of Franklin Twp., a largely Democratic township of about 50,000 people in wealthy Somserset County, located in north-central Jersey. I don’t believe Levine has formally declared yet, but he has formed an exploratory committee.

Quinnipiac (11/13-17, registered voters):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 42

Christopher Christie (R): 36

(MoE: ±2.2%)

Oh no!!! Look how close the New Jersey governor’s race is! I sure hope the Republican Governors’ Association doesn’t pour millions and millions of dollars into this race in order to push their super-strong candidate over the finish line! [/wink]

In all seriousness, Chris Christie, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, would be a good recruit for the Republicans (he isn’t an announced candidate, but is widely mentioned as the leading GOP contender); Christie has made a name for himself in local media by cutting a swath through corrupt Jersey politicians from both sides of the aisle. Coupled with mediocre favorables for Corzine (43 approve/46 disapprove in the same sample, with 51% saying he does not deserve to be re-elected), this might give Democrats some pause… except in the context of how verbose New Jerseyites are in expressing their contempt for their elected officials, and the rate at which New Jersey Democratic officeholders tend to overperform their early polls, those numbers put Corzine on track toward a convincing victory next year.

In the midst of more pressing political developments, a small snippet in a Reuters article caught my attention today; among the names mentioned as potential candidates for Treasury Secretary in an Obama administration, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine's name stuck out.  As we all know, Corzine has years of expertise in the financial world, having led Goldman Sachs before embarking upon his political career, first as a U.S. Senator, and now as Governor.  Frankly, I think he'd be an excellent Treasury Secretary . . . which opens up a slew of possibilities and questions in the horserace of New Jersey politics.

If Corzine ascends to the Cabinet, State Senate President Richard Codey will take over as Acting Governor for the fourth time (he took over when Christine Todd Whitman became the head of the EPA during Bush's first term, when James McGreevey stepped down amidst scandal in 2004, and when Corzine was hospitalized after a severe car accident last year).  Codey is probably the most popular politician in the state; we Jerseyfolk are known to badmouth our politicians and rate them poorly, even as we keep re-electing them, but Dick Codey stands out as the one pol with favorable ratings.   I would venture a guess that an overwhelming majority of voters in the state would be glad to actually elect him as Governor, after he would hypothetically serve out the remainder of Corzine's term.

And, frankly, that's a good thing, what with Chris Christie waiting in the wings on the GOP side, ready to take down a less popular Democratic candidate in the gubernatorial race.   Of course, Codey's name has also been floated out as a possible Senate candidate down the road, if, for example, Lautenberg decides that this coming term will be his last before retiring.  With Codey safely in the Governor's seat, the door would be wide open for such progressives as Congressmen Rush Holt and Frank Pallone, and perhaps even Newark Mayor Cory Booker.  Any one of them could keep the Senate seat safely in Democratic hands (and probably fend off the requisite primary challenge from Rob Andrews).  All of them are young, and could conceivably hold the seat for many years.

What I just outlined was the best case scenario: Treasury Secretary Corzine, Governor Codey, and, eventually, Senator Holt, Pallone, or Booker.  Will the stars align as such?  Discuss away!