Just when you thought it was safe to go outside again, there are elections looming. Not just the 2010 elections that are suddenly being chattered about: actual elections, coming up in November. Both New Jersey and Virginia hold their gubernatorial elections in “off” years, and if ever there was an off year — here we are. (There’s also an election coming up in the Northern Mariana Islands — who wants to volunteer to do some on-site reporting with me?)
For those who don’t live with the New York Times constantly imprinted on their eyeballs, I thought I’d do a quick run-down of who’s who and what’s what in these two races, starting with New Jersey this Tuesday and moving to Virginia next Tuesday, with a promise to revisit, at least briefly, each week until these contests get decided.
So: On to the Garden State!
In New Jersey, weighing in at an estimated personal net worth of $300 million dollars (in 2005 money), we have current governor Jon Corzine facing off against Republican challenger Christopher J. Christie1, a former U.S. Attorney under Corzine is pretty unpopular in New Jersey right now, where hard times have forced, well, hard budgeting.
The seminal quick-read piece on Corzine is New York Magazine’s 2005 profile, “The Deal He Made,” which describes Corzine both as one of the most liberal, idealistic members of the Senate, when he was there, and as a guy who’s learned fast and well about the dirty realities of New Jersey politics. In his first term as governor, Corzine has had to deal with a budget deficit that forced him to cut 3,000 state jobs, raise taxes on the wealthiest Jerseyites, and institute a sales tax increase (and a government shutdown in 2006). Imagine how popular you’d be in New Jersey if you’d cut that many state jobs (and therefore, state services). Now imagine you’re also the guy who once proposed dramatic increases of toll-road fees, and you’ll have the dismal re-election prospects of Jon Corzine pretty well pictured. He currently trails Christie by 10 percent (47-37) in a Quinnipiac poll.
New Jersey is supposed to be a pretty safely blue state, right? Well, not if Chris Christie has his way. Democrats have a strange, dirty history in NJ, and it’s finally time to clean house — at least, this is the former prosecutor’s platform. He had a 130-0 win record for convictions against public officials, bolstering his credibility as a corruption fighter. It doesn’t hurt that Corzine was in office during a very memorable sweep of corrupt officials — 44 people were charged in July, including “three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis.” A member of Corzine’s staff had his home raided. (I don’t hold Corzine responsible for the rabbis, but the others — keep an eye out, Jon, eh?). Christie v. Corzine, in that context, starts to look like David vs. the guy who mugged David at gunpoint with a Saturday Night Special.
Christie defeated conservative Steven Lonegan in the primaries and has had a pretty easy road for a while, attacking an unpopular governor whose party is mired in corruption (just today, a former state senator received a 2-year prison sentence on corruption charges). He is, however, a New Jersey politcian himself, and his résumé is not without the predictable black marks: as U.S. Attorney, Christie got into the habit of handing out monitoring jobs, which are amazingly lucrative, to friends and family. Essentially, after a firm was convicted of corruption, someone had to be appointed to watch over the firm. Christie frequently appointed his friends or political contributors, including such luminaries as John Ashcroft (heard of him?), who won a $52 million no-bid contract to monitor a medical prosthetics company under Christie’s watch. Christie’s response has been pretty dumb: since the money is actually paid by these companies, not by the government, there’s no conflict, he says. Sure. Sounds like business as usual.
The news of the last few weeks has been about Mr. Christie’s apparently improper loan to a close aide. The loan, which Marcy Wheeler argues was below market value and therefore counts as a gift, was given to Michele Brown, an assistant U.S. Attorney during and after Christie’s tenure. The controversy about the loan is two-fold: first, Christie failed to report his interest payments on his taxes (which, since they totaled a couple hundred dollars a year, isn’t terribly sexy); second, he continued to receive payments from Ms. Brown even after leaving the office, establishing a financial tie between a candidate for governor and a woman in a leadership position in an office pursuing dozens of legal cases against state officials, including some in the current governor’s office. Brown has resigned her position, and Christie has apologized. So far, the controversy doesn’t seem to be taking much of a bite out of his lead, but expect Jon Corzine’s relentless campaign ad machine to make the most of it.
Where does that leave us? Well, we’re two full months (oy! where’s my summer gone?) from Election Day, and Jon Corzine’s trailing. Corruption is not the worst charge one can level at a New Jersery politician, so the recent Christie scandal may not do anything to narrow the gap. Corzine’s big advantage — his ability to spend his way to the top — may not be as big as it used to be, since one assumes he’s been hit hard in the market over the last year or so. Yet it seems implausible that a Republican will end up governing New Jersey, so — I expect a turn around, late this month. I expect Corzine to hitch his star to a major proposal — maybe even to try and make the national health care debate a part of the story in New Jersey — and to have a surprisingly positive appearance at the gubernatorial debate in October. He has the money to pay for coaches, after all. Oh, and he’s got one more thing going for him:
A sitting president willing to join him on the campaign trail.
So that’s where we stand. Tune in next week for a tour of Viriginia, which is for lovers and, in this race, a guy whose name always makes me think of “The Office.”
1 Question: Why do parents do this? Chris Christie? It’s not like he married into that name. What happened, one of his parents turned to the other and said, “How about Michael?” and the other went, “Gee, I dunno, make it something easier to remember.” See also: Dave Davies, John H. Johnson, and my high school principal, whose name I’ll withhold so my detention records never hit the big time.
SATURN SMITH 