Gubernatorial race is a dead heat approaching election day

[Sandy]

Posted on Sun, Nov. 1, 2009
From the Philadelphia Inquirer

Why race to lead N.J. is so tight
By Cynthia Burton

Inquirer Staff Writer

New Jersey's gubernatorial race, winding down to Tuesday's election after a consistently brutal campaign, is a dead heat between Democratic Gov. Corzine and Republican Christopher J. Christie, in a state where no Republican has won a statewide race in a dozen years.

"This should have been a race where no Republican in his right mind would have taken [Corzine] on," said Joseph Marbach, a political scientist at Seton Hall University.

Corzine has the advantages of incumbency and vast personal wealth; he might pump in $30 million before the campaign is over. He also enjoys an almost 2-1 Democratic registration edge over Republicans.

But Christie has given Corzine a vigorous chal lenge, fighting him in urban, Democratic strongholds and at kitchen tables in middle-class suburbia.

The gubernatorial race has drawn national attention because it is one of only two this year, and some see it as a referendum on President Obama and his Democratic Party. And looming over it all has been a sour economy.

Corzine has had trouble convincing voters that things could have been a lot worse if he hadn't trimmed spending and bucked up social services. And Christie decided to stick to a plan of not giving sound-bite answers to complex problems, promising instead to pick apart the government and make informed choices. That opened him to bruising attacks from Corzine and independent Chris Daggett.

Throughout the race, voters have been cranky, scared, and frustrated by mounting home foreclosures and crippling unemployment rates. They have been looking for someone to blame and trying to figure out who, if anyone, could turn things around.

"It's close because people are angry. They're frustrated. They are upset, and in the American democratic system, we allow those expressions of public frustration to be vented through elections," Rider University political scientist Ben Dworkin said. "So Jon Corzine is in a tight race because the economy is lousy. . . . If the economy was going at a 5 percent growth clip, I don't think we'd be seeing this."

Corzine, a 62-year-old liberal Democrat, is a former farm boy and Marine who became a Wall Street millionaire. Christie, a 47-year-old former U.S. attorney born in Newark, N.J., is a conservative Republican and one-term Morris County freeholder. Daggett, 59, a former environmental commissioner with a doctorate in education, emerged as a genuine factor two weeks ago only to slide back into single digits in the latest independent polls.

Each is on a 21-county bus tour, stopping at diners and rallies, walking Main Streets, and charging up volunteers.

Those volunteers will be making calls to voters, knocking on doors, and dropping off literature through the weekend. They are being aided by live computer updates telling them which voters they've already visited or called.

That information will be used Tuesday as the campaigns pinpoint their votes and get them to the polls - in some cases, driving them. For Daggett, the ch*****ge is showing voters just where he is on voting machines. In 19 of the state's 21 counties, he is bundled with less-significant candidates.

Corzine has spent millions pummeling Christie on his best asset - a career as U.S. attorney that included a perfect record of securing convictions or guilty pleas form 130 corrupt politicians. The ads questioned Christie's ethics.

Christie, meanwhile, used advertising to argue that Corzine's policies put the state in bad shape to withstand a tanking economy.

The campaigns and the independent groups supporting them are jamming the airwaves with ads, some even getting slots during the World Series.

Obama is coming to New Jersey for a third time to help Corzine, attending rallies in Camden and Newark today. Christie is touring the state with former Republican Govs. Christie Whitman and Thomas H. Kean and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The appearances by Obama and others by Vice President Biden are evidence of the significance of the election. Virginia is the only other state electing a governor this year.

Some analysts see this year's races as predictors of the 2010 congressional and gubernatorial contests. But such off-year races never have been reliable indicators, according to a historical study by University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.

Still, the national party groups plan to use New Jersey's results as a selling point to raise money for coming federal and state races. So far in New Jersey, they have spent millions on advertising and field operatives to make sure voters get to the polls.

Together, the Republican and Democratic governors associations have spent almost $8 million. Christie, who is accepting state campaign subsidies, is limited to spending $11 million, while Corzine has spent $23 million and counting.

Though Christie had led in the polls for almost a year, Corzine tripped up his momentum with relentless television ads criticizing the Republican's support of no-frills health-insurance policies. Corzine said the plan would deny women mammograms; Christie said he never intended to deny women cancer screenings. By October, according to polls, undecided independent women were making up their minds - for Corzine.

Christie wouldn't let Corzine take it easy in the cities, even opening up a campaign headquarters in Newark and appearing frequently in Camden. He promised school vouchers and more charter schools for students in failing urban districts, and an aggressive attack on street crime. He said he would give tax breaks to middle-class families who moved into cities.

Each time the president came to stir up Democrats, Christie welcomed him. He has run ads featuring African Americans and Latinos, saying they voted for Obama in 2008 but were going to vote for Christie this year.

Christie doesn't expect to win the cities, but if he can trim the bump Corzine needs there, particularly in urban Hudson County, the governor could be in trouble, said Rider's Dworkin.

Both candidates sought to appeal to women with their choices for lieutenant governor, in the state's first-ever election for a governor-in-waiting.

On campaign stops last week, the major candidates were making their final pitches.

As preschoolers romped through a Pennsauken playground, Corzine said he wanted voters to ask themselves one thing: "Who can get us through and out of this recession the soonest and the strongest?"

A few miles away, at an assisted-living center in Washington Township, Christie said, "I've never felt more confident than I've felt in the last couple of days."

[Sandy]

Here's an article from the Star Ledger about the tight race:


Analysis of Gov. Jon Corzine reveals more complex picture than partisans present
By Tom Moran
November 01, 2009, 7:00AM
For the 80 percent of New Jerseyans who have made a firm decision on their vote Tuesday, here is an irritating fact of life: The outcome now hinges largely on the other 20 percent. These are the people who tell pollsters they haven’t decided, or may change their minds.

Why so much indecision? One reason is that many people have powerfully mixed feelings about Gov. Jon Corzine, the man at the center of this fight.

Look at him through one lens and you see an honest man who is a sturdy friend to working class families, a guy who expanded crucial health and education programs even as he reduced the overall size of state government, a grown-up who put a halt to some of Trenton’s worst excesses.

Look through another and you see a clumsy politician who bought his way to power, a captive of the unions and a sugar daddy to the corrupt party establishment, a man who is hopelessly ill-equipped to lead the reform movement the state really needs.

Partisans on both sides push one view or the other, the black or the white. But to honestly evaluate Corzine, you have to look through both lenses because each picture contains some truth. Sorry, but this one is not simple. Let’s take a look, starting with the good stuff.

Those who paint Corzine as a wild-spending liberal have just not paid attention. He has reduced state spending two years in a row and put more money into the pension fund than his three predecessors combined. He cut the state workforce by 8,400, more than 10 percent, and negotiated a contract with state workers that raised the retirement age by 7 years and forced contributions to health care for the first time.

Yes, he could have done more. A depressing clue to the governor’s true feelings came when he attended a labor rally during his first year in office to cheer on the state workers. He also showed the judgment of a hormone-soaked high school kid when he romanced Carla Katz, the leader of the state’s largest union local.

Still, despite being in bed with the unions, literally and figuratively, Corzine made more progress than his predecessors did at the bargaining table.

More good stuff: He revamped a school funding formula to end the profound injustice done for many years to working-class districts — places too wealthy to get the generous aid the Supreme Court ordered for poor districts, but not wealthy enough to compete with richer suburbs. So families in these towns paid higher taxes while their kids got short-changed in school. Fixing that was a big win for the governor.

None of this makes the governor’s personal list, though. Asked to name his signature achievement, he said: "Protecting children."

He includes New Jersey’s preschool programs, now arguably the nation’s best, with small classes and trained teachers. The state Supreme Court ordered it done, but Corzine did it well. And he began expanding it far beyond the court’s order before this Great Recession stalled him. He also includes growing enrollment in health insurance plans for children and solid gains in the state’s ability to protect abused children and arrange for their foster care and adoptions.

"Gov. Corzine has been a leader on this," says Ceil Zalkind, head of the Association for Children of New Jersey.

Finally, add the governor’s willingness to sign a gay marriage bill, his enactment of paid family leave and the abolition of the state’s death penalty on his watch.

Okay, now let’s look through the other lens, the darker one that may stay the hand of many voters once they are in the booth, with the curtain closed.

It has to start with his money. He bought his way into the Senate in 2000 and his gaudy use of money has tainted every election since.

Worse, he has given generously to the worst characters in the party, several of whom are now in jail. He is complicit in the state’s corruption plague because these bosses used his money to tighten their grip on power.

Corzine’s close ties to public employee unions are a concern as well. Because while he did win concessions with state workers, the real money is at the local level, paid to teachers, cops and firefighters. They all love Corzine because he hasn’t lifted a finger to change the negotiating rules that protect their high salaries and generous benefits. Thousands of public employees will be out volunteering for Corzine on Election Day. They know the score.

Here’s the problem for taxpayers: There is no way to reduce local spending without doing battle without these unions. So with Corzine in charge, we are likely to continue paying crushing property taxes.

And when the economy turns around, the smart money bets Corzine will use most of the windfall to expand programs, not cut taxes. This is the man who went to Washington to establish universal health care, universal care for the elderly, universal day care and universal access to college education. Events have forced him to scale back but in his heart, he would be politically at home in a country like Sweden.

And he doesn’t hide those colors. Last week, he visited a preschool in Pennsauken, a working class town near Camden where 60 percent of the kids are poor enough to qualify for free lunches.

In the brightly decorated classrooms, trained teachers used puppets and picture books to teach the basics of reading, always in small classes where each kid gets plenty of attention.

"Frankly, I believe we can’t afford not to be investing in this," the governor said. "My only regret is that given the recession, we haven’t been able to take forward our plans to expand even further."

So where does all this leave us? You’ll have to consult your own priorities to answer that one.

But one thing seems clear: We should all have some sympathy for the 20 percent who can’t decide.