Union City, New Jersey
CAMPAIGNING AGAINST “CORRUPTION” in New Jersey is sort of like campaigning against Castro in Miami. It’s bound to strike a chord among the natives. From Frank “I am the law” Hague and Harrison “Abscam” Williams to Bob Torricelli and Jim McGreevey, the Garden State has midwifed a murderers’ row of political swindlers. Late-night comics have long enjoyed sending up the state’s colorful history of graft, while sprinkling in a few organized-crime gags. But in the governor’s race this year, the ethics issue is getting more airtime than usual. Quite simply, New Jersey Democrats have been swamped by a raft of scandals that would make even Tony Soprano blush.
One longtime Democrat, asked why he’s backing Republican Doug Forrester for governor, doesn’t mince words: “Corruption, corruption, and more corruption,” says José “Cheito” Falto, an educator from Union City. Falto is one of the “Democrats for Forrester” now appearing in a handful of TV spots that feature a parade of Jersey Dems howling about their party’s seedy track record.
Last week, Forrester, 52, spent a day courting Hispanics in Falto’s hometown, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Joining him on his walking tour was Florida senator Mel Martinez, a Cuban-American Republican. Forrester had earlier been in Newark to protest construction of a new hockey arena for the state’s NHL franchise, the New Jersey Devils, which will cost taxpayers at least $210 million.
“The arena is a classic example of a boondoggle,” Forrester told me later that afternoon. It’s also “an example of what is wrong in New Jersey.” Originally slated as a $310-million project, it may have a final pricetag of $350 million or more. Forrester lodges several complaints. First, he says, the Devils have yet to pony up their share, some $100 million. Second, it’s still unclear just how much the arena will cost taxpayers–and how those funds will be allocated. Third, there is no clamor among Newark’s citizenry for a hockey rink, and the money would be better spent on tax relief and aiding the city’s rotten public schools.
New Jersey senator Jon Corzine, the Democratic nominee for governor, has declared his own opposition to the arena deal. But unlike Forrester, he stops short of calling for a halt to the groundwork pending an investigation of its expenses. Corzine deems the whole brouhaha a local matter. It is a prickly subject for him. The arena’s chief Democratic patron, five-term Newark mayor Sharpe James, wields great influence over the city’s mostly minority–and reliably pro-Democrat–voters. Democrats depend on a healthy turnout in the state’s largest city every election cycle, which James typically delivers.
But Corzine, 58, must strike a delicate balance: cozying up to his urban base in big cities like Newark, Trenton, Paterson, and Elizabeth without alienating moderate suburbanites. This is especially tricky in New Jersey, where more than half of the state’s roughly 4.8 million registered voters are independents. Despite its well-earned reputation as a Democratic stronghold–Democrats control the governorship and both houses of the state legislature–New Jersey boasts an array of prosperous suburbs where voters tend to be fiscally conservative but socially liberal. These suburbs are where statewide races are won and lost. They tilted Republican during the 1980s–New Jersey went for Ronald Reagan twice and for George H.W. Bush in 1988–but swung into the Democratic column during the Clinton years over social issues.
Indeed, New Jersey is among the most fiercely pro-choice and anti-gun states in the country. Consider the fate of Bret Schundler, a conservative GOP maverick who waged a quixotic quest for the governor’s mansion in 2001. Schundler, an ex-Wall Streeter turned mayor of Jersey City, possessed a wonkish command of topics like school vouchers and tax reform. But his opponent, Democrat Jim McGreevey, zinged him relentlessly over his pro-life views and support for gun rights. Schundler lost by a whopping 14 points.
Though Schundler has been a darling of national conservatives since his mayoral days, Forrester seems better suited to peel off New Jersey’s swing voters. True, he lost badly in a 2002 Senate race. But like Sen. Corzine, Forrester is a self-made millionaire, which helps when buying airtime in the New York and Philadelphia media markets. And “he’s a moderate who supports a woman’s right to choose,” as former New Jersey governor Tom Kean reminds voters in a new pro-Forrester TV ad. Kean, perhaps the state’s most popular Republican, endorses Forrester as “one of the most honorable men I’ve ever known.”
“The Tom Kean ad is really helping Doug Forrester,” says Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. “The abortion issue has always worked, in effect, for the Democrats.” She also mentions another Forrester ad that introduces the GOP nominee alongside his wife. “I’m struck by how many people talk about it,” Reed says of the pro-family ad.
A Star-Ledger/Rutgers-Eagleton survey from early September showed Corzine holding an eye-popping 18-point lead among likely voters. But over the past month, as more and more New Jerseyans have tuned in, and after Forrester performed well in a TV debate, that gap has closed. Most polls now give Corzine only a single-digit advantage, somewhere between 4 and 8 points. The campaign has accordingly turned nasty, with the two sides trading barbs over personal ethics. To keep the mud flying, Forrester and Corzine have tapped their flush war chests and put out a string of aggressive commercials.
At least three Corzine ads–two TV and one radio–link Forrester with President Bush, a most unflattering association in New Jersey. But the twin themes that have dominated the race are sky-high property taxes and rampant corruption. Forrester pledges to reduce property taxes by 30 percent over three years (“30 in 3” is the campaign’s leading slogan). His plan would cover all households–including those in the $200k-plus income bracket. Corzine trumpets his own plan to soften the property-tax blow for “all those earning less than $200,000 per year.”
If the Forrester proposal smacks of gimmickry, then the Corzine promise assumes a credulous electorate. Since 2001, the ex-Goldman Sachs chairman has compiled one of the most liberal, tax-happy paper trails in the Senate. For Corzine to now pose as a tax-slasher is (pardon the pun) rich. But then, as the Corzine camp might retort, Forrester jacked up property taxes while he was mayor of West Windsor (to pay for a new sewer system, Forrester explains).
Part of the reason New Jersey has the steepest property-tax rates in America is corruption–a connection of which voters seem increasingly aware. The litany of scandals that have plagued the state’s Democrats in recent years could fill a juicy airport novel. In 2002, Sen. Bob Torricelli quit his reelection bid amidst charges of campaign-finance impropriety; his chief fundraiser went to prison. Two of former governor Jim McGreevey’s top donors are now in jail, one for tax violations, fraud, and using a prostitute to tamper with a grand jury witness, the other for hatching an extortion scheme with the governor’s alleged consent. Meanwhile, a slew of McGreevey cronies abused the state’s “pay to play” system of government contracting, and it turned out his appointee to lead the state police had ties to the Mafia. McGreevey himself resigned when the world learned of his homosexual affair–with an Israeli poet whom he tapped to head the state’s homeland security efforts.
Since New Jersey has no lieutenant governor, McGreevey’s successor was Richard Codey, president of the state Senate. Codey, who took office in November 2004, initially mulled running for a full term in 2005, before Corzine outmuscled him with a series of VIP endorsements. Corzine has vowed that his immense wealth–he is worth perhaps $300 million; he dropped a record $63 million to win a Senate seat in 2000–will ensure he is “unbought and unbossed” as governor. But his record is hardly blemish-free. This past August, news broke that Corzine had made an undisclosed loan of some $470,000 to his then-girlfriend, Carla Katz, and later forgave it. Which would mean nothing, except that Katz is president of New Jersey’s biggest public-sector union.
Forrester has tried to make hay out of the Katz loan and other Corzine mini-scandals. But the Corzine forces have fired back in kind. They bang on about BeneCard Services, the Forrester-founded pharmacy benefits management company that has been sued for fraud. In addition, they note that Forrester may have broken the law by pumping money into state politics despite owning another firm, Heartland Fidelity Insurance, that does most of its business in New Jersey.
Whether these charges will neutralize Forrester’s anticorruption message is unclear. On the one hand, voters are clearly fed up. And later this month, Sen. John McCain, a paladin of the clean-government warriors, will stump for Forrester. On the other hand, Forrester must overcome a widespread cynicism among New Jerseyans who feel all politicians are rascals. While polls show corruption to be a prime concern, they also indicate that voters don’t believe either Forrester or Corzine can do much to drain the swamp. If true, that robs the GOP nominee of a signature issue–and it may leave him just shy of a victory in November. Indeed, the cynicism of the electorate could prove Corzine’s salvation.
Duncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
