Tag: chris christie

Corzine: for leasing the Turnpike before he was against it…

…then for it again, and now against it…

Thursday, New York Times:

The Democratic governor, Jon S. Corzine, says he may revisit his plan to lease the New Jersey Turnpike to raise cash — a proposal that he abandoned last year in the face of intense opposition from lawmakers and voters.

Friday, Philly.com:

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine says he has no plans to increase tolls or lease toll roads.

(The New York Times is sticking with their version.)

Via Jim Geraghty, who also pointed out this report that Christie spent the day hammering this.  Which is smart of Christie: speaking as somebody who grew up in NJ, looking like you want to muck around with the toll roads situation is contraindicated.

Contraindicated.

Moe Lane

PS:  Chris Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

Christie to Corzine: ‘Man up, and *say* I’m fat.’

“I’m pretty fat, Don… 550 pounds.”

Via Hot Air comes this Neil Cavuto piece on Don Imus’ interview with Chris Christie, where Chris addresses the two central issues of the Corzine campaign: Christie’s weight, and Corzine’s inability to even face that forthrightly.

“Hey listen: if you’re gonna do it, at least man up and say I’m fat.”

The phrase ‘wusses out’ was then used – accurately – followed by a couple of good lines about the need to keep stimulating the donut/restaurant industries. Give it a listen: like Allahpundit, I think that this is good retail politics, and it really does hammer home just how empty the Corzine campaign has been. I recognize that any Democratic campaign these days is going to revolve around trying to scare voters about the evvvvvil Republicans, but Corzine is being especially stereotypical about his response to what has essentially become a vanity campaign for him at this point. Which, given the way that he was fired from Goldman-Sachs and was more or less irrelevant as a Senator, is probably not too surprising. Depressing – why does the state of NJ have to pay for his therapy? – but not too surprising.

Moe Lane

PS: Chris Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

PPP: maybe DON’T GOTV for Corzine?

At least, that’s the impression that I’m getting from this PPP blog entry:

The voters under 30 in New Jersey in our latest poll reported voting for Obama 56-36 last year. But they support Corzine just 42-40 over Chris Christie this fall with 13% going to Chris Daggett.

In fact, in general I’m getting the impression that PPP is quietly operating from the expectation that Corzine will lose under current circumstances, and is trying to find some way of writing that without starting a self-fulfilling prophecy panic.  Meanwhile, Q-Pac is saying Corzine +5; reconciling that number with them having Christie win independents 45/30 is left as an exercise for the interested student (see Geraghty for more along those lines).  And, as usual, the uncertainty about the percentage of the vote going to Daggett is driving all the pollsters mad.

Moe Lane

PS: Chris Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

NJ-GOV: New PPP, Rasmussen polls out.

And if you thought that yesterday’s semi-cryptic blog post from the former was just some prepare-the-Democrats-for-some-bad-news, and not an attempt to raise Republican hopes… well, you were right.

Chris Christie now leads Jon Corzine 42-38 in the race to be New Jersey’s next Governor, a slight increase from our poll two weeks that showed his advantage at 40-39.

In other words, the partisan Democratic polling firm is reporting that the race has shifted in Christie’s direction by three points, and now has a lead barely out of the MoE. Rasmussen likewise reports that Christie has increased his lead to 46/43, with Daggett at 7%, which is down four from last week.  But here’s what may be the important part of that report:

Christie leads by eight points among those who are certain they will show up and vote. A week ago, he was up by five among that group. Christie’s supporters are also less likely to say they might consider voting for someone else.

A week to go. Word is that Quinnipiac will have out something later this week; in the meantime, expect New Jersey to get inundated with even more campaign advertising and national scrutiny .

Moe Lane

PS: Christie for Governor.

Crossposted to RedState.

I know that ‘Candidates swing away in final debate’ (NJ)…

…may make for an interesting headline; but I have a possibly more accurate one.

Supporters face off

An hour before the debate, crowds of Christie and Daggett supporters faced off in front of the studios, yelling taunts from opposite sides of the street and separated by cars.

“Sinking ship! Sinking ship!” chanted the Daggett fans, a reference to Christie’s slippage in the polls.

“We can’t hear you! We can’t hear you!” answered the Christie squad, which outnumbered Daggett’s group about 4-to-1.

It’s “Jon Corzine can’t draw a crowd.”

Moe Lane

PS: Christie for Governor.

PPS: A comment from Democratic Christie supporter Councilwoman Tana Raymond, on Corzine’s ties to convicted Bergen County Democratic chair Joseph Ferriero:

“For years, Jon Corzine facilitated the corrupt leadership of Joseph Ferriero at the Bergen County Democratic Organization with hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial contributions. Even as Corzine preached ethics reform in public, his actions enabled the corrupt status quo and completely contradicted his words. It’s ridiculous for the governor to attempt to play off his financial contributions to Ferriero as something other than what they actually were – Corzine looking the other way in the face of corruption for his own political benefit.”

Why *did* Gov. Corzine fund Ferriero’s corruption for so long?

I mean, I know that the Governor’s rich, thanks to Goldman-Sachs – so donating a mere $440,000 or so to former Bergen County chair Joe Ferriero (and yet another convicted Democratic politician) over the years may have been a mere lark.  A minor duty.  He just did what they told him to.  Still, you’d have thought that Corzine might have noticed all the dirty dealing going on.  Or cared.

Because the legal system did b0th: Continue reading Why *did* Gov. Corzine fund Ferriero’s corruption for so long?

NJ/VA Palin-less?

(Via Hot Air) The Democrats in this Politico piece about former Gov. Palin and the VA/NJ races are spouting nonsense about her long term appeal, of course* – they’re aware as I am that she’s going to be very much in demand in Congressional races where the Democratic incumbent is holding down a seat in a district that McCain or Bush won.  Of which there are quite a few; but Democratic strategists can perhaps not be blamed for not wanting to say something along the lines of ‘Well, THAT WOMAN is going to go through all those Southern/Western Blue-on-Red districts like a buzz-saw, so you might as well get used to it.’  The people who need to hear that most will want to hear it least.

That being said, I don’t expect her to participate in the NJ gubernatorial election, although VA’s may yet still see a presence if the McDonnell campaign goes sour.  Virginia’s at best lightly purple, even now; New Jersey’s pretty definitely blue.  Christie doesn’t have a margin for taking chances right now.

Moe Lane

*As might be perhaps witnessed by interest in her book, which is currently at #3 on Amazon after spending over a week at #1. And that was individual pre-order.

Crossposted to RedState.

[Insert Torricelli-themed pun involving Corzine rumor here.]

RedState colleague Mark Impomeni reports that New Jersey Democrats may be contemplating putting the Torch to Corzine’s campaign:

It could be déjà vu all over again in New Jersey, as rumors percolate that Democrats may force incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine off the November ballot if his poll numbers do not improve quickly. Corzine, a former United States Senator and first-term governor, trails Republican challenger Christopher Christie by nearly double-digits in aggregate polling in the governor’s race and has not enjoyed a lead over Christie in any poll since early January.

The Corzine campaign denies that the governor would consider dropping out, calling talk of a replacement “gossip.”

Why this is not generally considered to be enough to squash that particular rumor is because, of course, New Jersey Democrats did this back when Torricelli was ‘persuaded’ to drop out of the Senate race and replaced in a manner that I would call illegal, but unfortunately the NJ Supreme Court did not. This time around, talk centers around either Rep Pallone or Sen Menendez (although the latter may be reluctant to do so, particularly considering how many of his Bergen County Democratic friends are currently up on corruption charges). The clock’s ticking on this one, as Mark notes: the closer it gets to November, the harder it gets for the Democrats to toss Corzine.

The complicating factor here is that Corzine’s major problem is that he’s loathed by NJ voters for his job performance; unless there’s a convenient revelation of major criminal shenanigans on Corzine’s part, he is going to want to bull his way through and hope that he can narrow the race. And he did win the primary; if NJ Democrats get a name for setting aside the results of their primaries every time the winner ends up polling badly, it becomes a fair question to ask why the party even has them…

Moe Lane

PS: Chris Christie for Governor. Contribute here.

Crossposted to RedState.