Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine maintains a lead of 10 percentage points over Republican businessman Douglas Forrester in the race for New Jersey governor, according to results of a Quinnipiac University poll, released today.
New Brunswick Home News Tribune

For those of you that don’t know, Sen. Jon Corzine is running for Governor of New Jersey. This is both good and bad. It’s bad because I had high hopes for Corzine as a long-serving popular Senator. Keeping his Senate seat in Democratic hands is not assured.

New Jersey is a blue state, but it can swing. Bush Sr. beat Dukakis in 1988, and Christie Whitman served two terms as Governor.

It’s good because Corzine is in position to win. The last elected governor, James McGreevey had to resign when it was disclosed that he was gay, and had had an adulterous affair with a man. McGreevey’s term in office was mired in scandal from the beginning. And it didn’t help that “two Democratic fund-raisers were indicted on federal charges… — one of them accused of lining up prostitutes to discredit a witness in a tax fraud investigation, the other accused of extortion.”

No one should be shocked. New Jersey state politics have always been among the most corrupt in the nation. Between Atlantic City and the Newark Docks, there is enough mob influence to make Tony Soprano blush. But Corzine doesn’t come from the Democratic ranks of the state party. He comes from his Manhattan job at Goldman Sachs, and he has enough money to finance his own campaign. Corzine in beholden to no one.

Doug Forrester, on the other hand, is a kind of combination of Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. You can read about what a schmuck he is here and here.

For Garden Staters, the biggest issue is property taxes. I moved to Philadelphia and saved $6,000 a year over what I was paying in Hightstown, NJ. The polls back me up:

When voters polled were asked in an open-ended question what was the most important issue in deciding their vote in the Nov. 8 election, 36 percent listed taxes, including 23 percent who said property taxes.

People in Jersey are being taxed to death. Corzine understands this:

It’s a fact: New Jerseyans are paying too much in property taxes. The 2 million homeowners in our state pay the highest property tax bills in the nation. New Jersey’s more than one million renters feel the burden too: New Jersey rents are the 2nd highest in the nation, and a major cause is that property taxes are passed on to renters, resulting in sky-high rents.

This fall, there are only really two big political races: the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. If you want to get involved in Jon Corzine’s race, you can sign up to volunteer here and you can donate money here. I encourage you to help Jon Corzine in his campaign to keep the Jersey state house blue. He offers a rare opportunity for the state party to clean up its act and begin doing its job of representing the people the way the people deserve to be represented.

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