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