Wally Edge's blog

Gov.-elect Christopher Christie's first big move - putting Richard Bagger and Robert Grady in charge of the state budget transition team - is an impressive display of gravitas and seems to avoid some of the early mistakes made by his predecessor, Jon Corzine.  Bagger and Grady offer an interesting contrast to Bradley Abelow and Gary Rose, two Goldman Sachs executives with no government or campaign experience, who were brought in by Corzine to run his economic shop. Christie has picked government insiders-turned-private sector outsiders who understand politics.  Democrats complained about Abelow and Rose all the time, but never about Bagger.

Bagger, who spent nearly a dozen years in the Legislature, knows his way around the state budget; he chaired the Assembly Appropriations Committee for four years, and was well-liked and respected by legislators from both parties.  He left the State Senate in after one year to move up within the Pfizer corporate structure, so he bears no responsibility for budgets passed by Democratic governors.  He also understands local government; he was a Mayor and Councilman in Westfield before his election to the Assembly.

Grady is an expert on budget matters; he was the Associate Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President George H.W. Bush, and understands New Jersey politics - and the media - from his years as Gov. Thomas Kean's Communications Director and as Chief of Staff to U.S. Rep. Millicent Fenwick.  He returns to New Jersey after spending more than fifteen years as a partner at the Carlyle Group, one of the nation's largest private equity firms.

The race for governor helped give PolitickerNJ.com our best month since the site launched on February 1, 2000.

As compared to the four weeks before Election Day 2008, visits to our site are up 93%.   Page views have increased by 151%, and time on site has gone up 44% -- our readers send more than 12 minutes per visit on PolitickerNJ.com.  We had over 3.5 million page views during the month leading into Election Day 2009, and nearly 600,000 visitors!

Dana Redd's victory in the Camden mayoral race was as easy as everyone expected, which means Democrats will need to fill her fifth district State Senate seat.  Possible candidates include Assemblymen-elect Donald Norcross and Angel Fuentes, outgoing Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, Camden City Councilwoman Dana Burley, and Camden City Councilman Whip Wilson.  Redd will need to step down no later than January 1, when she takes office as mayor; a special election convention would be held 7-35 days after her resignation.  If it's Norcross or Fuentes, a second special election convention would need to be held to fill their Assembly seats.

Worth noting: the Corzine campaign put U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone on TV as their spokesman early this evening - at least an indication that Gov. Jon Corzine might prefer the Monmouth County congressman if a U.S. Senate seat were to open up.  Also worth noting: if Corzine loses his re-election bid, Christopher Christie would appoint a Republican to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy.

When you get this close to Election Day, there is no shortage of dumb comments that come from people who are either in public office or likely to win one.  But with Joseph Ferriero no longer in charge, what's coming out of Bergen county is sort of amazing.

The best line of the week came from Assemblyman Frederick Scalera (D-Nutley), who sought to lessen the effect of Ferriero's criminal conviction by noting that he also represents parts of Essex and Passaic counties: "We answer to three county chairs," Scalera said, not considering that some might think he actually answers to the voters.

The biggest stretch of the truth also came from two Democratic Assemblywomen, Connie Wagner (D-Paramus) and Joan Voss (D-Fort Lee).  Their campaign put out a mailer attacking Republican Judith Fisher of being an Internet pornographer.  Their evidence: Fisher and her husband own a firm that produces accounting software for intellectual property management.  One of their customers is Playboy.  Fisher's problem is that she's running in a Democratic district and doesn't have the money to respond - or talk about how Wagner and Voss were hand-picked for their seats by Ferriero, who liked candidates who didn't necessarily think entirely for themselves.

Democratic incumbents Julie O'Brien and Vernon Walton have seized on attacks against tobacco companies as a critical issue in a race for Bergen County Freeholder.  They are blaming GOP challenger John Driscoll, who is a field sales representative for Lorillard Tobacco, for his role in enabling children to smoke cigarettes.  "As a mother and a grandmother I know how hard it is to keep kids away from cigarettes. John Driscoll's efforts aren't helping.  It takes your breath way," O'Brien said.  Maybe it's smart politics that O'Brien has shifted the debate away from property taxes and Ferriero (by the way, he picked her too). 

A Republican Council candidate in North Arlington taped a one-hour conversation with four Democratic leaders, including Mayor Peter Massa, where the Democrats outline a plan to give him "money, appointments and power" in exchange for dropping out the race.  What remains to be seen is whether the bad guy is Republican Chris Johnson, who may have solicited a bribe, or the Democrats, who may have violated the same state law that sent the Mayor of Carney's Point to jail.

U.S. Rep. Steven Rothman's e-mail to PolitickerN.com:

The Star-Ledger is reporting that "the revenue situation at our newspaper has worsened this year, and we expect a further significant revenue decline next year."  In a memorandum to full-time employees, publisher George Arwady announced another "voluntary buyout offer" as the newspaper seeks to reduce their staff "by at least fifty people."

Click here to read Arwady's memo.

It's almost like a special election for an open seat: sponsors of this week's gubernatorial debate are mulling candidates to fill the vacancy caused by the withdrawal of Tom Moran (I-Star-Ledger).  Moran was slated to be the third panelist on Friday when Jon Corzine, Christopher Christie and Christopher Daggett in the second officially sanctioned debate.  But the Star-Ledger withdrew as a sponsor after realizing they had violated a state law that requires debate sponsors to hold off on an official endorsement until the debate is over. 

New Jersey again finds itself in need of a candidate switch.  The remaining sponsors - William Paterson University, The Record, the Herald News, Fox News, WWOR-TV (Channel 9), and WTXF-TV (Channel 29), along with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission - must decide on a replacement candidate for Moran.

A spokesman for the debate, Patrick DeDeo of WPU, would not rule out the possibility of the seat remaining unfilled.  That would leave The Record's Alfred Doblin and WTXF Fox 29 news anchor Thomas Drayton as the lone panelists.  WOR's Harry Martin will be the moderator.

Moran, who recently returned to the Star-Ledger after a brief stint with PSE&G, has been following the gubernatorial race closely and has institutional knowledge of the candidates and the key issues of the campaign.  So does Doblin, a veteran columnist and editorial editor.  Drayton is newer to the scene: he joined the Philadelphia Fox affiliate last year after spending six years as an anchorman in Sacramento.  He previously worked in Colorado, Alaska and Wyoming.

Debate organizers may look to fill the Moran seat with another reporter that has been actively covering the race for governor.

Some insiders wonder if the race for debate sponsor last summer (ELEC picked two out of three eligible candidates) might have been affected by the participation of the Star-Ledger, the state's daily newspaper.  Had the Star-Ledger not been a candidate, perhaps the winner would have been the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, who had applied with a major media sponsor: ABC-TV's New York and Philadelphia affiliates.  ABC had offered to pre-empt Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy to air the debate live on a weeknight from 7-8 PM.  That's a better time slot that Fox, which will air the debate live on their website, and rebroadcast in Philadelphia at 2PM Saturday and in New York at noon on Sunday.

Less than a month after he and his wife were indicted on charges that they funneled legislative paychecks into a campaign account, Assemblyman Anthony Chiappone (D-Bayonne) used his campaign account to pay his wife $6,000 to manage his bid for re-election.

According to reports filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, Diane Chiappone was paid $6,000 on September 23 to serve as "campaign manager, coordinator, and record keeper."

State Attorney General Anne Milgram has alleged that Chiappone issued $7,532 in paychecks to a legislative aide, who in turn donated all of the money to the campaign along with $629 to a woman who they falsely claimed was a legislative aide.  The state charges that that more than half of the money -- $4,299 - was deposited for personal use, and that the rest was put into the campaign account but not reported to the Election Law Enforcement Commission.

Two State Senators who have remained loyal to Richard Codey (D-Roseland) are likely nearing the end of the legislative careers, according to several Democratic insiders.  As a white man representing a district where Latinos and African Americans outnumber whites, John Girgenti (D-Hawthorne) has been at risk of losing party support for the last few years.  Assemblywoman Nellie Pou (D-Paterson) asked Passaic County Democrats to consider her for the Senate in 2007, but party leaders backed the re-election of the 62-year-old Hawthorne Democrat who has been in the Legislature since 1977.  Latino leaders have been eyeing the 35th district Senate seat as their best opportunity to double their representation in the upper house – from one to two.

Girgenti could either lose party support for another term in the Senate, or mapmakers – if Democrats were to dominate legislative redistricting – could offer him the chance run in a new district, perhaps against Senate Minority Whip Kevin O’Toole (R-Cedar Grove).

Some Democrats say the retirement of Senate President Pro-Tempore Shirley Turner (D-Lawrence) could come sooner rather than later.  If Gov. Jon Corzine wins a second term, Turner – no favorite of the front office – could be offered another post in an effort to clear a path for Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) to go to the Senate.  Watson Coleman, popular with Democrats, appears to have gotten the short end of the stick in a legislative leadership deal that will make Sheila Oliver (D-Ewing) the next Assembly Speaker and Joseph Cryan (D-Union) the new Majority Leader.  Watson Coleman is also a contender for a cabinet post in a second Corzine administration. 

If Turner completes her turn and Watson Coleman remains in the Assembly, there is a good chance that Turner will get nudged into retirement in two years so that Watson Coleman can move up to the Senate then.