JON CORZINE

Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) in Summit on Friday.: Politicker photoSUMMIT - Coming off a train station rally here for presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer and state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) convened a town hall meeting at the high school, where they brandished their fiscally conservative credentials in a room of about 50 voters.

Now in a race with Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) to represent the 7th Congressional District, Lance the veteran legislator underscored his tenacity fighting bloated government, including the administration of disgraced former Gov. Jim McGreevey.Former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer addresses voters in the Summit High School Library as GOP organizer Kelly Hatfield looks on: Politicker photo

"I am the ‘Lance’ of Lance versus McGreevey," the senator said of his suit against the former administration to curb borrowing to balance the state budget.

The New Jersey Supreme Court in 2004 allowed McGreevey to borrow $1.9 billion, or nearly 7 percent of what was then a $28 billion budget, but forbade the governor from borrowing in the future.

Talking to Summit voters Friday evening in the high school library, Lance took pride too in noting how his proposed Constitutional amendment to ban borrowing without voter approval will appear on the Nov. 4th ballot.

State Sen. Tom Kean, Jr. (R-Union): Politicker photoSUMMIT - As far back as 2004, Sen. Tom Kean, Jr. (R-Union) recalls himself and others - state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon), then Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove) among them - complaining about the lack of transparency in the way legislators obtained money for projects in their respective districts.

Now on the heels of George LeBlanc’s testimony in the corruption trial of former Sen. Wayne Bryant (D-Camden) in which the Senate budget officer highlighted how legislators in 2004 and 2005 siphoned money from a dedicated $40 million property tax relief fund, Kean wants answers.

"The next step is to get our hands around what occurred," the senator told PolitickerNJ.com. "Who was spending and what was being spent? The most important thing now is to expose to the light of day what was happening - expose the process.

"We're talking about a system in which information was being held not just from the public but from other members of the Legislature, a system that resulted in massive overspending with no oversight, which made New Jersey more unaffordable, in which members of the (Codey) administration were complicit."

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark), and Piscataway grassroots organizer Nadia Brown: Politicker photo 

ROSELLE - It’s Garrett Smith country on a Saturday.

Emptying a chair alongside the young Roselle mayor, U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark) stood in front of a microphone and gave Gov. Jon Corzine props for playing a role in discovering Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il) when Corzine chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Obama’s romping here in Roselle by every indication, but Payne and Obama aren’t eyeball to eyeball on everything, including last week’s Wall Street bailout.

While Obama and his Republican rival in the presidential race on Wednesday quietly supported the $700 billion measure that its critics say falls disproportionately across the shoulders of American taxpayers, Payne twice vociferously bucked the controversial bill in the House.

Today he laid out his views before a cheering crowd in Roselle’s Warinanco Park, where several hundred people gathered in support of Obama on the front-end of a Union County voter registration drive days before the Oct. 14th registration deadline.

Gov. Jon Corzine: Politicker file photo 

Governor Jon S. Corzine on Saturday afternoon plans to address a rally in support of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) at Warinanco Park in Roselle.

According to Obama campaign spokesman Andrew Poag, in his remarks the governor intends to detail why he believes Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) healthcare plan is wrong for New Jersey.

"Additionally, Obama’s New Jersey Campaign for Change will continue to hit the pavement across the state contacting voters in the run up to Election Day," Poag said.

Atlantic County Republican Chairman Keith Davis today challenged Gov. Corzine to skip a fundraiser for Sheriff Jim McGettigan and the county freeholder candidates scheduled for Monday.

Since Corzine last week outlined a series of sweeping ethics reforms, Davis said it would make sense for him to stay away from Atlantic County.

“By withdrawing from the event, the Governor can make an unequivocal statement that he is committed to ending pay to play and the practice of wheeling campaign contributions and that he will refuse to lend his presence, the prestige of his office, or his assistance to those who violate existing financing laws,” said Davis in a press release.

Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop just saw his own municipal pay-to-play ordinance signed into law by the city council on Tuesday.  The next day, Gov. Corzine outlined a sweeping ethics reform package that, if passed, Fulop thinks will strengthen the one that Jersey City just enacted. 

The Governor’s plan covers banning contributions to municipal officials from redevelopers.  That, Fulop said, was part of his original plan, but he was advised that it wouldn’t pass muster in a legal challenge because of state laws favoring redevelopers– so he dropped it. 

“For us in Jersey City, I think the Governor’s would certainly be stricter because it would affect redevelopment, which would give us more stringent pay-to-play laws,” said Fulop.

U.S. Attorney Chris Christie: Politicker file photoSubpoena activity in Paterson on the day Gov. Jon Corzine pulled the cape off of a sweeping new piece of ethics reform provided an ample reminder of another presence on the political landscape.

U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

As some Democratic Party strongmen fume quietly about Corzine’s efforts to weaken the fundraising capacities of leadership committees in the third year of his gubernatorial tour of duty, his potential Republican opponent in 2009 is going through his own "anything you can do, I can do better" ritual, to hear the back-chatter in the state right now.

At worst, Corzine’s ethics package is a quick prep phase for what Democrats are certain will be another autumn appearance by Christie, who last year in early September decimated a statewide corruption ring and left the Democrats in a shambles trying to defend their recent ethics legislation. Gov. Jon Corzine: Politicker file photo

At best - to the most cynical - the newest ethics package signals what state Sen. Brian P. Stack (D-Hudson) calls some "better political thinking," which he would like to see practiced by the Corzine administration.

After all, Christie’s record suggests he’s coming with something.

The question is whether this time the U.S. attorney’s quarry will be the remnants of Operation Broken Boards, which felled 11 officials, but left some loose ends that many observers feel Christie will now resolve in short order - prior to the Nov. 4th election.

Or will it be bigger, on the order of more big fish reel-ins in Bergen County, for example?

er union leader and gubernatorial ex-girlfriend Carla Katz has filed a legal brief saying that the emails she exchanged with Gov. Corzine should be kept private because they touched on union negotiations, reports the Associated Press.  

Katz attorney Paul Fishman argued that the some of the emails made “in connection with” contract negotiations don’t have to be disclosed, while the rest of the correspondence is private.

Republican State Chairman Tom Wilson is suing to make the emails public, believing that they should be public information.  Corzine cited executive privilege.  Wilson won the initial phase of the lawsuit, but Corzine appealed. 

The entire Republican Assembly caucus sent a letter to Gov. Corzine today urging him to reconsider his reluctance to cut more out of the state budget to deal with the looming financial crisis.

Republicans earlier this week pressured Corzine to reopen the budget in light of the nation’s fiscal emergency, to which he responded that he did not see an immediate need to do so and would “take responsible action as the facts unfold."

Corzine’s office said the budget was put together prudently and may be able to withstand the economic downturn.

“We, the undersigned members of the Assembly Republican Caucus, implore you to reconsider your refusal to revisit the budget for the current fiscal year and find more cuts to compensate for the loss of tax revenue that will be the inevitable result of the calamity on Wall Street and the continued loss of jobs,” read the Repubicans’ letter.

If enacted, Gov. Corzine’s reform agenda could curtail the power of county chairs, who would be able to tap donors for less money and wouldn’t be able to wheel money from one county to another.  But in solidly Republican Somerset County, GOP Chairman Dale Florio thinks that the reforms don’t go far enough. 

Florio thinks the wheeling ban isn’t strict enough, since it allows state committees to donate unlimited funds to county committees, while still allowing county committees to donate $25,000 to state committees.    

That’s still wheeling, according to Florio, whose day job is as a partner in one of Trenton's most influential lobbying firms.