Jeff Michaels's Blog

The tidal wave unleashed this week by the FBI and the US Attorney's Office across New Jersey will likely re-calibrate the campaign for Governor.  While the corruption did not touch the Governor personally in any way, the investigation of his DCA Commissioner and the arrest of the protégé of his long-time counselor and advisor Angelo Genova are certainly too close for comfort, and re-set the general election campaign in terms unfavorable for the Democrats.

It is true that Governor Corzine's approval ratings, favorable standing, and ballot strength were all at all time lows, according to all independent public opinion polls.  It is also true that the Governor received no apparent "bounce" from the visit last week by President Obama.  The latest Strategic Vision poll after the visit showed an even stronger Christie lead.

But it is also true that the Governor's spending of his vast personal wealth on early negative advertising had an opportunity to tilt the playing field to his advantage, as his opponent could not match him dollar for dollar.

The Governor has spent in excess of $4 million since the primary for this purpose.

The re-election campaign of Governor Jon Corzine was down-right giddy this week when it was announced that the state's tax amnesty program generated more than $600 million in new state revenue, $400 million more than anticipated.

The Governor's re-election campaign issued a breathless statement touting this accomplishment, and reiterated the Governor's position that the new-found money should be returned to property taxpayers.

Strategists for the Governor no doubt hope that this new windfall will ease some of the pain of the rest of the FY 2010 state budget, an appropriations act that even Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney said "still stinks."

Those supporters of the Governor who are already counting the extra votes this windfall will bring in November would be wise to remember what happened the last time an embattled Democrat Governor and Legislature enacted an ambitious "property tax relief" initiative, as a response to voter anger over their fiscal policies.

In November 1990, the Democratic Party suffered record losses at the local level, and an unknown Republican named Christie Whitman nearly upset US Senator Bill Bradley.  Voter anger over Governor Jim Florio's tax increases and his school formula, the "Quality Education Act (QEA)" generated serious enough voter backlash that the Legislative Democrats vowed to produce in 1991 a massive "property tax relief" plan they hoped would mollify angry voters.

A largely overlooked statistic from Tuesday's election is likely occupying much time and evaluation by Governor Corzine's political advisors, as they plan their campaign strategy and tactics.

On Tuesday, the Governor garnered only 77% of his party's primary vote, against 3 unknown, and arguably, kooky candidates.

What is more significant is that he got more than 70% in only 10 counties, almost all of whom have significant minority populations, or in the case of Morris and Atlantic counties, a contested local election in a town with a large minority population.

The Governor's startling under-performance among the Democratic Party's most active and committed suburban voters,  in most of the state, home to NJ's suburban swing voters, is the clearest indication that the GOP is right to think this may be their first real opportunity in a decade to win a state-wide election.

One of Steve Lonegan's more outlandish claims in his campaign for Governor is that he would be the strongest GOP candidate against Jon Corzine.  One's first instinct is to suppress laughter at this ludicrous assertion, inasmuch as he has lost every race he ever entered outside his small hamlet of Bogota, for County Executive, State Senate, and Governor.  What's more, his tax plan, which would raise income taxes on 70 % of NJ taxpayers, which is not going over well in the Republican Primary, would seem to give the Democrats precisely the only issue with which they could possibly divert the public's attention away from their record.

"I'm going to take this guy out in the debate."
--Steve Lonegan pre-debate hype, May 12, 2009

Like many of Steve Lonegan's promises, his pledge to "take out" Chris Christie in last night's GOP gubernatorial debate fell very short.

Indeed, many observers who watched with me in the NJN Studios, both Christie and Lonegan partisans, were impressed with the level of detail, and the level of rational discussion of the participants.

But the way this race has shaped up, Lonegan needed to score a heavy blow to Christie, but failed to come close to delivering it, despite his promise to do so.

In fact, Christie successfully put Lonegan on the defensive throughout the debate with simple, easy-to-understand criticisms of Lonegan's tax plan, which would raise income tax rates for 70% of NJ taxpayers.  Lonegan was forced to defend it with boring marginal rate statistics, and obscure references to political philosophies of collectivism and income redistribution.

I was in a campaign once with New York-based Republican consultant Arthur Finkelstein.  I always remember the advice Arthur gave to candidates or public officials who find themselves answering any questions about transparency, honesty, or integrity, or dealing with governmental actions that touched on these issues.

Arthur proposed a formulation that he called "the dance of the honest man."  What he meant is that the official or the candidate should always put themselves in the shoes of any normal honest voter who might be asked these same questions, or be required to make a governmental decision, and react according.  How the regular honest voter would react to a particular issue of this kind is the "dance of the honest man."

I recalled this advice on the occasion this week of learning that UMDNJ lost a whistle-blower lawsuit to my friend Carol Caprarola.  Carol was a governmental affairs staffer at UMDNJ who was fired because she dared to question in writing her superiors' little habit of writing illegal campaign contributions from the non-profit state agency to favored political candidates, mostly Democrats, and after she cooperated in a criminal investigation into the agency.

Carol had the courage to question this practice in writing, and was fired in 2006.  She sued UMDNJ and last week a jury awarded her nearly $400,000 in punitive damages.  The jury found that she was passed over for a promotion after testifying before a grand jury, and after a memo she wrote appeared in the Star-Ledger.

The most amazing and telling part of this affair is the reaction of the Corzine Administration, which called the whistle-blower's Court victory "disappointing."

If you apply the Finkelstein formula, ask yourself how a normal honest voter would react if he or she were Governor and in charge of an agency that lost a whistle-blower case?  Would they express disappointment?  Or would they praise the whistle-blower who ended corrupt practices?I think if the Administration were doing the "dance of the honest man" the Administration would be crediting people like Caprarola for shining public scrutiny which ended the abuses and illegal practices in our state agencies, especially since many of these abuses occurred before Governor Corzine took office.

Ask yourself what the CWA and the NJEA would say if a Republican Governor in his or her re-election year proposed a State Budget that reduced the annual payment to the Teachers Pension and Annuity Fund by more than $500 million, from almost $700 million the previous year, to only $120 million?  

How long would it take for an NJEA Rally to be organized at the Statehouse to protest this policy?

The unions' silence and acquiescence in Governor Corzine's plan to do just this, and their assent to legislation permitting towns to defer local pension payments, are strong evidence that Governor Corzine's senior staff and political team have not rolled over and played dead in the face of severe public backlash over his budget and recent devastating independent polls.

That the union leadership has either agreed or been cowed into silence in the face of these proposals demonstrates a surprising degree of skill and tact from the Governor's senior advisors, which some observers say had been lacking in the front office for several years.

The question is - Is this new group of advisors, while perhaps short on "flash," long enough on smarts to help the Governor recover from his current image problems?

In the run-up to next week’s Budget Address, many New Jerseyans are anxiously awaiting the Governor’s decision on whether he maintains NJ’s property tax rebates.  He and the legislative leaders have apparently ruled out cutting them for some senior citizens;  no decision has been announced as to the fate of rebates for non-seniors.

There are many observers who insist that cutting out rebates for non-seniors has been done before, without political consequence.  They point to the decision in 1992 by the Republican legislature to cut the Florio-era rebates for non-seniors.  The GOP not only survived, this argument goes, but went on to win the Governor’s office the following year.  How bad could it be?

This argument ignores that this recession is much worse than the early 1990’s.  Incomes and jobs are disappearing for NJ’s middle-class.  Large portions of retirement and college savings plans have been wiped out.  Rebates are likely to be more important to middle-class families in 2009, than ever before.  And no Legislature or Governor has reduced rebates in the same year they were seeking re-election.  Until now.