Anne Milgram

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg is trying to help Paul Fishman become the next U.S. Attorney from New Jersey.

Paul Fishman was fairy close to becoming New Jersey's U.S. Attorney in 1999, and as Democrats prepare for their first opportunity to fill the post since then, there is increasing speculation that 2009 may be his year. 

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg pushed hard for Fishman to get the U.S. Attorney post when Faith Hochberg was nominated to a federal judgeship in 1999.  But Fishman got in the middle of a rather extraordinary public feud between Lautenberg and U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli.  The Clinton administration sided with Torricelli, and when Hochberg resigned to take her seat on the bench (after a lengthy delay in the confirmation process), Attorney General Janet Reno elevated Torricelli's preferred choice, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary, as New Jersey's interim federal prosecutor.  Cleary served until George W. Bush's nominee, Christopher Christie, took office in January 2002.

PolitickerNJ.com reported last October that Fishman would be Lautenberg's top choice if Barack Obama won the presidency.  With other potential contenders asking not to be considered, including attorney Joseph Hayden and Attorney General Anne Milgram, Fishman has moved to the top of the list in a campaign that essentially needs just two votes: Lautenberg and U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. 

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Attorney General Anne Milgram, who may have helped save Gov. Jon Corzine's political career, with then-U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, who may be the Republican nominee for Governor this fall.

One of the winners of the week has got to be Attorney General Anne Milgram, who took a risk and personally argued Gov. Jon Corzine's case against the release of his personal e-mails before a panel of appellate court judges and won.  Overturning a Superior Court Judge's ruling that Corzine should make e-mail correspondence with former girlfriend/union leader Carla Katz public could play a pivotal role in the Governor's bid for a second term. 

Gov. Jon Corzine, right, with senior policy advisor (and former 4th Congressional District candidate) Josh Zeitz

TRENTON – It’s very early, of course. 

But Gov. Jon Corzine at his full-fledged press conference on the fourth floor of the Hughes Justice Center this afternoon, where he was flanked by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner and Attorney General Anne Milgram, suggested the déjà all over again feel of Gerry Ford’s defensive posture campaign against Jimmy Carter one day after Corzine’s presumptive chief rival entered the race for governor.  

In that 1976 presidential contest between Carter and Ford, Carter was out in the hinterlands while Ford tracked the sedate and somber steps of good government, immersed in all the symbolic trappings of his office. 

In this case, in the face of repeated Republican put-downs that Democrats with their overt culture of political patronage and government first ask questions afterwards approach, Corzine projected the image of an executive committed to making the engine run as he announced in the midst of a national recession the creation of a new state-supported mortgage foreclosure mediation program.

The state attorney general should be investigating how the corruption of "money manager" Bernard Madoff has hurt New Jersey residents and groups, espeically the charitable organizations that have become even more critical during the current economic downturn.

Politicker.com managing editor James Pindell was elected to the Capital Beat Board of Directors

Capitol Beat, an association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, gave out awards over the weekend for the bets of statehouse reporting in 2008.  The Star-Ledger won honors in three categories: In the Single Report category, first place went to Susan Livio and Mary Jo Patterson for their story on “Problems Beset Program for Troubled Kids”  Patterson, the wife of former Star-Ledger political reporter David Wald (now the spokesman for Attorney General Anne Milgram) has taken the newspaper buyout, while Livio will remain at the Star-Ledger.

Dunstan McNichol and John Martin won second place honors in he In-Depth Reporting category with their story “Waiting in pain” McNichol and Martin have both accepted buyouts. Joe Donohue, who is leaving the Star-Ledger to join the Gov. Jon Corzine's administration, won an Honrable Mention in the Beat Reporting category.

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According to pubished reports, Gov. Jon Corzine is a possible candidate for U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in Barack Obama's administration

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has asked potential administration officials to fill out a 63 question form, according to a report in the New York Times.

Question 13: "If you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but not limited to an email, text message or instant message, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-elect if it were made public, please describe."

Sources say that Jeff Pillets, a Pulitzer Prize nominated investigative reporter for The Record, is being investigated by the New Jersey State Police for allegedly swiping some documents from the Department of Environmental Protection.  The alleged theft, which has attracted considerable buzz within political and media circles today, happened while Pillets was reviewing files related to an Open Public Records Act request.  Sources say that Pillets later returned the files and was questioned by law enforcement officials.

NEWARK - In the middle of a political battlezone in the lead-up to the Nov. 4th presidential election, the forces of President George Bush aligned with the Democrats on the ground here in New Jersey to support the expansion of a prisoner re-entry program in the City of Newark.

Gov. Jon Corzine today stood with state Attorney General Anne Milgram, Mayor Cory Booker, representatives of the U.S. Department of Labor and others to announce the infusion of $5 million in county, state and federal prisoner re-entry funds.

The program expansion will beef up opportunities for Newark ex-cons to get job coaching, job readiness training and mentoring, Milgram told a packed crowd in the Dryden House near Lincoln Park.

The attorney general laid out the stats: 60 percent of those released from prison are re-arrested, and 50 percent are re-convicted. With the expansion of this program, "we know we can successfully drop the recidivism rate," Milgram said.

If you care: with Gov. Jon Corzine, Senate President Richard Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts in Denver attending the Democratic National Convention this week, Anne Milgram is manning the ship at home.  The Attorney General, fourth in the line of gubernatorial succession, is serving as Acting Governor.

Crime fighters U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie and state Attorney General Anne Milgram will appear together at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy on Thursday.

NJN’s lead anchor Kent Manahan will moderate a panel that is scheduled to focus on the issue of human trafficking, and will feature Christie and Milgram followed by a question-and-answer session.