Bill Pascrell

Gov. Jon Corzine at the convention.: Politicker photo 

DENVER - The clash of speaking styles could not have been more dramatic.

There was U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), consigning Karl Rove to the most fiery furnaces of Dante’s Inferno, and putting extra incisors in the teeth of the party attack dog on the tail end of a Thursday breakfast in which half the crowd had appeared asleep before Pascrell arrived and roused them.

Then came Gov. Jon Corzine, and one could almost imagine the house lights again going way down as he began his morning remarks.

On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, the governor went to that oratorical touchstone to refer back to something even earlier, which King had also invoked in his 1963 speech: the words "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence.

"We now have an opportunity as a nation and as a human race to make that real," Corzine told the crowd. "We will be as hard as Joe Biden’s mother told him to be, but we shouldn’t lose track of the fact that there is a vision for a better world."

It was a quintessential Corzine statement, delivered in the most self-effacing Midwestern tones. Every time he slid a Jersey edge into his rhetoric, as when he roared moments later that Democrats are in the hardest fight of their lives and have one hell of a chance, he still carried the thought to a idealistic conclusion.

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark): Politicker photo

DENVER - It was coming to an end in an Irish bar, only it wouldn’t actually end there. It would in another bar, a few blocks removed.

Two bars separated by one speech.

"It should be a walkover, of course," said U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark). "These guys - Obama and McCain - are neck and neck. I think it’s perhaps the trepidation about race that makes it that way, but we'll see."

In a few hours, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) would take the stage and accept his party’s nomination.

Payne, and his elder brother former Assemblyman Bill Payne, mingled among a respectably large crowd of guests in this, the last big, pre-Obama speech bash in downtown Denver at the Celtic Tavern, thrown by U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) and U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson).

The Celtic Tavern is located near the light rail line, and soon the delegates and superdelegates and other guests would pile aboard and head out to Invesco Field to see and hear Obama.

In the meantime, the hosts brought Speaker Joe Cryan up onto the stage with the folk band to take a bow. Just as they were stepping over the microphone cords and getting ready to launch into the Irish songs, the bar door swung open and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy walked in, prompting Pascrell to make a special introduction.

It almost looked staged, as if a staffer had sent Healy a text message. Healy's a good Irish tenor with a rich, well-modulated voice.

But the mayor’s stride-in would astoundingly prove a premature entrance to the main event, for on this afternoon, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Union City) went to the front of the room.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Union City): Politicker photo

DENVER - Sen. Robert Menedez (D-Union City) sang a more than passable verison of Toora loora loora at the Pallone-Pascrell pre-Obama speech party at the Celtic Tavern here Thursday night.

The Irish-Americans in the room listened with apparent satisfaction.

Corzine deputy chief of staff Maggie Moran, governor's spokesman Sean Darcy, Pallone chief Jeff Carroll and others all gave Menendez's perfomance a ramrod thumbs-up.

There wasn't a dry mug in the place.

A New Jersey Congressman says that former White House advisor Karl Rove is going to hell: Getty Images Photo
DENVER -- Speaking in front of the New Jersey delegation this morning, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) said that former White House official Karl Rove – for years President Bush’s closest advisor – is going to hell.

Pascrell said that the last eight years have been full of squandered opportunities and missteps, both domestically and internationally, and pinned the blame squarely on the Bush Administration.

“We might have missed the last eight years because folks did not tell us the truth,” he said. “Dante’s Inferno laid out very specifically the very levels receding into hell. And the hottest place is reserved for those who distort the truth, who manipulate our minds, or who attempt to do it, anyway. So I don’t think Bush and Cheney will be at the hottest point in the inferno, but I sure as hell know that Karl Rove will be.”

Not surprisingly, the New Jersey delegation was thrilled with Joe Biden’s speech tonight.  But among three delegates, the most powerful moment was Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden’s introduction of his father. 

Beau Biden’s recounting of the family’s tragic narrative, when he and his brother survived a car wreck that killed his mother and infant sister, struck State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) particularly hard.

Listening to his son speak and seeing him come out, that was very powerful,” she said.  “You could see the son’s eyes welled up with tears, appropriately so.”

DENVER --If U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-Haddon Heights) does go back on his pledge and returns to his House seat, don’t expect U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) to welcome him back.

When asked whether he would “forgive and forget” Andrews’s primary challenge against Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park), Pascrell said “I look at it this way, who am I to forgive anyone?”

It’s the scenario that won’t die, no matter how many times Andrews denies it.  South Jersey sources here at the convention continue to speculate that there’s a slight chance Andrews will return to the seat – the ballot spot for which is being held by his wife.  Even the revelation that Andrews is in job negotiations with Goldman Sachs hasn’t extinguished the idea. 

To U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), the lack of any primetime speakers at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions is just another example of both parties using the Garden State cash machine before abandoning the state to its own devices.

“I think it was an insult to the state of New Jersey because a lot of money comes out of this state for both political parties, and a lot of support for both political parties. So there’s no excusing it,” he said.

Responding to a Star-Ledger report that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Hoboken) was eventually offered a speaking spot but turned it down because it wasn’t primetime, Pascrell quickly responded that they only offered it “after the fact.”

DENVER -- The reaction of the New Jersey delegation to Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight seemed almost uniformly positive. Most said she hit the right notes. All found her message a unifying one.

And perhaps the message that resonated most with the delegation was Clinton’s emphasis that her supporters weren’t just pulling for her, but a message that she said Barack Obama shares.

“I think Hillary Clinton really hit all the right notes. She did a magnificent job reminding everyone – she asked her supporters the right question: did you work so hard just for me or was it for all the causes that we believe in,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman, who was Barack Obama’s most prominent early backer in New Jersey. “If it was ‘not just for me,’ if it was for the causes we all believe in, then you must support Barack Obama as President.”

Barrett and Kerry synchronize their BlackBerrys.: Politicker photo  

DENVER - Essex County operative Tom Barrett didn’t really have a horse in the race at this point. But Essex County Freeholder Linda Lordi Cavanaugh and her friends did.

This would be Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) "Don’t Cry for me Argentina" moment, and consummate party insider Barrett wanted to make sure the diehard Clinton supporters got there for the coming Clinton catharsis.

He settled up with the waiter at the Palms and high-stepped it for Lawrence Avenue where Cavanaugh and company were already hobbling double-time on high heels on their way out to hail a cab.

As the Clintonistas piled in, Barrett caught sight of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) emerging from one, and soft-shoeing after a high-class-looking brunette.

Party Chairman John Currie and Assemblywoman Nellie Pou (D-Paterson): Politicker photo 

DENVER - Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) romped in Passaic County in the Democratic Primary, essentially blowing up the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) there with a 59-38% victory.

"He didn’t win a single town in Passaic," said Democratic Party Chairman John Currie, and that includes the county’s biggest city.

"In my ward, he lost handily," recalled Sixth Ward Paterson Councilman Andre Sayegh, a longtime Obama supporter. "A lot of Latinos in my ward told me, ‘We’ll vote for you, but not Obama.’ It wasn’t a landslide, but he lost Paterson, and got trounced in my ward."

Now old school Democrat Currie, a onetime Clinton backer, wants to mobilize his troops behind Obama for the general election, where Democrats number 47,807 to the Republicans 38,662 registered voters.