Brigid Harrison

Most polls showed the gubernatorial race as a dead heat, but Quinnipiac (the big one)  showed Gov. Jon Corzine leading Chris Christie by 5%.  According to the New York Times, Corzine stood by the dead asset monetization plan he proposed two years ago, giving Republicans perfect political ammunition (Corzine argued that the paper got it wrong).  Corzine brought in Bill Clinton again.  Eleven day pre-election reports show Corzine outspending Christie three to one.  Independent Chris Daggett had to deal with the conspiracy theory that he is in the race to intentionally spoil it for Christie.  A focus group found that voters like Daggett, but don’t want to vote for someone they think will lose.  And the Phillies beat the Yankees in the first game of the World Series.

So who won the final full week before the election?  Four out of our five panelists said there was no clear victor, while one awarded the win to Corzine.

Chris Daggett won the endorsement of the Star-Ledger, and later complained about the Republican Governors Association's ads against him.  It was revealed that Chris Christie went over the Justice Department’s hotel budget when he was U.S. Attorney.  An email surfaced asking Governor Corzine’s cabinet to “get creative” in showing how Corzine’s economic policies are working – even if it’s a “stretch.”  Polls continue to show a deadlocked race between Corzine and Christie.

So who won the week?  Our panel of experts was divided.

After trailing in the polls since February, Jon Corzine finally saw one where he led Chris Christie – even if only by a statistically insignificant one point.  Several other polls also showed the race in a dead heat, or Christie only slightly ahead.  Corzine outlined how he plans to slash the deficit in the next four years, although Christie jumped on him for planning it partly by extending a tax on the wealthy.  And lieutenant governor candidates Loretta Weinberg, Kim Guadagno and Frank Esposito engaged in a contentious debate.

So who won the week?  Two of our experts said Corzine, one picked Guadagno, and one chose nobody. 

Two non-partisan polls came out showing Jon Corzine closing the gap with Chris Christie.  Independent gubernatorial candidate Christopher Daggett laid out a detailed plan to cut property taxes.  South Jersey was victorious in the senate leadership contest, toppling the most popular political figure in the state from the senate presidency, but with no apparent effect (so far) on the gubernatorial race.  It looks like Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) will by the new speaker.  And Christie, Corzine and Daggett had their first debate.  

So who won the week?  Daggett, according to all but one academic PolitickerNJ.com asked. 

In Hunterdon County, independent gubernatorial candidate Christopher Daggett's name is hard to find. He is listed 10th out of 12 candidates for Governor.

Independent candidate Christopher Daggett is running for governor of New Jersey, but voters in most counties will have to look in "Siberia" to find him on the ballot.

Daggett will stand next to Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican Christopher Christie during tonight's televised debate.  He raised enough money to qualify for public financing from the state, won the endorsement of a major environmental group and garnered 12% support in a Quinnipiac University poll.  But unlike Christie and Corzine, who each automatically receive either the first or second position on each county's ballot, Daggett had to try his luck in random drawings for ballot placement with the nine other gubernatorial candidates who do not belong to a major party - none of whom have been able to demonstrate any widespread support for their campaigns. 

In most counties, that relegates him to an obscure ballot position that election watchers jokingly compare to the vast, remote Russian region of Siberia. 

"It certainly represents a challenge, and it shows again how the system is stacked by the two parties against independent candidates," said Daggett's policy director, Mark Magyar. 

Daggett caught a break in two counties: Bergen, the state's most populous, and Gloucester.  In both places, voters will find his name at the top of the ballot's third column - just to the right of Christie's. 

But in Ocean and Atlantic Counties, voters looking for Daggett's name will have to scour the ballot to find him in the second row of the seventh column - the last possible spot (a staffer from the Atlantic County clerk's office joked that "It just worked out that way. Sorry.")   In Hunterdon County, voters have to look past nine candidates before they get to Daggett's name.  And in Warren County, Daggett is the 9th name to appear in the third row- right between candidates Jason Cullen and Joshua Leinsdorf.

Upset not only by his personal disadvantage but by the principle of awarding major party candidates the top two spots, Daggett last month filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the practice.  It fell through when a Superior Court judge refused to hear it before November.

Click here to view the Cumberland County ballot.
Click here to view the Hunterdon County ballot.
Click here to view the Warren County ballot.

It wasn’t the most exciting week in New Jersey gubernatorial politics.  The unemployment rate went up again.  Governor Corzine touted a decrease in uninsured New Jerseyans.  A Monmouth University poll showed Chris Christie ahead of Corzine, but his leadshrank from the previous month.  Corzine agreed to do a debate on a jazz format public radio station, but avoided 101.5fm and the League of Women Voters/ABC televised debates.  Jeb Bush turned up unexpectedly at a Christie fundraiser (although they had a name tag ready for him).   And Chris Daggett said he’ll sue over ballot position. 

Still, this close to the election, everything counts. So who won the week? 

Governor Corzine caved and agreed to participate in an October 1 debate.  Two new polls showed Chris Christie maintaining a lead in the gubernatorial race despite three weeks of very bad news.  Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts announced that he will retire at the end of his term, leading to speculation about who’s going to replace him and intrigue in the state Senate.  Another story about Christie’s driving record came out.

So who came out of the week looking the best, or maybe the least scathed?

 
Brigid Harrison, political science professor at Montclair State University
Winner: Christie

“Chris Christie won the week. He remains ahead in two polls, up by 10 points in the Quinnipiac, up by five in the FDU poll (though this is less than optimal for Christie because Independent Chris Daggett was not included in the FDU poll). What we learned from this week is that the various Christie missteps (Karl Rove, Michelle Brown, and the traffic incidents) were not, in and of themselves, significant enough to cause a serious shift in voters' opinions of Christie. But to remain ahead, Christie will need to get out in front of these issues before the Democrats package them together and spin them in a way that they do start to matter to voters.”

Joe Marbach, professor of political science at Seton Hall and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
Winners: Christie and independent Christopher Daggett

“Overall, I think Christie won the week, largely on the strength of the three polls that came out – the Rasmussen, Quinnipiac and FDU that indicate his lead is holding anywhere from 5-11%.”
    
“I think also that Christie and Daggett won in terms of the Governor participating in the debate…. Daggett gets to participate in the debates, which puts him on the same platform as Christie and Corzine.”

Change in front office communications director “isn’t directly related to the campaign, but whenever you have an incumbent making changes in their communications staff certainly has an impact on the campaign.”

Patrick Murray, Director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute
Result: draw

“Christie got a couple of polls that indicated there hasn’t been much of a dent in his lead at all, even after the news that came out in the prior weeks.  But still there was a slight increase in his negative ratings, which is probably not as big as the Corzine camp would have liked to have seen.”

“On the Corzine camp, they didn’t get their way with the debate schedule, while nobody was willing to call their bluff, the strategic position was that since ELEC looked like they were willing to drag that debate out, it looked like it was going to be a negative process story…  They promptly nipped it in the bud.”

Roberts retirement “could actually help Corzine.”  Since labor leader/Camden County Democratic Co-Chairman Donald Norcross will probably succeed Roberts on the ballot, power broker George Norcross “would like to see probably a bigger than average margin of victory for his brother, which could mean a bigger margin of victory down there in Camden county which could help Jon Corzine.” 

GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie in between state Sen. Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove), left, and state Sen. Brian P. Stack (D-Union City).

News about GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie's failure to disclose a loan to a former employee and report the income on his federal income tax and fallout from his pre-campaign discussions with Karl Rove have Democrats alert to shifting terrain in the gubernatorial election even if they remain guarded about the outcome.

Ahead by double digits through the bulk of the summer, Republicans say the headlines are inevitable campaign turbulence, and not even close to death spiral spasms.

"We'll continue to work contrasts between Jon Corzine and Chris Christie," said Democratic State Chairman Joseph Cryan, who wouldn't identify this week as the first time in the cycle that Gov. Jon Corzine has appeared to have climbed off the political cold slab, a condition some polls have shown the governor to be in since he and Christie officially started their head-to-head rivalry back in June.

State Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Metuchen) today stepped up the optimism.

"At this point it's a horse race, but I'm feeling very confident the governor will be successful," said the chair of the Senate Budget Committee and a prospective candidate for lieutenant governor until Corzine picked her colleague, state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck).

Buono toured Indian-American businesses with Corzine today on Oak Tree Road in Edison in her first campaign appearance with the governor since failing to lock up the LG spot.

Since the gubernatorial primary ended and the general election began, incumbent Jon Corzine has outspent Republican nominee Chris Christie by a 10-1 margin on television ads.

Corzine has spent over $5.4 million on cable and network television in the New York and Philadelphia media markets since June with mostly negative ads, while Christie has spent a little over $540,000 solely in the Philadelphia market during the same period.    

The figures, however, do not count spending by third party groups.  The Republican Governors Association (RGA) has spent about $3 million in New Jersey -- most of it since the June 2 primary.  The Democratic Governors Association, which helped fund the Mid-Atlantic Leadership Fund’s attack ads against Christie before the primary, has not run any ads to help Corzine (or any other candidates) since then. 
    
Radio ad buys are harder to track, and right now it’s impossible to tell exactly how much each campaign has spent on the internet.  But with the next campaign finance reports not coming out until October, television ad buys are one way to keep tabs on campaign spending.

Christie campaign strategist Mike DuHaime noted that his candidate has maintained his high single-digit or low double-digit lead in the polls all summer long despite the disparity.

“How much does he have to spend to make a dent in this lead?” DuHaime said.  “Millions and millions in negative ads seem to have not worked. They keep trying one after the next and the lead hasn’t changed much over the summer.”

To get a true picture of where the New Jersey gubernatorial race stands right now, analysts and pollsters say you need to look past the horse race poll numbers and focus instead on some of the recent suveys' underlying questions.

While the head-to-head match ups demonstrate a clear trend of Republican Christopher Christie consistently leading incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine, they're malleable this early in the campaign, and fluctuations in that number- whether swings or incremental changes - should be taken with a grain of salt.  Voters, for the most part, do not start paying attention until September at the earliest.

"That's why the campaigns are paying attention to all the stuff underneath that: the favorability rating, the issue ratings," said Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray, whose organization, along with Gannett New Jersey, is releasing its own poll on Thursday.

What's clear is that Governor Corzine faces enormous political problems, and that the public is clearly in an anti-incumbent mood.  But there is still time - especially given Corzine's huge monetary advantage - to close the gap with Christie.

In the Quinnipiac University poll released today, Murray said the most important number is the 40% of voters who don't know enough about Christie to have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him.  Although Christie's favorables remains net positive, there's plenty of room for his unfavorables to increase.

"That 40% who don't know Chris Christie hanging out there in this poll, that's got to leave his campaign worried," he said.