Cory Booker

More New Jerseyans get their state news on political and public affairs from television than from any other source, though they think their in-state newspapers do a good job covering the state. 

A Monmouth University/Gannett poll released this morning shows that 41% of state residents get most of their information from television.  Another 28% get most of their information from newspapers, while 19% mainly use internet news sources and 6% most often listen to the radio.

But New Jerseyans read newspapers about as much as they watch television news broadcasts out of New York and Philadelphia.  While 43% watch television news nearly every day, 42% read a newspaper regularly, 32% visit Web sites about every day and 22% listen to talk radio.

Of New Jersey residents who read the paper, 42% open it mainly for local community news, while 30% read it for national news and just 15% for state news.

"Like most Americans, New Jerseyans have become accustomed to turning on the television for news updates.  However, the focus of TV coverage tends to be national or the city where those media outlets are located, while newspapers are favored for their local news coverage.  Since we lack a home-grown broadcast media market, this leaves a gap for state-level news exposure in New Jersey," said Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Election Day, 2008

Standing in the vanguard of opposing parties makes Gov.-elect Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker obvious political adversaries - a relationship made more intriguing by their agreeable history and the crisis demands on both of them to deliver reforms in their respective spheres of power - but whatever the dynamics of their personal and professional relations, allies of both men expect a coming collision between Newark and New Jersey.

Don't count Booker among them.

"I know people want to turn this into a rivalry but when you consider the monumental challenges we are up against right now, he is my greatest ally," Booker said of Christie, the Republican who on Nov. 3rd defeated Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. "To characterize us as rivals would be like saying Democrats and Republicans were the chief antagonists during World War II. We're in a crisis."

"I would also say - and I use this word because it is accurate - that Chris Christie is my friend. We have been friends for three years and he can assume credit for things we have accomplished here these past three years."

Booker knows the buzz about how he's the Democratic Party's most likely nominee for governor in 2013, to which he gives the only politic response: he's focused on the city's crime problem.

Prodded on politics and Christie, he adds, "I'm focused on next year's mayoral election and on electing the Booker Team (of council candidates)."

Newark West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, left, with state Senate President/former Governor Richard Codey (D-Roseland)

NEWARK - Over 100 people packed the Spot on Tuesday night for a fundraiser in support of West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, who's up for re-election next year as a member of the Booker Team.

So far, Rice has no challengers to the seat he has held since he landed in office three and a half years ago and there was considerable buzz in the room and all up and down the bar about his moving up politically in the not too distant future.

"This is the last time you'll be running for the West Ward council seat," Assemblyman Tom Giblin (D-Montclair) told the Essex County rising star.

But Rice proclaimed that whatever happens next year or beyond, he intends to protect his "little brother" on the council, South Ward Councilman Oscar James, Jr.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the front runner for the Democratic nomination for Governor in 2013, will headline a fundraiser next month for Senate Judiciary Chairman Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge).  The chairman of Sarlo's fundraising event is his boss, literally: North Jersey developer Joseph Sanzari.

NEWARK - As inspirational as President Barack Obama remains in Newark, politics in this city still hinges on local mechanics - and there are undeniably several factors contributing to a lack of good structural pre-conditions for this governor's race.

Take the Central Ward.

Last year at this time the city was blanketed with foot soldiers selling the local candidacies of Eddie Osborne and Charles Bell.

Each campaign had octopus arms around the presidential candidacy of Obama who, by the way, was on the ballot - for real.

Other Central Ward contenders were in the race, each one anxious to prove why he or she actually best encapsulated change in the mold of the presidential candidate, and each one embodying a key voter demographic.

That battle at the grassroots and ward level created the perfect atmospherics for top-down, bottom-up fusion and symbiosis.

NEW BRUNSWICK - Obama's on the ballot Tuesday.

That's what U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark) told a group of black activists and Payne allies at a meeting of the African-American Political Alliance here aat the United Methodist Church on Saturday.

"This race has national significance," the veteran congressman told a room packed with 100 leaders and community activists. "The Republicans would love to say a Corzine loss is a referendum on Obama. If we lose Virginia, and then lose New Jersey, you can see the headline: 'Clean sweep by GOP: Obama on the decline.' They just can't wait to write that story.

"There's no way we're going to allow that to happen, right?"

"Right," the crowd called back.

Payne called up Corzine Deputy Campaign Manager James Gee.

"It's essential the - and they have all these fancy names for it - the base vote comes out," said Gee.

**** UPDATED: Sen. Ronald Rice's staff today told PolitickerNJ.com that Rice will not attend the Obama rally tomorrow because his mother is gravely ill.  

NEWARK - Two big charter buses idle outside of headquarters off South Orange Avenue and state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark) is just about ready to give the signal for the two of them to get going.

"Our people always march at night," he says in the face of the darkening streetscape. "They hit the doors between 4 and 8 p.m."

Onboard are 109 canvassers for Gov. Jon Corzine, with instructions to blanket the West Ward with door hangers and campaign literature for the incumbent Democratic governor two days in front of President Barack Obama's 11th hour Corzine rally in Newark followed by the election itself next Tuesday.

No one seems to know at this point exactly who's going to win: Corzine or his Republican opponent, Chris Christie; but the campaign wants to squeeze 40,000 votes out of Newark, and Rice has a goal to help get the governor 8,000 votes in the West Ward, a long-shot, he admits.

Four years ago, then-candidate Doug Forrester's campaign tore through the streets with a lot of hoopla and once the operatives here had recovered after being doubled over with laughter, they hit back with a vengeance against the interloper from the GOP and delivered nearly 9,000 votes for the Democrat.

Essex County Corzine Campaign Coordinator Leroy Jones, left, and Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Newark) Thursday in the East Ward.

NEWARK - After months of mostly unobservable underground movements and five days in front of President Barack Obama's appearance at the Rock, there is evidence of effort on behalf of Gov. Jon Corzine in a city the governor needs to win amply in order to land another four years in office.
 
Of course, Democrats are leaning heavily on Corzine-Obama linkage.

In 2005, Corzine defeated Republican challenger Doug Forrester in Newark, 39,573 to 3,336, while carrying Essex County overall, 131,312 to 45,789 on his way to statewide victory.
 
By comparison, Obama punished Republican Sen. John McCain in Newark by a vote of 77,112 to 5,957 last year, as he carried Essex County, 240,127 to 73,975, recording a larger number of votes here than in any other county on his way to winning New Jersey by a 15% margin. 

"Certainly for Obama, people had a clear and distinguishable reason for coming out," says Essex County Democratic Party chairman Phil Thigpen. "Now, it's not as visible when you talk about quality of education or property taxes and you're a renter, for example. So we've got to jazz it up."

Pa. Governor Ed Rendell today in Asbury Park

ASBURY PARK - The event at the West Side Community Center appeared to lack coherence from the beginning, as operatives with furrowed brows tried to figure out how to get more people burrowed in, while headliner Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell sat in a sedan outside in the rain and Newark Mayor Cory Booker was MIA.

"I told him whenever he needed me, I'd be there," said Rendell, referring to an August conversation he had with Gov. Jon Corzine, who's deadlocked in his reelection bid with GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie on the same day Corzine campaign manager Maggie Moran on "Power and Politics" for the first time blasted independent candidate Chris Daggett, who this past week inched up in a Rutgers-Eagleton poll to 20% behind the frontrunners' 36%.

Whatever the thrills provided last week by President Barack Obama and other Democratic Party luminaries, this particular rainy weekend campaign episode was not looking like the rally that would propel Gov. Jon Corzine into a second term on "the wheels of inevitability" described by Martin Luther King, Jr., in a favorite Booker quotation.

GOV. RENDELL & BOOKER ENERGIZE ASBURY PARK VOTERS
AT RALLY TO SUPPORT CORZINE/WEINBERG & DEMOCRATS

(ASBURY PARK) -   Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell joined Newark Mayor Cory Booker and hundreds of supporters today at a rally at the Westfield Community Center in Asbury Park to energize support for the re-election of Governor Jon S. Corzine, the election of Senator Loretta Weinberg as the State’s first Lieutenant Governor and Democrats up and down the ballot.