Cory Booker

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.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell will campaign for Gov. Jon Corzine tomorrow in Asbury Park and Atlantic City, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson will appear for Corzine in Newark on Sunday.  Newark Mayor Cory Booker will join Rendell in Asbury Park.

Mayor Doug Palmer addresses guests at his fundraiser with, from left, Mercer County Executive Brian J. Hughes, Gov. Jon Corzine, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, former President Bill Clinton, and Palmer's wife.

TRENTON - A wounded county came out here tonight to get a glimpse of former President Bill Clinton before the Secret Service propelled him away - again - to some more voter-concentrated region of the state for what Democrats hope will be a pay dirt rally at Rutgers University.

"I knew you weren't here to see me," Mayor Doug Palmer told a crowd at his $150 fundraiser for his nonprofit Trenton First, over one of his shoulders stood Gov. Jon Corzine with two weeks to go in a dead-heat gubernatorial contest.

Over Palmer's other shoulder stood Clinton.

"God, he looks great, Clinton - so slim," said Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing).

"You're here to see the president," supplied Palmer with a smile and deafening war whoops filled the banquet hall here at the Marriott, a building Palmer helped bring to Trenton.

The mayor acknowledged Corzine at last, and threw in a "first and foremost" when introducing him. Corzine, it should be said, received raucous applause. 

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, left, is introduced at a Newark Pride alliance event at the Newark Public Library earlier this week by Newark activist Darnell Moore.

BELLEVILLE - Notwithstanding a mistaken reference at one point to "Corky Booker," Newark Mayor Cory Booker's New Jersey political peers paid tribute Wednesday night to their rock-star-in-residence, who tonight is scheduled to sit down on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in a mock-up mano-a-mano for their now weeks-long national news spat. 

"I wonder if New Jerseyans are going to be watching Conan and Cory or Corzine and Christie," cracked Gov. Jon Corzine, a day before heading into pre-debate seclusion in preparation for his William Paterson University gubernatorial showdown with GOP rival Chris Christie and independent Chris Daggett, which also airs tonight.  

Booker two nights ago headlined the Nanina's in the Park fundraiser held by Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, who called the motor-mouthed metaphor generating mayor now racing to have more Twitter friends than Ashton Kutcher and locked in a playful back and forth with O'Brien over the late night talk show hosts disparaging remarks about Newark, "global." 

"Conan and I could have a fun and very substantive conversation on Friday," Booker tweeted on Tuesday to 836,795 followers, whose cyberspace Hollywood rival, Kutcher, this week observed to his his 3,830,305 followers that "arts education in our pubic schools is important."

Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford), left, and Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo Wednesday night at Durkin's fundraiser.

BELLEVILLE - It was fitting that the main man at the microphone tonight at Nanina's in the Park was County Clerk Chris Durkin, a walking hybrid of two opposing political camps, which 20 days before a gubernatorial election can already see the delineations of a county executive battle in 2010.

"Dick Codey was ready to lead when he became governor and he made us all so proud to live, work and play in this state," Durkin said of the former governor and sitting senate president, in the next breath noting of his boss, the Essex County Executive, "Joe DiVincenzo has made Essex County the envy not only of the state but of the country. He is the taxpayers' best friend, and a bureaucrat's worst nightmare."

If it sounded like homage paid to opposing warlords, Durkin is indeed ensconced in the administration of the powerful county executive, but his mother, Joan, is a Codey, cousin of Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland), who last month was unofficially forced off the senate throne in a north-south Jersey Democratic Party coup that hinged on DiVincenzo backing Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) as the new senate president.

Tonight, Durkin - an amiable presence belying a torturous Codey v. DiVincenzo undercurrent - greeted guests to his $150-a-plate fundraiser, including headlining speaker Newark Mayor Cory Booker and the governor himself, who posed for pictures with Durkin before ascending a staircase where South Jerseyan Sweeney stood in a milling, hors d'oeuvres munching crowd with DiVincenzo.