Doug Forrester

Arthur Finkelstein, who served as Doug Forrester's pollster and strategist, used his blackberry this morning to send his take on the 2005 gubernatorial campaign to some senior Forrester staffers:

In 2004 bush carried va by 9 lost nj by 4. A 13 pt swing.

In 2005 gop lost va by 6 nj by 9 a 3 pt swing.

In short we picked up 10 net pts but in this environment the tread mill was working overtime against us. I believe on election day that generic vote against us was 13 way too much to overcome. The same race in 2004 wud have been a dead heat.

No one will believe this but I thought you guys shud know my thinking.

-- "Wilson and DeCroce Must Step Down in wake of 2005 debacle."
LONEGAN: NJGOP NEEDS TO REBUILD WITH NEW, CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP.

Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan said today that the massive ten-point Corzine landslide victory over Doug Forrester coupled with a minimum one seat Assembly loss was a message that the state Republican Party needs to rebuild with new, conservative leadership and said the first step were resignations from State GOP Chair Tom Wilson and Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce.

So we've reached the final hour of an election several years in the making. The newspapers will probably do a good job putting it all in perspective in the next couple of days. What's interesting is how dramatically these two candidates lives' figure to change in a matter of hours.

A Corzine win, and he's off to Trenton, and if he can slay his party's bosses down there, then maybe he'll be just crazy enough to put together that national campaign everyone thinks he's itching to run. A loss, and I believe he'll serve out the last year of his Senate term quietly, a slow but inexorable fade from relevance.

As for Forrester, if he can somehow pull this off, he'll be a national GOP hero-- the man who beat that liberal Corzine, and the conqueror of a blue state in a year when being a Republican didn't help. If he doesn't make it, though, I think we've seen the last of Douglas R. Forrester.

Anyway, this will be my last entry for a while. This is the biggest night in New Jersey politics, so I've got to jump in my car now and head to...New York City. I can explain: I'm doing NJ analysis for the WCBS-TV web cast, which I think will air on-line from 9 to 11. So check it out if you feel like it, and I promise I'll stick up for our state if any of those big-shot Manhattanites say anything. And please, keep the e-mails coming. I'll be able to check them regularly, and I'll try to start updating this thing again when I get settled.

Sherry Sylvester, Doug Forrester's communications director, says overall statewide turnout looks to be about average, and that it's slightly above average in the Forrester campaign's top 100 target towns.

Campaign strategists in Forrester's map room, she says, have told her that "urban turnout is low and that in the target towns we need to win, the numbers are good and we're right on target."

She added:"We think out vote is a later vote, with suburban professionals coming in later."

The winner of today's gubernatorial election will become the first Governor who did not grow up in New Jersey since Woodrow Wilson won in 1910. Wilson spent his childhood in Georgia and Virginia and moved to New Jersey in 1875 when he transferred from Davidson College to Princeton University. Jon Corzine grew up in Illinois and moved to New Jersey in the 1975 when he took a job at Goldman Sachs. Doug Forrester grew up in California and came to New Jersey in the mid 1970's after graduating from Harvard to study at at the Princeton Theological Seminary.

The Man-Who-Isn't-Running-But-Who-Everyone-Wishes-Had isn't doing much politicking today. Richard J. Codey and his wife, Mary Jo, cast their ballots this morning in West Orange. Then he went off to meet with New York Jets officials to hash out plans for the team's new Jersey-based training camp.

Codey's 14-month run as acting governor will end in January and polls show he's the most popular politician in the state, with personal favorable ratings that are off the charts. Of course, part of that is a consequence of his decision not to run for a full term, but if he had, many believe he'd be coasting past Doug Forrester right now.

So how's he feeing today?

"A touch sad, but that's all," the governor said by phone.

He doesn't regret his decision not to run, especially in light of the rumors about Forrester's and Jon Corzine's personal lives that have been leaked to the press the last few weeks.

"Obviously, it would have been a different situation with me, but I wouldn't want to drag my family through that stuff...And I know both Jon and Doug get up every morning with spasms in their colons, afraid about what might happen next."

Codey's planning to be in East Brunswick for what he believes will be a Corzine victory party tonight. But he's not sure what the final margin will look like.

"It all depends on whether Forrester made a mistake with that ad," he said,referring to the Forrester ad featuring a quote from Corzine's ex-wife. "My tendency is to think there was a different quote they could have used. I thought the one they went with was a little too personal. But I guess (Arthur) Finkelstein gets paid to figure that out, not me."

Of course, what everyone wants to know is if the most popular politician in the state would be interested in replacing Corzine in the Senate.

"Ego-wise, there's nothing left for me," Codey said.

He added: "My inclination at this point is to say no. Right now, you'd have to talk me into it."

But if Corzine does win, Codey expects he'll be hearing from all sorts of national Democratic leaders asking him to run starting tomorrow.

"I'm going to be honest with them and say, 'Listen, you're going to have to show me that this is something my wife and family are going to be happy with.'"

I voted this morning and Hudson County being Hudson County, the only remotely competitive race on the ballot was for governor. I left the booth wishing there had been more choices, and then it hit me: there was a question on the ballot about whether the state should have a lieutenant governor. At least there's supposed to be; I completely missed it. I have far toomany senior moments for a 26-year-old, somaybe it's just me, but I'm wondering if other people missed the question too.

There's been very little attention paid to the lt. gov. issue, few newspaper stories and no slick ads. A polllast month showed the measure should pass. I guess this is because the average person's knee jerk reaction is to assume a post called "lieutenant governor" must be important and therefore necessary. I'm not so sure about that, but if this does pass, it will add an interesting wrinkle to the state's political game.

Think of a guy like John Murphy, who is seen as a potentially attractive statewide candidate but who was also priced out of the Republican gubernatorial primary. If we had a lieutenant governor, Doug Forrester might have turned around and tapped him as his running-mate. Win or lose, Murphy would have gained exposure and made invaluable political and fund-raising contacts for the future-- the kind of leg-up he can't otherwise get. The new office could turn outsiders into power-players.

And it works for both parties. How many women and minorities are routinely passed over for consequential posts by a predominantly white and male state Democratic leadership? But there'd be huge pressure for a Democratic candidate (assuming he's a white male) to fill out his ticket with a woman or a minority.

I can't think of one policy area that shows this state is crying out for a lieutenant governor, but hey, what's the fun of politics if we're talking policy?

This is supposed to be an Election Day blog, but I figured I should get a head start. There'll be plenty to write about tomorrow, but today is really the last chance to see the candidates on the stump. And it occurred to me late this afternoon that for one of these guys, this is probably it.

I think everyone knows the story about Doug Forrester: If he loses tomorrow, he'll have run and lost two statewide campaigns and burned a $50 million hole in his pocket. It's safe to say the GOP will look to someone else to lead the next statewide ticket.

Jon Corzine is a trickier question. Everyone's knee jerk reaction is that he'd just get up off the mat and run for a second U.S. Senate term next year if he comes up short tomorrow. That's an understandable sentiment, but I think people make that assumption because they're just used to viewing Corzine as the 800-pound gorilla in state politics. But think about it -- won't Corzine look a lot less intimidating if he blows this? If he can't beat Doug Forrester in 2005, why would he be a lock to knock off Tom Kean in 2006? And why would he want to spend another $30 million (give or take) trying? He's already told us he doesn't really want the job anymore.

So I say whoever gets the short end of the stick tomorrow has run his last political campaign. Ever. With that in mind, I decided to get one last look at each man in action.

I started with Forrester, whose green campaign bus pulled into the parking lot of the Nottingham Firehouse in Hamilton Township (Mercer County) at about 8:30 tonight. (This is the first firehouse I can remember with its own auditorium.) Forrester disembarked accompanied by his wife Andrea and daughter Brianna, and offered an upbeat assessment of the race to a few TV reporters. About a hundred yards away a small group of Corzine supporters taunted him, though they were tough to hear.

The candidate's handlers brought him to a set of double-doors that opened up into the auditorium. A few of them offered hopeful tidbits of info to the reporters in tow. For example, it was pointed out that the day before the 1981 election, Tom Kean trailed Jim Florio by the same margin Forrester now trails Corzine. I'm not sure if this is true (I have no reason to doubt it) and I'm also not sure if the examples are analogous. But when you're the Forrester campaign and you've yet to lead in a single poll, this is the stuff that keeps you going.

Anyway, there's no point in mentioning the specifics of Forrester's speech. It's basically the same one he's been giving all year. And I know I've knocked him for his performance in debates (particularly Saturday's) but he's quite good in a setting like tonight's, where he has a microphone and the crowd's complete attention. Unfortunately, no one besides hardcore GOP partisans has seen this Forrester.

I was looking for signs in Forrester's body language that he knows the end is near, but I didn't see any. And the crowd -- at least 250 people, and a lot of them, surprisingly, were under 30 -- also seemed enthused. I don't think you can draw much from this, though, other than that Forrester either believes he has a real shot tomorrow or he's doing a damn good job of kidding himself. And if he is kidding himself, well, that's what you have to do. How do you think Freddy Ferrer made it through October?

I left the firehouse thinking I may have just seen the last campaign speech Doug Forrester will ever give. It was hardly Churchillian, but if it was his last hurrah, he went out fighting. That probably sounded like a cliche.

On the way to my car I talked to a veteran reporter, someone who's covered a number of gubernatorial races. I asked him how much he thought Corzine would win by tomorrow, and he guessed around three points. This surprised me, because, to be honest, I'm expecting a pretty comfortable Corzine win.

"You don't think Forrester's got a shot, do you?" I asked.

"I think it's going to be close," he said. "If the cities go to sleep on Corzine, I could see him losing."

Which is an interesting comment, because, as you may recall, I set out to see both candidates tonight. But when I got to the Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, the traditional last campaign stop for Democratic candidates, the place was a ghost town. Turns out, the event was canceled at the last minute. Corzine was running late and had to do an interview with Lynn Doyle on Cn-8. Think the folks who waited for him at Shiloh will go the extra mile for Corzine tomorrow?

Of the 6,000 absentee ballots cast in Ocean County, 1,000 have been flagged as coming from deceased voters, says Rick England, who is Doug Forrester's campaign manager. "No wonder the AG's office didn't want to turn over the list," England told PoliticsNJ.com. But Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes, a Democrat, says that the Board of Elections has not found "one case of fraud" among 4,919 absentee ballots requests. "This was a hollow tactic of the Republicans crying wolf on the supposition that the Democratic Party is out to steal the election," said Hughes, referring to a NJGOP lawsuit. "IIt cost our taxpayers precious resources in staff time that should have been used to serve the needs of the public."

Jon Corzine 51%
Doug Forrester 46%

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