Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney will both be making fundraising appearances in New Jersey this week, according to a report in the Star-Ledger.

Clinton will be here today to raise money for Assemblywoman Linda Stender’s (D-Fanwood) congressional bid, while Romney is coming sometime later this week to help her opponent, state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Flemington) with his campaign, according to a report in the Star-Ledger.

The report does not say whether Clinton or Romney will make any public campaign stops for the candidates.

The New Jersey Democratic State Committee will need to hold a special election to fill the vacant Democratic National Committeewoman post left vacant yesterday when Stephanie Bush-Baskette resigned to take a seat on the state Ethics Commission.  The party has not yet scheduled a date for the election, and the DNC is not expected to meet again until January.

Bush-Baskette, a former Assemblywoman and state Community Affairs Commissioner, won the job on August 13.  She defeated incumbent Christine "Roz" Samuels, one of the first superdelegates to switch from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama. At the time, a Democratic official says that Samuels' defeat was unrelated to her defection to Obama in a state where most of the party leadership lined up behind Clinton. Sources say that the DNC seat traditionally goes to Essex, and Democratic County Chairman Phil Thigpen decided today to replace Samuels with Bush-Baskette.

If Barack Obama wins New Jersey in November, he will become the first candidate to lose the state's presidential primary and still win electoral votes in the general since 1932.  Obama lost the February 5 New Jersey primary to Hillary Clinton by a 54%-44% margin.

In 1932, Alfred E. Smith won the New Jersey Democratic presidential preference primary by a 62%-38% margin over the Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Smith, the former Governor of New York, had been the Democratic nominee for President in 1928.  In the general, Roosevelt narrowly won New Jersey, 50%-48%, against incumbent Herbert Hoover.

MINNEAPOLIS - Stunned by Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) headline-snatching announcement last Friday that he selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, N.J. Democrats this week re-set after taking a three-day hard look at Palin.

So far, they’re having a difficult time squaring an obscure Alaskan with New Jersey’s hard-edged, ethnically diverse environs, despite Republicans’ best efforts - in the words of State GOP Chairman Tom Wilson - to make a case for why "New Jersey will love Sarah Palin."

"They have Eskimos in Alaska," former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield said to the suggestion that Palin may not have experience relating to the kinds of ethnic groups whose myriad cultures saturate New Jersey.

As for the fact that Palin’s a woman - a younger, slimmer verison of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with an attitude to tempt backlash voters over to the GOP after Clinton’s primary loss - Democrats remain unimpressed.

My mother, Pearl, always gave great advice in life. "Always wait a half hour after eating at the beach before you go swimming." "Finish your food. Children are starving in Europe [or alternatively, China, when I noticed that children were fat in France]." And she warned me to clean up after myself when visiting someone's house. And she gives good advice to this day.
 
Obviously, however, this is not something Bill or Hillary Clinton followed. It seems they both left their crumpled up pre-speech "To Do" lists on the podium at the Democratic National Convention. Fortunately, because of my wide spread connections in the world of politics, I knew the staffers who cleaned up, and they forwarded to me the actual notes themselves, warts and all.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) with mother and daughter constituents visiting Denver: Aisha, left, and Valerie.: Politicker photo 

DENVER - The Democratic Party had been splintered all week, and the test of the convention would be whether on the last day Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) resolved the contradictions and moved everyone forward.

The factions were not imagined, or at least one piece of the delegation claiming the loyalties of 18 million voters was hesitant about the presumptive nominee. For New Jerseyans, that faction had particular force. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had beaten Obama by almost ten points in New Jersey and her fundraisers had hauled in millions form New Jersey supporters.

Some Monday night drama hinged on Michelle Obama’s shot to prove she loves her children and understands the Middle American concept of family.

"I cried until I couldn’t applaud anymore," Newark Councilwoman Mildred Crump said of Obama’s speech.

However, warm and fuzzy testimonials were already starting to rile the Rev. Reginald Jackson of Orange. Yes, he’d been a solid Clinton backer during the primary, "but we need to deal with the Bushes and we’ve got to define McCain."

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.

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez might not have received a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention, but apparently he’s still poised to enhance his clout in the Senate over the next few years. As Vice Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Menendez is expected to move up to the chairmanship next year when incumbent Charles Schumer moves on after two cycles on the job. That puts the junior Senator from New Jersey into a nationally visible role for the 2010 elections – when (based on historical precedent) Menendez will either be defending seats in Barack Obama’s mid-term election, or looking to pick some up in John McCain’s.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, right, with Sens. Bob Menendez, Frank Lautenberg and Barack Obama in 2006: Getty Images Photo
DENVER - The affable salesman from the Midwest landed on the outskirts of town here with a bright smile and anecdote-laden speaking style that even the most bleary-eyed early morning Democrats responded to through the haze.

If the junior senator from his home state is the glamorous superstar, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) can claim the mantle of progressive, happy warrior work horse, and he kicked off his breakfast address to the New Jersey delegation today by noting how much he liked the deli cuisine that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Ill.) introduced him to when Menendez hosted Durbin one day in Hoboken.

He would get a standing ovation here, this politician who looks like an actor who would insist on playing Willie Loman as the guy who plays out a happy ending, in what amounted to a nearly perfect set-up when Gov. Jon Corzine prepped the crowd for his onetime Senate colleague.

"If you want to know how we get through healthcare, it’s going to be through the leadership of Dick Durbin," Corzine said of Durbin. "If you want to know how we’re going to change our foreign policy, it’s going to be through the leadership of the majority whip."

Obama calls Durbin his mentor and the older legislator responds publicly in the role of witness to what he sells as American excellence. Tonight he will introduce his friend and the Democrats’ presidential nominee at Invesco Field.