Janet Napolitano

Michael Chertoff with President George W. Bush in a 2005 White House photograph.

UNION – Talk to people in New Jersey’s legal profession and no one denies that what Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff perhaps lacks in charisma or courtroom presence, he compensates for with something more fundamental:  profound powers of reason. 

“Going back 20 years, he was a great lawyer, a brilliant lawyer – hard but fair,” said attorney Ted Wells.

His friends in the New Jersey political world say Chertoff’s a creature of hard analysis not politics.  “This is one of the brilliant legal minds of the country,” said Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), who introduced Chertoff today at Kean University, where the Homeland Security Secretary and author of the USA Patriot Act reflected on his three-year term in the Bush administration.

His tenure included his grim mea culpa in front of Congress following what he acknowledged was his department’s 2005 failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. 

But Katrina didn’t come up today as a cross-section of audience members in friendly fashion mostly picked the Elizabeth native’s brain about general public policy during the question and answer portion of his presentation.

In case you missed it: Governor Jon Corzine delivered New Jersey to his preferred presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton – something some other major political leaders could not do. Barack Obama had endorsements from the two United States Senators from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, but still lost the state to Clinton. And Governor Janet Napolitano could not produce an Obama win in Arizona.

Two weeks after the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to legalize gay marriage, a former Assemblyman from Mercer County played a key role in stopping voters from approving a constitutional amendment to ban gay marraige in his new home state of Arizona. Joseph Yuhas, a Democrat who represented the fifteen district from 1994 to 1996, was the political consultant for Arizona Together, the group that led the campaign against the ballot initiative.

After moving west, Yuhas served as President of the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association and worked on campaigns to expand Indian gaming in 2002 and to create the official framework for the Arizona Sports & Tourism Authority, which voters passed in 2000 to build the Arizona Cardinals stadium. After Democrat Janet Napolitano became Governor in 2003, Yuhas became the Deputy Commissioner of the Arizona Department of Commerce. He left earlier this year to head the public affairs division of Riester-Robb, a large west coast public relations firm.

Yuhas won an Assembly seat in 1993, running on a ticket with Shirley Turner; they defeated Republican incumbent John Hartmann, who had won a traditionally Democratic seat in the 1991 GOP landslide. Yuhas didn't run again in 1995 and was succeeded by Reed Gusciora.