John Edwards

Former Vice President Al Gore will be in New Jersey today, lending a hand to Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election by addressing an annual meeting of Democrats in Atlantic City.  Gore becomes the second of the eight living Democratic nominees for President to stump for Corzine; Barack Obama was in the state last July.  Democrats expect two others to be in New Jersey over the next few weeks: former President Bill Clinton, and U.S. Sen. John Kerry.  There are no plans for any of the other four onetime Democratic standard bearers to campaign for Corzine: George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

There are four living Republican presidential candidates.  It's almost certain that former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush will not campaigning for GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie.  There is no word if Bob Dole or John McCain will be visiting New Jersey before November.

Gore also puts in checkmark under the living former Vice Presidents column. It seems certain that Christie won't ask Dick Cheney to come to New Jersey this fall - the heavy traffic on Route 1 notwithstanding. There are no apparent invitations for Mondale or Dan Quayle to stump for Corzine or Christie, respectively.

Vice President Joseph Biden appeared at a Corzine rally on the night of the Democratic primary.

Of the other five living former VP candidates, three almost certainly will not be invited: Sarah Palin, John Edwards, and Joseph Lieberman.  Sargent Shriver has health issues and is no longer making public appearances. That leaves Geraldine Ferraro, and there is a decent chance the Corzine campaign won't want her.

Former Hillsborough Township Committeeman David Redlawsk will be the new Director of theEagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University

There is a generation of New Jersey politicians who like to reminisce about the old days, before the Internet, when the Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers poll was the one everyone talked about.  Old-time wags would go out late Saturday night to buy the Sunday edition if they knew a new Eagleton poll was on page one.

Over the last few years, the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University lost its market share in the New Jersey polling business - and their Star-Ledger sponsorship.  Quinnipiac University is now the premier independent poll for state politics, followed by Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.  Eagleton hasn't released a poll since October, and hasn't had a poll centered on New Jersey politics since November 2007.

Now Eagleton is seeking a return to the polling business, and has hired a former Democratic official from Hillsborough, David Redlawsk, to run their operation.  Redlawsk was serving his second term as a Township Committeeman when he resigned to become a political science professor at the University of Iowa.  In 2007, he became the Director of the University of Iowa Hawkeye poll.

The problem for Eagleton is that the partisan affiliation of their polling director is one of the reasons they have lost their standing as New Jersey's premier political pollster.  In 2004, Rutgers hired Jeffrey Levine, a political consultant whose firm polled for Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt earlier that year and Democratic State Senate candidate Blair MacInnes the year before.  Levine's appointment triggered the resignation of Eagleton poll director Clifford Zukin, a Rutgers professor who says he quit because he didn't want to seek Eagleton become a Democratic or Republican polling shop.

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Warren County Democratic Party Chairman Mike Sedita: Politicker photo 

DENVER - Warren County, certainly no Democratic Party stronghold.

But that fact didn’t stop County Party chairman Mike Sedita from making the trek out here to back up his fellow Democrats.

Sitting at one of the tables in the Spotted Dog bar in the basement of the Inverness Hotel, Sedita cleared it up right away that he was disappointed Sen. John Edwards (D-SC) detonated his political career with an extramarital affair.

Sedita had been one of the linesmen for the Edwards campaign in New Jersey.

Over the last twenty years, five of eight vice presidential candidates had defeated incumbents in races for the United States Senate. Joseph Biden, who was picked as the Democratic VP candidate on Saturday, won a U.S. Senate seat in 1972 when he upset J. Caleb Boggs, a two-term incumbent and a former Governor of Delaware.

John Edwards defeated one-term U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina in 1998; in 1988, Joe Lieberman ousted three-term U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker in Connecticut; Dan Quayle beat Birch Bayh, a three-term U.S. Senator from Indiana; and in the 1970 Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Texas, Lloyd Bentsen upset the incumbent, Ralph Yarborough.

But during the same time period, just one of the three successful candidates for Vice President – Quayle -- had ever defeated an incumbent. Al Gore won open seats for the House (1976) and Senate (1984), and Richard Cheney won an open seat for the House in 1978. Another VP candidate, Jack Kemp in 1996, had never run against an incumbent. Kemp won his House seat in 1969 special election.

John Edwards admission that he lied and dismissed reports of an affair with Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker hired to cover his presidential campaign, may have ended his public life, but did it also signify an end to the era in which the mainstream media controlled the agenda for national political journalism?

In preparing for a presentation I gave at the New Jersey Political Science Association meeting last week, I spent some time reviewing the exit poll data compiled by the New York Times. In assessing whether or not moving the New Jersey presidential primary from June to February was worth the reported $ 10 million it would cost state and local governments, I looked at the turnout rate and specifically the number of new primary voters it produced.

According to the Times poll, 19 percent of the 1.1 million voters participating in the Democratic primary identified themselves as "Independent," in essence unaffiliated voters. Extrapolating form the numbers, this means that approximately 210,000 new Democrats decided to participate in the primary process. Not surprisingly, a plurality of these voters supported Barack Obama (49%), while Hillary Clinton drew 43 percent and seven percent went to John Edwards

Senate President Richard Codey at the Wilshire Grand Hotel todayAfter getting one question cleared up in the affirmative with Sen. Barack Obama, Senate President and former Governor Richard Codey today officially endorsed Obama for president at a press conference in his hometown of West Orange.

"What’s the skinny on the fact that you’re part Irish?" Codey said he asked Obama in a 10 minute conversation with the presidential candidate this morning, six days before the Feb. 5 primary.

"I am," Obama told him.

"Is that on your father’s side?" Codey cracked.

"It’s O’bama," Senator Loretta Weinberg informed the Senate President.

Barack Obama may have gotten the support of Dick Codey today, the most popular politician in New Jersey, but two other prominent Edwards supporters have gone the Clinton route.

Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney and State Sen. Joseph Vitale announced their support for Clinton in a conference call today, burnishing their respective organized labor and health care credentials. They were joined by Mike Beson, the Edwards campaign state director

Vitale, who chairs the Health and Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, said that Clinton has the best plan to provide universal health care.

“I find her approach to helping solve this issue not just inspired but informed. I’m pleased to join her campaign,” said Vitale.