Joseph Roberts

DENVER - New Jersey’s Trenton triumvirate pumped up the delegation here a few hours before the Monday night main event, with Gov. Jon Corzine paying tribute to his legislative legmen: Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) and Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden).

The presidential campaign will come down to who can reach out and grab those undecided voters, said Codey, who showed up here today with a big green pin on his lapel that says "O’bama."

First, the Democrats have to be buzzed.

"We’ve got to elect Obama," Codey cried to a packed house at the Inverness Hotel. "Come on you know it and I know it! You know, the press keeps asking, "Are you united? I mean, come on. Come on! Yes!"

The press conference yesterday headlined by Assembly members Allison Littell McHose  (R-Franklin) and Jay Webber (R-Morris Plains) that attacked the Clean Elections program produced several reverberations today. 

McHose (R-Franklin) took a comment by a staffer of the Assembly Democrats yesterday in response to the press conference as a promise that Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) would work to rid the state of pay-to-play contributions.

A report in the Asbury Park Press said that Assembly Democratic spokesman Derek Roseman told the paper that Roberts “plans to reform pay-to-play in the fall.”

McHose took that sentence to mean a ban on the practice, and went on to call for more stringent measures.

JERSEY CITY - U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-West New York) been in Congress for almost two years, and he says his second year was a big improvement on the first, in part because he feels focused in his new job as a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

"It takes a while to be effective because it’s very much based on seniority," Sires said of the Congress. "The first year was very difficult. I was new. The entire Democratic Congress was new.

"But I have a mission now," said the freshman congressman. "I still enjoy being on the foreign affairs committee very much, but I also have transportation now and that’s critical. My job is to go after the money for transportation and infrastructure projects."

Sires has confidence he can get federal money for the ARC (Access to the Region’s Core) Tunnel, but he needs the state to get in gear.

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts characterized former Assemblyman Neil Cohen, who just resigned his seat amid allegations that he stored child pornography on a legislative office computer, as a legislator whose potentially great legacy has been felled by an alleged personal flaw.

“The allegations made against Assemblyman Cohen, if true, are sad and indefensible,” wrote Roberts. “Assemblyman Cohen was a respected legislator who dedicated his life to the State House and whose legacy would have been great. Unfortunately, all of that will now be forever overshadowed. While law enforcement reviews these allegations, we sincerely hope that he receives the help he desperately needs.”

Amid the shockwaves that hit the political community last night over the revelation that Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union) is under investigation for possession of child pornography, four legislative leaders from both sides of the aisle have requested that the Office of Legislative Services begin installing the “most aggressive” possible internet filtering software on all of the legislature’s computers.

A joint statement by Senate President Dick Codey, Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr. and Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce said that this morning they directed the Office of Legislative Services to “immediately pursue installing the most aggressive Internet filtering software available on all computers in the Legislature.”

State Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex).: Politicker photo 

Nothing’s ever rock solid in politics, but the top of the Trenton power heap may contain more potential for movement than usual in the lead-up to Statehouse reorganization come January.

Two possible factors include Speaker Joseph Roberts’s (D-Camden) imminent departure from the Assembly, and the possibility that a newly crowned Obama administration would haul former Wall Street guru Gov. Jon Corzine out of New Jersey to crunch numbers in Washington.

In the thicket of this political drama, it’s difficult not to identify Senate President and former Governor Richard Codey (D-Essex) as a protagonist.

"I’m just a kid from Orange," Codey told a packed auditorium in his native Essex County town last month - but he’s also a former governor, who by all appearances liked the job and enjoyed great popularity.

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D-Camden): Politicker photo

BROOKLAWN - South of Camden in a shopping center parking lot on Route 130, under a water tower with the name "Brooklawn" stenciled on it in big letters, amid the donut and pizza shops, stands a lone legislative office.

It’s the headquarters of Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden), who, coming off one of the biggest wins of his 21-year career in the Assembly, told PolitickerNJ.com he has no intention of leaving Trenton when he’s up for re-election in 2009.

A veteran of ten legislative cycles and Assembly Speaker since 2006, he insists he’s running again.

"Absolutely, I’m ready to go," said Roberts, specifically expressing his desire to seek the Assembly’s top leadership position, for which he had his caucus’s unanimous support when his party reorganized in January.

As he stood with futility against a bill he believes would ravage his 39th GOP Assemblyman Vince PolistinaLegislative District, Assemblyman John Rooney took little joy in noting a personal milestone.

For while 2008 marks the Bergen County Republican’s 25th anniversary as an assemblyman, it is also the low point of his legislative career.

"My towns got destroyed last night," said Rooney, a day after the majority Democrats passed a $32.9 billion budget, which includes 25% cuts in aid to all of the 28 municipalities in Rooney’s district, and eliminations of property tax rebates for residents in the $150,000 to $250,000 income range.

Monday also brought the Democrats’ successful if ignominious - by Rooney’s reckoning - passage of a bill requiring the construction of affordable housing in affluent towns.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) basks in victory on Election Night in Newark.

The trouncing Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) gave U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1) last week sends the South Jersey congressman to the back of the line among those Democratic members of the congressional delegation intent on succeeding the 84-year old senator.

It depends on the region where the question is asked, of course, but among those eyeballing Lautenberg’s seat, the names of U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6), U.S. Rush Holt (D-12), and U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9) surface more frequently than U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-8), U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-10), and U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D- 13).

Pallone to Andrews: Don't come backThe bad blood between U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1) and his congressional colleagues seeped around the edges of Election Day as U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6) today called "absurd" the public exhortations by Andrews’s allies for the congressman to return to his House seat.

A little over two months ago, Andrews abandoned his claim to the seat he held for 18 years to run for the U.S. Senate. On the campaign trail, Andrews repeatedly denied that his wife, Camille, was merely keeping the seat warm for him should he fail.

After his Election Night concession speech to U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), the congressman reiterated his commitment not to reclaim the seat that Camille Andrews won the same night, burying her primary opposition by a more sizable margin than her husband was simultaneously buried by Lautenberg.

But in a Courier-Post article today, Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney both urged Andrews not to give up his seat.

That left Pallone fuming over what he sees as the South Jersey Democratic Organization trying to create public traction for Andrews to make an "aw, shucks" reclamation of his House seat - and to once again fail to keep his word.