Michael Murphy

Democrats are willing to give campaign workers a few hours off on Sunday so they can attend one of two campaign rallies featuring President Obama, even though it means taking bodies away from phone banks and door knocking two days before Election Day in a race that most pollsters say is too close to call.

Obama will speak at rallies for Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election campaign at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden and the Prudential Center in Newark.

Whatever Democrats may lose for a few hours in the way of mechanical operations will more than be made up for in getting energized by close proximity to the President, say some Corzine supporters.

"You can't help but getting excited," said Michele Jaker, executive director of the Planned Parenthood of New Jersey Action Committee. "I'm a hardened vet, yet there I was yelling screaming at the last Obama rally. If I get excited, our college students and volunteers will certainly get excited. They will be that much more energized for Monday and Tuesday. I know twenty people off the top of my head that are planning to go."

Charlie Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey AFL-CIO, said his organization is so big and so operationally sound, that Obama's presence here won't change the GOTV flow for Corzine.

"Obviously our labor campaign is in full force final week, and will continue to be through Election Day," Wowkanech said. "We're working every day and every night this week, and we will have people there to see President Obama, as well as ample volunteers on Saturday and Sunday. We have a million members in the labor movement here. The Prudential Center only holds 17,000 people. We'll have people inside, and plenty more in the streets."

With Corzine at 64% approval among Democrats and Obama at 87%, according to a recent Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll, the upside in Obama inspiration is enough incentive for team Corzine to bring the president in for the second time in as many weeks as part of an effort to lift the Democratic incumbent past GOP challenger Christopher Christie and independent Christopher Daggett.

"Corzine has enough money to get bodies in the streets," said Patrick Murray, director of polling at Monmouth University. "Even if some of those people who might otherwise be phone-banking or campaigning (are in the Prudential Center or in the Susquehanna Center for a few hours on Sunday), at the end of the day, the Obama presence is going to inspire those people knocking on doors and making phone calls and energize the core of support that's critical for GOTV on Monday and Tuesday. If they can't get excited about Jon Corzine, Democrats will get excited about Barack Obama."

Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes expects to leave the hospital within the next couple days after suffering a heart attack over the weekend, according to his half brother, Michael Murphy.

“I think he’s getting out in a day or two.  He was anxious to get out and cooler medical heads prevailed.  They said give yourself a little extra time,” said Murphy, a lobbyist and former gubernatorial candidate who chaired Rob Andrews’s U.S. senate primary run.

Hughes, the son of former Gov. Richard J. Hughes, was walking his family’s dog outside of his Princeton home on Sunday afternoon when he fell ill.  A neighbor saw him and called an ambulance, which then took him to the University Medical Center at Princeton, where he’s been recuperating since then. 

Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes suffered a heart attack on Sunday.

Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes is resting comfortably after suffering a heart attack on Sunday afternoon.  The 52-year-old Democrat, had surgery to repair a blocked artery.  In late 2004, underwent brain surgery to treat trigeminal neuralgia, a disorder that causes intense facial pain.

Former Rob Andrews Senate Campaign Chairman Michael Murphy said that Andrews changed his mind and “put service to our country after self.”

“Rob’s a good friend and colleague, and I hold him in high regard and have great respect for him,” he said. “It was a uniquely personal decision, and one he made with the input of his friends and family.”

Murphy said he’s been urging Andrews to reconsider his promise to leave the House seat since he lost the U.S. Senate primary against Frank Lautenberg.

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.

Brian M. Hughes, Mercer County executive: Politicker file photo 

The Murphy-Hughes brothers’ first Democratic National Convention was the last one staged in New Jersey: 1964, Atlantic City.

It was hard to beat for drama when compared to everything that followed, with the exception of Chicago just four years later, which the brothers also both attended.

Staged a year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and a month after Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 1964 Democratic Convention featured the nomination of Johnson, of course; and a speech by Robert Kennedy, oldest surviving brother of the slain president.

Mercer County executive Brian J. Hughes, a Lautenberg supporter, and his brother, Michael Murphy, campaign chairman for Andrews 

PRINCETON - New Jersey’s Hughes-Murphy alliance has parted company in the big party races lately, with Michael Murphy backing Barack Obama and Rob Andrews, and Brian J. Hughes standing by Hillary Clinton and Frank Lautenberg for president and U.S. Senate respectively.

Murphy and Mercer County Executive Hughes are half-brothers, whose Irish-American families joined forces with the marriage of Elizabeth Murphy to the late Richard Hughes, New Jersey’s governor from 1962 to 1970.

South Ward Councilman Oscar James II, left, and his choice for U.S. Senate, U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1).

NEWARK - The car pulls into New Jersey’s northern urban stronghold on Saturday and slices through traffic on a mission.

Failing organizational power in the north, U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1) continues to try to nail together enough of a credible presence to drain his opponent in this part of the state where U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg has a snap-of-the-fingers ability to put people in the street.

The South Jersey congressman travels up Clinton Avenue in Newark’s South Ward, eager to connect with his own Democratic primary allies here.

But where he anticipates finding Andrews for Senate support in front of his destination, he instead encounters an army brandishing shiny blue Lautenberg signs.

Not to be outdone by Frank Lautenberg’s Web site tying him to President Bush’s Iraq policies, Rep. Rob Andrews announced the creation of his own site today.

The site outlines what Andrews says are Lautenberg’s contradictions – from his call for 21 debates with Millicent Fenwick in 1982 to his early support for the Iraq War.

"Nothing speaks louder than a man's own words and actions," said Andrews Campaign Chairman Mike Murphy. "This website lets Sen. Lautenberg's record speak for itself."