Ralph Siegel

November 6, 2009 - 12:26pm

INSIDE EDGE

What will Christie do with Wald?

Attorney General Anne Milgram had already decided she would leave her post when Gov. Jon Corzine lost his bid for re-election. She has been seeking jobs in Washington, D.C., where she lived when she worked on Corzine's U.S. Senate staff. Her spokesman, David Wald, told PolitickerNJ.com yesterday denied reports that Milgram was headed to the U.S. Department of Justice to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

It will be interesting to see what the new Republican governor does with Wald, who was dominate political reporter in the state from 1978 to 2000, when he left the Star-Ledger to join Corzine's campaign staff when he ran for the Senate. Wald worked in Corzine's Senate office before taking the Attorney General's communications director after Corzine named Zulima Farber to the post after the 2005 election.

Gov.-elect Christopher Christie will also have to decide what to do with other former reporters who wound up getting jobs with Democratic governors in recent years. Deborah Howlett, who was covering Corzine for the Star-Ledger when he hired her as Communications Director, is sure to be a goner. Corzine demoted Howlett a few months ago, although she remains on the front office payroll.

The Revolving Door?

By Wally Edge

In the old days, political reporters were often recruited to work for the elected officials they covered. Joseph Katz covered campaigns for the Newark News before taking a job with Governor Richard Hughes; he later went on to open a lobbying firm that became a model for modern contract lobbyists. 1977 gubernatorial candidate Raymond Bateman started out as a journalist with Forbes magazine before becoming Executive Director of the Republican State Committee and launching a twenty-year career in the Legislature. Walter Edge served as Governor and as a U.S. Senator after a career as a newspaperman in Atlantic City.

The announcement last week that Deborah Howlett, a highly-regarded Star-Ledger statehouse reporter, would become Governor Jon Corzine’s new Communications Director has renewed interest in the revolving door between politicians hiring the reporters that cover them. Howlett joins a team of ex-reporters that covered Corzine before they worked for him: Mark Perkiss (Trenton Times), Ralph Siegel (Associated Press), and David Wald, who began the 2000 cycle as the Star-Ledger’s chief political correspondent and columnist and ended it on Corzine’s U.S. Senate campaign staff. Wald spent five years on Corzine’s Senate staff and is now the spokesman for the state Attorney General. Read More >

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