Richard Codey

Steve Adubato, center, with Gov-elect Chris Christie, right, and Gov. Jon Corzine, at the North Ward Center during the Republican Primary election earlier this year.

NEWARK - North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato hit back today against those critics in his party who bashed him for embracing Gov.-elect Chris Christie in the aftermath of the gubernatorial election at the charter school Adubato founded.

The Democrat singled out longtime political foe Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland), who Tuesday evening at West Ward Councilman Ron Rice's fundraiser griped that the party bosses dropped Gov. Jon Corzine "like a prom dress."

"First of all, the election's over, if we didn't come together we're going to play partisan roles and we all lose," Adubato told PolitickerNJ.com. "Codey knows that. Come on. He picked a Republican, Leonard Lance, to swear him in. What was Dick Codey saying then? He made a deal with the Republicans to hold onto his Senate Presidency to save his seat when Nia Gill challenged him. Stop.

"Tell Codey this is America. Teach him a lesson. We don't control who does what when they go into the booth and vote."

Republicans have hired Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the nation's top election law experts, as national counsel for legislative and congressional redistricting in 2011.  Ginsberg served as counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004, and has worked for the Republican National Committee.  His appointment was announced jointly by GOP State Chairman Jay Webber, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield), and Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Parsippany).

As State Chairman, Webber will name all five Republicans on the legislative redistricting commission - presumably in consultant with Kean, DeCroce and Gov.-elect Christopher Christie.  For the congressional redistricting commission, Webber, Kean and DeCroce each get two appointments.

The Ginsberg appointment marks an unusually early start for Republicans on redistricting.  Democrats started their redistricting process back in 1999, more than a year before the GOP.

Newark West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, left, with state Senate President/former Governor Richard Codey (D-Roseland)

NEWARK - Over 100 people packed the Spot on Tuesday night for a fundraiser in support of West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, who's up for re-election next year as a member of the Booker Team.

So far, Rice has no challengers to the seat he has held since he landed in office three and a half years ago and there was considerable buzz in the room and all up and down the bar about his moving up politically in the not too distant future.

"This is the last time you'll be running for the West Ward council seat," Assemblyman Tom Giblin (D-Montclair) told the Essex County rising star.

But Rice proclaimed that whatever happens next year or beyond, he intends to protect his "little brother" on the council, South Ward Councilman Oscar James, Jr.

VERONA - Already state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr.'s (R-Westfield) appointee to the congressional redistricting commission and more than a forward observer in the legislative redistricting process, state Sen. Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove) catapulted into a place where he can now speak candidly in the ears of power, both of the incoming governor and the incoming senate president, with Gov.-elect Chris Christie's victory last week and Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney's (D-West Deptford) imminent ascendency on Nov. 23rd.

It has been a slow turn-about and rapid ascent for a politician who on more than one occasion clung to what appeared to be the last shreds of his political career.

"When (James) Treffinger went down, it looked bleak," admittted the former chief of staff to the fallen Essex County executive. "2001 redistricting was bleak."

Elected to local government office in Cedar Grove at 25, the pugnacious political animal spent a career toiling as the dedicated minority in the engine room of the Democratic Party behemoth here in Essex, learning for the sake of survival how to nurture close ties to the other side even as he proudly hanged framed portraits of Ronald Reagan and Sean Hannity in his law office. 

He'd show up at an event in the North Ward, the guest of North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato. He had his friends there. There were high fives, for example, from Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo. But those Democrats not among Adubato's inner circle looked on O'Toole as an interloper, a castaway from the other party treading into enemy territory.

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland)

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) will make his own appointment to a 2010 congressional redistricting commission and leave a second seat for his presumptive successor to fill with his own choice.

The former governor's game plan comes in the face of state Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney's (D-West Deptford) control of the lionshare of Democratic caucus votes and Codey's likely imminent defeat come Jan. 12th when the senate reorganizes.

"I intend to make one of those appointments and leave a second appointment for Steve," former Gov. Codey told PolitickerNJ.com.

The Inside Edge yesterday reported that Codey could appoint two congressional redistricting members to the six-member commission before the end of his current term, according to the law.

New Jersey might lose one of its thirteen House seats after the 2010 census is completed; new districts will be drawn by a bi-partisan six-member commission in time for the 2012 elections.  The Democratic and Republican State Chairs will each appoint two members, and the Senate President, the Senate Minority Leader, the Assembly Speaker, and the Assembly Minority Leader will each appoint two members.  Several legal experts told PolitickerNJ.com that Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) could appoint two congressional redistricting commissioners before the end of his current term. The law requires members of the congressional redistricting commission to be appointed by June 15, 2011, but does not specific how early an appointment could be made.  Sources close to Codey would not say if this is something the Essex County Democrat might consider.

South Jersey GOTV central on Election Day last Tuesday.

The North Jersey urban operative, under the radar as always, eyes bloodshot late in the game last Tuesday night, said he saw what Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) saw among rank and filers in South Jersey, and it rattled him early on Election Day.

"For the first time in all my years doing GOTV, rank and file labor guys weren't telling me who they were voting for," said the operative. "These are guys I'm talking to as they're heading in and out of the polls and ordinarily you'll get a thumbs up sign for the Democrat or some fraternal sign for the Democratic candidate. Not this time. This time - silence."

Sweeney saw it a while ago - rank and file worry translating itself into anti-Corzine sentiment.

Poised to become the next state Senate President, Sweeney, an ironworker by trade and business agent for Ironworker's Local 399, said South Jersey Democrats did everything they could to get the vote out for Gov. Jon Corzine.

"We worked very hard," Sweeney told PolitickerNJ.com. "But it wasn't in the cards, you could feel it on the ground."

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton)

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton) today blamed party bosses for deal-making when they should have been focused on re-electing Gov. Jon Corzine.

"Party leaders undermined the governor by having a party leadership fight," said Gusciora. "They reinforced the message that if Corzine won, the reins of power would be handed over to special interests."

Asked on Election Day morning about the intra-party deal cultivated by South Jersey Democratic Party leader George Norcross III and Newark North Ward Democratic Party boss Steve Adubato, Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) dismissed its larger-scale impact on voter production.

"It's inside baseball and affected very few people beyond Trenton," said Roberts of a North-South deal that would oust Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) in exchange for Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford), and launch Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) into the lower house leadership chair being vacated by Roberts.

Senate President Richard Codey says the White House talked to him about running for Governor if Jon Corzine dropped his re-election bid, according to a must-read story in the Star-Ledger.  Codey says that Corzine was close to ending his bid for a second term last July, especially after a large group of Hudson County politicians were arrested on federal corruption charges, and said that White House political director Patrick Gaspard told him their internal polls had him leading Republican Christopher Christie. 

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck), who will return to the Senate next year after losing her bid for Lt. Governor, has committed to supporting State Sen. Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) for Senate President, Democratic source say.  Weinberg becomes the 15th Democratic Senator out of 23 to back Sweeney in his bid to unseat the incumbent, Richard Codey (D-Roseland).