Robert Torricelli

The amount of vitriol in the 1996 U.S. senate race between Democrat Robert Torricelli and Republican Dick Zimmer became the stuff of legend, even by Garden State standards.

Tonight, Zimmer showed up to Chris Christie’s party marking the conclusion to another particularly nasty race.  But how did it stack up to his own?

“I am resigned to the 1996 race being the permanent gold standard,” said Zimmer, who ran a much lower profile U.S. Senate race against incumbent Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) last year.  

Zimmer did see some parallels between the Torricelli race and Christie’s battle with Gov. Corzine.

“Robert Torricelli even said that I was opposed to mammography,” he said, noting that Corzine top campaign advisor Jamie Fox was also Torricelli’s chief of staff at the time.    “It worked.”

Robert Torricelli represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate from 1997 to 2003.

The contest for Governor of New Jersey might be the most visible but in the long term it might not be the most important. Long after our youngest children have forgotten the winner of this year's gubernatorial election they'll be aware of the pernicious loss of our quality of life in New Jersey.

The things that we value most in our quality of life are at issue. A quiet drive on a Sunday afternoon. A walk with family through falling autumn leaves. Having fresh produce for a summer picnic. They're all part of the struggle to preserve open space in New Jersey.

On November 3 voters will be asked to approve a $400 million bond issue to continue preserving our diminishing open space. It's the latest in a bipartisan effort over the last two decades to reverse the destruction of farms, fields, and forests that make New Jersey a wonderful place to live.

Our instincts in difficult economic times are probably to oppose the referendum. The last thing that our state government needs is more debt; and schools, tax relief, and health care are higher callings. A closer look might lead to a different conclusion.

There have been few clues as to Paul Fishman's plans for key posts in the U.S. Attorney's office after he takes the oath tomorrow morning.  For the time being, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra will return to his old post as First Assistant (Marra took over when Christopher Christie resigned on December 1), and Marc Larkins, who became Acting First Assistant following Michelle Brown's departure, will be the Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney.  Larkins has held both posts since Brown left last month.

Fishman is not expected to make any immediate announcements regarding key personnel, but new U.S. Attorneys typically assemble their own team.  That may or may not affect Marra, a career federal prosecutor.

Eight years ago, the appointment of a First Assistant U.S. Attorney was part of the deal to convince then-U.S. Senators Robert Torricelli and Jon Corzine, to sign off on Christie's nomination.  Torricelli and Corzine reportedly insisted that they have input on the selection of Christie's second in command.

The newest recipient of the Neil Romano Award for scamming a Bergen County political organization goes to Carmen Pio Costa, who convinced Republicans to nominate him for State Assembly in the potentially competitive 36th district by promising to raise money from his wealthy family.  For the second consecutive cycle, Pio Costa, the son of a millionaire developer/philanthropist from Morris County, has not come through; his individual and joint accounts show about $7,500 raised.

The last winner of the Neil Romano Award was Democrat Paul Stuart Aronsohn in his 2006 campaign for Congress.

One of the legendary scams in Bergen County politics came in 1984, when Republicans were considering candidates to take on newly-elected Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli. Torricelli had won the seat two years earlier, when he ousted three-term GOP incumbent Harold Hollenbeck by a 53%-46% margin. The political climate in 1982 (and congressional redistricting in the 9th) favored Democrats and Torricelli leveraged the national contacts he made working for Vice President Walter Mondale and running Jimmy Carter's 1980 re-election campaign in Illinois to help him raise $266,000 -- about $70,000 more than Hollenbeck had.

Ronald Reagan's popularity heading into the 1984 election, and a new congressional map (the '82 redistricting plan was tossed by federal judges), gave Republicans reason to believe Torricelli could be beaten. The 9th district went strongly for Reagan, giving him a 59%-41% win over Mondale -- a plurality of almost 47,000 votes.

Paul Fishman will become New Jersey's next U.S. Attorney after a ten-year quest for the post.  His nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate tonight.

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) pushed hard for Fishman to get the post in 1999, when Faith Hochberg was nominated to a federal judgeship.  But Fishman got in the middle of a rather extraordinary public feud between Lautenberg and then-U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli.  The Clinton administration sided with Torricelli, and when Hochberg resigned to take her seat on the bench (after a lengthy delay in the confirmation process), Attorney General Janet Reno elevated Torricelli's preferred choice, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary, as New Jersey's interim federal prosecutor.  Cleary remained in office until George W. Bush nominated Christopher Christie in 2001.

President Barack Obama must now formally sign his commission; that could happen as early as tomorrow.  Then Fishman must arrange for a federal judge to swear him in; that also could happen immediately.

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez's new book, Growing American Roots : Why Our Nation Will Thrive as Our Largest Minority Flourishes, has been published by Penguin Group (USA).  Menendez did his first book signing on Sunday in his old home town of Union City, where he broke into politics as a young school board member, Mayor, Assemblyman and State Senator before winning a seat in Congress in 1992. He is now the lone Latino in the United States Senate.

Menendez's book is now at 145,057 on the Barnes & Noble sales rank.  As a matter of comparison, as of this morning: former Gov. James E. McGreevey's book is ranked 119,152, ex-U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli's book on great political speeches is at 190,079, and former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley's most recent book is at 101,309.  Menendez leads another Cuban American Senator, Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), whose book is at 404,504.  He is also in a tight contest with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose boom is at 116,354.

Another tight race: sales of Menendez's book are trailing pre-sales of John Wefing's biography of another prominent New Jersey Democrat. The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes : The Politics of Civility, a biography of the former two-term Governor and Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.  The Hughes book is at 114,697 and is due to be released on November 15.

As the campaign for governor intensifies, both Governor Corzine and Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie have begun throwing some not-so-subtle personal jabs.

The latest example is a television ad Governor Corzine released yesterday.  More than a few observers and bloggers noticed the double entendre – whether intentional or not --when the voiceover says that Christie “threw his weight around” as U.S. Attorney to avoid traffic tickets and points on his license.  

Corzine spokesman Sean Darcy indicated today that the campaign did not intend for the comment to be taken literally.   But state Sen. Bill Baroni, who grew up overweight and lost 130 pounds 15 years ago, said that he “immediately” recognized a reference to Christie’s girth in the Corzine ad.

“Tens of thousands of New Jerseyans like me battle weight,” he said.   “To make reference to that in such a blatant way to distract from a discussion about the issues? We’re better than that.”

Corzine also got personal by launching a web ad accusing Christie of doing a favor for a fellow former U.S. Attorney who declined to prosecute his brother.  

But it has cut both ways.  Throughout the campaign, Christie has focused on portraying Corzine – who grew up in rural Illinois and moved to New Jersey in 1975 -- as not just out-of-touch, but out-of-town.  His campaign released a Web ad replaying a Corzine statement about the “Garden State Expressway”, which does not exist. 

It's not likely that the courts will toss Dawn Zimmer or Beth Mason off the ballot just because they were a little late filing their petitions for the Hoboken mayoral special election.  The whole concept of strict interpretations of election law were pretty much thrown out seven years ago when the New Jersey Supreme Court, citing voter choice, allowed Democrats to switch U.S. Senate candidates long after the deadline had passed.  Ironically, the candidate who had no problem filing petitions was Nathan Brinkman, who is running as a Republican in this heavily Democratic city.  Brinkman's political consultant is Bill Pascoe, who was Douglas Forrester's campaign manager in 2002 when Robert Torricelli ended his re-election bid and was replaced on the ballot by Frank Lautenberg.  The big question is why Zimmer, the Acting Mayor, and Mason, a Councilwoman, needed to push the deadline.

A North Carolina-based Democratic polling is asking Democratic voters if they would prefer Newark Mayor Cory Booker or U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) as their candidate for Governor.  The Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey is expected to be released on Thursday.

A PPP poll has Gov. Jon Corzine trailing Republican Christopher Christie, 44%-35%.

Five weeks before the 2002 general election, Democrats switched their candidate after Republican Douglas Forrester took a commanding lead in the race for United States Senator against the incumbent, Robert Torricelli.  Corzine said in July that he will not get out of the race.

The inference in NJ 101.5's story on Christopher Christie's three tickets is that the then-U.S. Attorney had a "do you know who I am" moment when he was stopped for speeding in September 2005.  The Lambertville police director - coincidentally a former Democratic candidate for Hunterdon County Sheriff - told PolitickerNJ.com that Christie identified himself as a federal prosecutor.  This is the latest in a series of self-inflicted wounds that has dominated the 2009 gubernatorial campaign in recent weeks.

The incident occurred eight months before Zulima Farber, then the state Attorney General, became embroiled in a similar controversy.  On May 26, 2006, Hamlet Goore, Farber's live-in boyfriend, was stopped by a Fairview police officer for driving with a suspended license and an uninsured vehicle.  Farber went to the scene and a State Trooper who was driving her spoke to the police officer.

After a two-month review, a special prosecutor named by Gov. Jon Corzine said that although she broke no laws, Farber violated state ethics codes by showing up.  After initially resisting, she resigned. 

Christie is not the only statewide candidate to get a ticket over the last few years: in April 2007, Corzine suffered serious injuries when his state car was involved in an accident on the Garden State Parkway.  The trooper was reportedly driving at 94 mph and Corzine admitted to not wearing a seatbelt.  He paid a $46 fine.