Robert Torricelli

Former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has picked up another endorsement of a former Governor of New Jersey, although his campaign has not yet made a formal announcement: Christine Todd Whitman contributed $1,100 to Christie's campaign on May 18.

Another Christie contributor is Kenneth Pasternak, the former head of a day trading firm who was exonerated last year after the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that he overcharged Knight Trading Group customers.  In early 2002, Pasternak actively explored entering the race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination to challenge Democrat Robert Torricelli.  The SEC investigation began shortly after that.  After a fourteen-day trial, a federal judge cleared Pasternak of any wrong doing. Pasternak contributed $3,400 to Christie's campaign on May 14.

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to serve as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is the secondtop court nomination since Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken) joined the United States Senate in early 2006. He voted against the nomination of Samuel Alito in 2006.  The Sotomayor nomination will be eleventh Supreme Court nomination during the 25 years Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) has served in the Senate.

Lautenberg has voted yes on four Supreme Court nominations -- Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Anthony Kennedy, and Antonin Scalia -- and no on six: Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, William Rehnquist, and David Souter.  Lautenberg was among nine Senators to vote against Souter in 1990.  Souter's retirement created the opening for President Obama to nominate Sotomayor, who will become the first Hispanic and third woman to serve on the nation's top court.

President Obama is expected to nominate Paul Fishman as the new U.S. Attorney for New Jersey within the next few days, possibly as early as tomorrow, sources say.  His nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Fishman was recommended for the post by U.S. Senators Frank R. Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) and Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken) last February.  The post has been vacant since Republican Christopher J. Christie resigned on December 1.  Ralph Marra, Jr. is now the Acting U.S. Attorney.

The 52-year-old Fishman, a Princeton University graduate and editor of the Harvard Law Review, worked in the U.S. Attorney's office as Chief of the Criminal Division and as First Assistant before going to Washington as a senior advisor to Reno and as a Deputy U.S. Attorney General.  Fishman is a partner at Friedman, Kaplan, Seiler and Adelman, where he specializes in white collar criminal matters.  Fishman has represented several public officials prosecuted by Christie, and is currently an attorney for former CWA Local 1034 President Carla Katz, who is seeking to keep her e-mail correspondence with Governor Jon Corzine private.

It's called making perfection the enemy of the good and it's the first lesson of legislating.

Every legislative action involves compromise. Effective leadership means doing the best that you can to get the best result. Freshman legislators often make the mistake of demanding too much and being left out of the final product. By wanting perfection, they become the enemy of the good and the final result can be failure.

This is exactly the scenario that played out last week in the New Jersey Legislature. State Senator Bob Smith introduced legislation for a $600 million bond issue for open space preservation.

This has always been the most popular cause in New Jersey. Dwindling open space and rising congestion is destroying our quality of life, choking our economy and impacting our health. We're not only the most densely populated state in the nation, we've now past India as one of the most densely populated places on earth.

Frank Lautenberg probably didn't expect David Souter to vote with the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court when he was appointed Associate Justice by George H.W. Bush in 1990.   New Jersey's two U.S. Senators at the time, Lautenberg and Bill Bradley, were among the nine Senators who voted against the Souter nomination.

During his 25 years in the Senate, Lautenberg has participated in ten Supreme Court nominations; he has voted yes on four (Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Anthony Kennedy, and Antonin Scalia), and has voted no on six (Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, William Rehnquist, and Souter).

Jon Corzine voted on one Supreme Court nomination during his five years in the Senate, casting a no vote on Roberts for Chief Justice.  Bradley voted on nine top court nominations while in the Senate from 1979 to 1997, supporting Breyer, Ginsberg, Kennedy, Scalia and Sandra Day O'Connor, and opposing Thomas, Souter, Bork and Rehnquist. 

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Robert Torricelli represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate from 1997 to 2003. He dropped his 2002 re-election bid after the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee voted to admonish him.

The New York Times is reporting that former U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli "has been added to the list of people linked to (New York) Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's widening pension corruption investigation."  Torricelli was contacted by Cuomo's office in 2007 as part of the investigation of former State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, and "fully cooperated," his spokesman told the newspaper.

Since leaving the Senate in 2002 amidst his own ethics issues, Torricelli became a lobbyist.  His clients included Searle & Company, which employed Hank Morris, a longtime friend who was indicted last month on fraud charges related to the New York pension fund scandal.

Eight years ago, the last time the two United States Senators from New Jersey signed off on a candidate for U.S. Attorney, the appointment of a First Assistant U.S. Attorney was part of the deal.  That was when the new Republican President, George W. Bush, wanted to name Christopher Christie as the new federal prosecutor.  Because Christie had no criminal law or prosecutorial experience, Democratic Senators Robert Torricelli and Jon Corzine only agree to sign off on his appointment if they had input into the selection of Christie's number two.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Timpone was widely expected to get the First Assistant post; he was the one Torricelli and Corzine (mostly Torricelli; Corzine was a freshman) had been pushing.  He also became Christie's choice, and the new U.S. Attorney went to Washington to lobby on his behalf.  But Timpone's chances faded after FBI surveillance revealed that while acting as the defense attorney for former Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski, who had allegedly been recruited by federal prosecutors to be a witness against Torricelli, was visiting Torricelli at his home.  There was a feeling that Timpone had tipped off the senior Senator, and while he avoided prosecution for tampering, his prospects of becoming First Assistant were over. 

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg is trying to help Paul Fishman become the next U.S. Attorney from New Jersey.

Paul Fishman was fairy close to becoming New Jersey's U.S. Attorney in 1999, and as Democrats prepare for their first opportunity to fill the post since then, there is increasing speculation that 2009 may be his year. 

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg pushed hard for Fishman to get the U.S. Attorney post when Faith Hochberg was nominated to a federal judgeship in 1999.  But Fishman got in the middle of a rather extraordinary public feud between Lautenberg and 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 served until George W. Bush's nominee, Christopher Christie, took office in January 2002.

PolitickerNJ.com reported last October that Fishman would be Lautenberg's top choice if Barack Obama won the presidency.  With other potential contenders asking not to be considered, including attorney Joseph Hayden and Attorney General Anne Milgram, Fishman has moved to the top of the list in a campaign that essentially needs just two votes: Lautenberg and U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. 

Robert Torricelli, a Democrat, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 1997, and in the U.S. Senate from 1997 to 2003.

It's hard to not be concerned these days. We've all witnessed frustration with our institutions before but I never remember anything of this scale.

Perhaps the events of the last few years are too much to grasp. Just consider the last few days. Wall Street executives fight for bonuses as their employees and investors face devastation. Senators from states without auto assembly plants fight government assistance. Auto executives demand assistance but fail for a month to deliver a rescue plan. Labor leaders refuse to concede a dollar of contract wages. The entire debate is worthy of a second rate high school. 

A pillar of the investment community defrauds friends, charities and neighbors of billions.  The Governor of Illinois appears to have put the US Senate on an auction block. The Republican Party responds with advertisements that gleefully attempt to damage the new President. President Bush makes every effort to push every problem into the new Administration.

Now every newscast begins with someone throwing a shoe at the President. No issue is too grave for the media to distort, confuse or simplify. The public responds with a rising tide of anger and ignorance (see comments to follow).

WASHINGTON – Newly-installed Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-Union City) is eyeing a fund-raising strategy that targets a geographically broader donor base than the one employed by his predecessor, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Like Schumer, Menendez is planning to use his connections to Wall Street and well-moneyed Democratic donors in New York and New Jersey to stuff the DSCC’s purse. But the New Jersey senator, who during his career in the U.S. House served as chairman of the Democratic Caucus, is looking to broaden the committee’s fund-raising reach, and has indicated that he wants to make heavy use of relationships he has established with donors in around 20 cities around the country, sources familiar with Menendez’s planning said.

These sources predicted that Menendez will make overtures to Democratic givers in Texas, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. Menendez, who is Cuban-American, will also target donors in South Florida. The effort will be geared at taking advantage of a nationwide network that is already in place.