Rudy Giuliani

• Conservative activist Steve Lonegan was arrested for protesting at Jon Corzine’s town hall meeting on Saturday.  Lonegan says the Attorney General retaliated by investigating him.
• During her campaign swing through North Jersey, Joe Ferriero endorsed Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s National Finance Co-Chair wants Bob Menendez as Vice President.
• A Quinnipiac New Jersey primary poll shows John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in a dead heat.        And McCain picked Bill Baroni as his N.J. campaign chairman.
• Leonard Lance says he’ll run for Congress, and Kate Whitman says she’s more conservative than her mother.
• The House Majority Leader supports congressional hearings on federal monitors and deferred prosecution agreements.
• Camille Fernicola is won’t seek a fifth term as Middlesex Freeholder, and Burlington Republicans pick Stacy Jordan as their new Freeholder.

Kevin O’Toole wears two hats, and each one has endorsed a candidate in the February 5 Republican presidential primary.  O’Toole the State Senator has endorsed John McCain and serves on his New Jersey Steering Committee, but O’Toole the Essex County GOP Chairman has given Rudy Giuliani the Essex County Republican Organization slogan. 

John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are in a statistical dead heat in New Jersey, and Hillary Clinton holds a 17 point lead for the February 5 presidential primary, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released this morning. McCain leads Giuliani 29%-26%, with Mitt Romney at 14% and Mike Huckabee at 9%. Fred Thompson had 9%.

Clinton, who will make stops in Hackensack and North Bergen today, leads Barack Obama, 49%-32%. John Edwards gets 10% of the likely Democratic vote. Among Black voters, Obama leads 62%-27%, while Clinton leads among women 44%0-36%.

Two polls show John McCain leading Rudy Giuliani in New Jersey’s February 5 presidential primary: a Neighborhood Research poll has McCain leading 31%-26%, with 18% for Mitt Romney, 9% for Mike Huckabee, and 4% for Ron Paul; and a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll has McCain ahead of Giuliani by a 23%-29% margin, with 10% for Romney and 7% for Huckabee.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama, 41%-27%, with 8% for John Edwards in the FDU poll.

Quinnipiac University will release their poll this morning.

A new poll of 380 past Republican voters likely to vote in the Feb. 5th New Jersey primary shows Sen. John McCain leading former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani by 31-26% with 18% for former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney.

Conducted for a private client on Sunday through Tuesday by Neighborhood Research of Franklin, the survey has a theoretical margin of error of +/- 5.0% in 95% of cases.

Sen. Hillary Clinton is the candidate New Jersey voters say they would be most likely to support in the general election, according to a new study from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind.

She's also the candidate voters here are most unlikely to support, according to the same poll.

Roundly booed by conservatives for representing Rudy Giuliani's views on immigration, former U.S. Rep. candidate Bill Spadea won over the crowd at Saturday's Conservatives with Attitude straw poll when he jumped up and immediately took a question on government spending.

Michael Strumolo, former Parsippany councilman, trusts Giualini's presidential campaign strategy will prevail coming off of Feb. 5th - if the former New York mayor can first do well in Florida.

At an event in the Montville Senior House in his hometown, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Pennacchio likens part of his remedy for the immigration crisis in America to the Israeli border, defends presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, and discusses two of his political heroes: John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

For more on Pennacchio, see the Matt Friedman story below about the candidate's afternoon campaign kickoff at Liberty State Park; and watch Assemblyman Jay Webber make the case for his fellow Republican at right on "Max Pizarro's Video Blog."

A poll released today by Rasmussen Reports confirms what a Monmouth University/Gannett poll showed earlier this week: that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are in a dead heat in New Jersey.