Shirley Turner

State Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Cryan address the crowd at Obama HQ on Saturday.: Politicker photo

WEST WINDSOR - The sense here on Saturday is the presidential race is no longer deadlocked nationally.

At this moment.

So when State Democratic Chairman Joseph Cryan asks the crowd of 260 Obama canvassers to demonstrate an upbeat mood, they respond with full-throated gusto in the packed headquarters of Obama’s campaign headquarters.

No one committed to a candidate in this cycle lets pass an opportunity to celebrate the good fortune of his or her presidential aspirant, be he Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) or Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

To hear the media tell the story, the fortunes appear too transient.

If this event occurred a week ago, the mood would have been borderline gloomy. But today Washington is mulling a $700 billion bail-out package for a flat-lining Wall Street and Sen. John McCain - longtime champion of deregulation in the private sector - also lugs a five-day old burden of suggesting that America’s economy is fundamentally sound.

MINNEAPOLIS - Stunned by Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) headline-snatching announcement last Friday that he selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, N.J. Democrats this week re-set after taking a three-day hard look at Palin.

So far, they’re having a difficult time squaring an obscure Alaskan with New Jersey’s hard-edged, ethnically diverse environs, despite Republicans’ best efforts - in the words of State GOP Chairman Tom Wilson - to make a case for why "New Jersey will love Sarah Palin."

"They have Eskimos in Alaska," former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield said to the suggestion that Palin may not have experience relating to the kinds of ethnic groups whose myriad cultures saturate New Jersey.

As for the fact that Palin’s a woman - a younger, slimmer verison of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with an attitude to tempt backlash voters over to the GOP after Clinton’s primary loss - Democrats remain unimpressed.

DENVER - The perceived indignity of standing in a crush of bodies behind the Island of Guam in that gaping blue glow of the Pepsi Center, coupled with the ongoing grind of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) loss, didn’t do much to boost the spirits of the delegation, as coming in here they hung their last hopes on a podium appearance by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Union City).

"No comment," state Party chairman Joseph Cryan said when poked about Menendez’s chances of speaking.

When it finally didn’t happen, the bulk of Garden State Democrats looked again for sustenance in Senator Clinton, who won by nearly ten points in New Jersey, whose presence on stage could keep the painful tensions of every silently suffering delegate alive for a few more hours - building to some end that was as yet unknown.

And yet when she spoke on Tuesday, Clinton put a larger political conflict in very stark terms, attempting to uplift to battle stations a mood that could easily go straight to a meltdown with the wrong tone.

State Party Chairman Joseph Cryan: Politicker photo

DENVER - It’s a few hours until Hillary’s close-up and the New Jersey delegation - both the Obama originals and the baby boom Clintonistas still nursing stubbed toes from the primary campaign, are imbibing heavily at the Palm’s in downtown Denver.

"This is a party that I’ve thrown for the delegation and friends of mine from all over the country," says party fundraiser Michael Kempner, head of MWW.

It is perhaps appropriate that Kempner is hosting this mixer a few hours before Clinton speaks. Kempner, after all, was a fierce Clinton partisan during the primary. Then he broke through the hurt feelings of the Group to become the earliest Obama backer among the Democratic Party fundraising elite.

State Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer): Politicker file photo 

Monday night’s convention tribute to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) carries special meaning for state Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer), who served as a delegate to underdog presidential candidate Kennedy in 1980, when she attended her first Democratic National Convention in New York City.

"I remember it brought tears to my eyes," says Turner, who supported Kennedy because she believed the Republicans would defeat President Jimmy Carter and doubly humiliate the Democrats by gaining a majority in Congress.

They did - on both counts.

But although Kennedy lost the nomination, in endorsing Carter, he delivered an emotional speech whose final lines Turner remembers by heart: "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

NEWARK - Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer) submitted a letter to the court on behalf of former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, part of which defense attorney Thomas Ashley read to U.S. District Judge William Martini.

"The events represent a brief period in a long and illustrious career," Turner wrote. "...I am convinced he is not likely to commit another offense."

The crime of fraud, said Turner, represented a departure from James’s otherwise distinguished public service as a teacher and elected official, in her view.

Sen. Bill Baroni (R-Mercer), Tuner's Republican state Senate colleague and fellow member of the Mercer County delegation, last week wrote a letter to Martini with three other GOP lawmakers, asking the judge to impose the maximum penalty. 

State Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex).: Politicker photo 

Nothing’s ever rock solid in politics, but the top of the Trenton power heap may contain more potential for movement than usual in the lead-up to Statehouse reorganization come January.

Two possible factors include Speaker Joseph Roberts’s (D-Camden) imminent departure from the Assembly, and the possibility that a newly crowned Obama administration would haul former Wall Street guru Gov. Jon Corzine out of New Jersey to crunch numbers in Washington.

In the thicket of this political drama, it’s difficult not to identify Senate President and former Governor Richard Codey (D-Essex) as a protagonist.

"I’m just a kid from Orange," Codey told a packed auditorium in his native Essex County town last month - but he’s also a former governor, who by all appearances liked the job and enjoyed great popularity.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, backing up Senate President Richard Codey's endorsement of Obama.

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander knew it would be hard to pry Sen. Hillary Clinton’s supporters loose in New Jersey after her victory in New Hampshire.

This was a fight now, and Clinton’s people were solid.

"We have an opportunity here in Hudson - Hudson, Hispanics, Hillary and history," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) cried to a North Bergen audience of mostly Latinos with Clinton on stage.

The response was near to deafening with Clinton standing on stage with Menendez, U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-13) and state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).

But that didn’t mean there weren’t other opportunities for Obama; in fact, one big opportunity, in the form of Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex), who was at the moment glumly serving as state director for the foundering campaign of John Edwards.

Alexander knew Codey. He also knew Codey was close to former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ), who had come onto the Obama campaign as an advisor.

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander. 

The campaign was about to change.

On Oct, 9, 2007, an announcement came down from Chicago regarding New Jersey operations. 

Mark Alexander, a Seton Hall University law professor and Obama’s senior policy advisor, would be the campaign’s official state director.

"I am grateful that he is going to carry the fight forward to and through the Feb. 5 contests," Obama said of Alexander. "He is a valued and trusted advisor, and at the same time has deep ties in his home of New Jersey that will be invaluable to our efforts. 

"I am proud of the policy work we have done on this campaign and through Mark’s leadership we have built a team of key advisors from the ground up that will continue to offer new and innovative approaches to the challenges this country faces," added the presidential candidate.

A personal friend of Barack and Michelle Obama’s going back a dozen years, Alexander as a child worked on the 1974 Washington, D.C. mayoral campaign of his father, Clifford Alexander, former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission. Later, he ran Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign and served as counsel to Cory Booker.

Not thrilled with some of the budget provisions, Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) presided over its passage. 

TRENTON - With a majority arguing that the state pension system needs to get on better financial footing, the Senate tonight passed a package of state worker pension reforms by a vote of 30-8.

Sen. Stephen Sweeney of South Jersey introduced the controversial proposal in what he described as a bipartisan vein.

"I make my living as a union leader," Sweeney told the Senate chamber. "You can go out of business if you don't manage your funds properly. These are modest not major reforms."