Steve Sweeney

CHERRY HILL - Wearing a green ironworkers local t-shirt, state Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) says he's been here before, and so he speaks with first-hand knowledge when he says the labor vote makes the difference in close elections down here.

"In my senate race, my internals showed me down by two and I won by three - and it's because of this," says Sweeney, on his way into the packed Camden County Democratic Committee headquarters where the workers are pressing through the front doors, then the back, spilling into the rear parking lot for their massive morning GOTV rally.

"There is more of a commitment than ever from organized labor for this election," Sweeney says. "Chris Christie has made it easy for us. He drew as deep a line as you can draw and people are eager to defeat him."

The majority leader, who is poised with senate reorganization to become the senate president, said at least 1,000 workers will attend the rally, then jump on GOTV vans that will cruise to targeted locations throughout South Jersey on behalf of Gov. Jon Corzine and  his allies.

"This is something the Republicans don't have," he says. "A ground game."

Sweeney confirms that he had a sit-down meeting last week with his rival for the senate presidency, Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland), but denied that Codey told him he was conceding their leadership contest.

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BELMAR - Inevitably, observation of Assemblyman John McKeon's (D-West Orange) higher profile and intensified advocacy for open space and environmental issues coincides with Senate President Richard Codey's (D-Roseland) public battle to remain in the chair of senatorial power.

Those dynamics in the 27th District have created speculation that McKeon, alert to a shakeup as redistricting looms next year, may be angling to head the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) if Gov. Jon Corzine is reelected.  

"No one's asked me (about serving as DEP commissioner)," McKeon, who on Wednesday night co-chaired Caroline Kennedy's rally at the Barclay for Corzine, told PolitickerNJ.com.

He added, "I'm totally focused on my own re-election."

But Codey's situation may impact the 51-year old McKeon, as the sitting senate president faces the prospect next year of being unseated by Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) and the empowerment of Codey's political antagonists to redraw a district map for 2011 that would favor their closest allies and conceivably weaken the current legislative occupants of District 27.

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Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) says he won't run for re-election to the Gloucester County Board of Freeholders in 2011, and suggested that he might leave his post as Freeholder Director and his seat entirely before his current term ends.

Sweeney, who has a majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus backing his bid for Senate President, said his decision to leave his county post will not be affected by the outcome of his campaign to oust the incumbent, Richard Codey (D-Roseland).

"I still have to figure out how to transition out (of the freeholder director's position)," Sweeney told PolitickerNJ.com.  ""I got elected freeholder last year. It's a three-year term and for the record I was going to transition out anyway because there would be no way I could run for senator and freeholder at the same time, so right now it's just a timeline consideration." Read More >

WESTVILLE - Standing in a diner across the street from a soon-to-be-shuttered Sunoco Plant where 400 employees will be out of work, GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie bashed Gov. Jon Corzine as an incompetent incumbent taking refuge behind overkill advertising as the state's unemployment rate climbs another digit.

"He does see the light at the end of the tunnel," Christie said of Corzine, referring to the governor's recent press conferences hyping the state's exit out of a recession. "But that light is a train driven New Jersey taxpayers who will run him off and run him over on Nov. 3rd."

Yet Christie's everyman appearance down here in South Jersey this afternoon came as the Corzine campaign continues to pound him for lavish excursions racked up on the public meter while he was U.S. Attorney, including a six-day, $4,705 London hotel stay in 2008, complete with marble decor and heady proximity to Buckingham Palace.

"My secretary made my hotel reservations every time I had to travel and the instructions were very clear: find a government rate if you could, and if you couldn't, get me the best rate at the most convenient hotel," Christie said. "Yes, I have to sign my own (preauthorization) forms, but i don't always know what government rate is."

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BELLEVILLE - It was fitting that the main man at the microphone tonight at Nanina's in the Park was County Clerk Chris Durkin, a walking hybrid of two opposing political camps, which 20 days before a gubernatorial election can already see the delineations of a county executive battle in 2010.

"Dick Codey was ready to lead when he became governor and he made us all so proud to live, work and play in this state," Durkin said of the former governor and sitting senate president, in the next breath noting of his boss, the Essex County Executive, "Joe DiVincenzo has made Essex County the envy not only of the state but of the country. He is the taxpayers' best friend, and a bureaucrat's worst nightmare."

If it sounded like homage paid to opposing warlords, Durkin is indeed ensconced in the administration of the powerful county executive, but his mother, Joan, is a Codey, cousin of Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland), who last month was unofficially forced off the senate throne in a north-south Jersey Democratic Party coup that hinged on DiVincenzo backing Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) as the new senate president.

Tonight, Durkin - an amiable presence belying a torturous Codey v. DiVincenzo undercurrent - greeted guests to his $150-a-plate fundraiser, including headlining speaker Newark Mayor Cory Booker and the governor himself, who posed for pictures with Durkin before ascending a staircase where South Jerseyan Sweeney stood in a milling, hors d'oeuvres munching crowd with DiVincenzo. 

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BELLEVILLE - The self-proclaimed party of diversity lined up at the start of the Columbus Day Parade today, and if the presence of a single woman packed into this brace of gray and blue suited would-be alpha males heartened Democratic Party onlookers, the downside was that Nutley Mayor Joanne Cocchiola is, in fact, a Republican.

"We're from every part of Italy you can imagine," cracked U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) in an effort to explain the gender domination factor; indeed, they even had an Irishman in there, Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, who made a point, in the midst of all the pre-march backyard chest-thumping, to compliment Celeste Caputo, wife of Assemblyman Ralph Caputo (D-Belleville), on the food.

Making an appearance here at arguably the area's most important Columbus Day event and forced to share a piece of the street with a Christopher Columbus lookalike in Genovese regalia who, when addressed, only responded in Italian, Gov. Jon Corzine relished a chance to inflate his wobbly image in this blue collar, Italian-Irish-Latino Catholic stronghold where Newark's white ethnics re-entrenched after the 1967 troubles.

Twenty-three days from D-Day, he leaned heavily on the locals.

"He opens up his home the way he opens up his heart," Corzine, affectionately gripping the back of Caputo's neck, told a crowd of local Democratic Party rivals who shelved their differences long enough to occupy the same patio with the governor moments before convening in the street at the head of any number of school marching bands, 1940s and 1950s cars, and party flotillas.

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After participating in a morning caucus meeting in Trenton, Senate Republicans announced today that they have unanimously voted to support Sen. Minority Leader Tom Kean (R-Westfield) for senate president.

"People are looking for change in Trenton, and our caucus is united and determined to provide real alternatives to the governor's failed policies that will create jobs and make our state more affordable for everyone," Kean said in a release, thanking his 16 fellow caucus members for their support.

The announcement gives Kean 17 votes, versus 14 publicly committed Democratic caucus votes in favor of Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) for the position.

"We have 17," said Kean. "We have the most votes for senate president of any of the contenders, and our goal as a caucus is to get across the finish line."

The question now is where the eight supporters of sitting Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) will go: to the member of their own party who built a coalition to force their champion from power, or across the aisle to support a Republican.

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PATERSON - If Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) endorses Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) for speaker, he wouldn't see the move as a self-destruct button on his own leadership chair.
 
"I'm saying it's not the end of the world if we had a senate president and a speaker from Essex County," said Codey, to stories suggesting Essex County fracture between Codey, who's trying to protect his senate presidency; and County Executive Joe Divincenzo, who supports Oliver for speaker and South Jersey Senate Majority Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) as part of a North-South Jersey leadership trade-off.
 
Trying to succeed retiring Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) as the face of South Jersey leadership in Trenton, Sweeney has enough (14 of 23) votes in the Democratic caucus to extract Codey from the rostrum roost Codey has owned for six years. But Codey still hopes to build cross-the-aisle support in the Republican caucus to block his South Jersey rival and hold onto the senate presidency.
 
And he doesn't believe he needs to fight Oliver in the process, as he envisions an all-Essex leadership team - for two years.
 
"Who's the Speaker of the House?"
 
"Nancy Pelosi," was the answer.
 
"Who leads the U.S. Senate?"
 
A mind blurred over with Jersey political personages failed to immediately dredge the name of Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), but Codey made his point anyway.

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PATERSON - The guests came and kept coming, happily bellying up to the bar and spilling into the overflow rooms here at the Brownstone for a Sheila Oliver fundraiser even as Essex County Democratic Party Chairman Phil Thigpen upped the confidence decibel level with a release that all of the Assembly people from his powerful county delegation would back the East Orange Assemblywoman for speaker.

The email missive carried the latest piece of bad news for Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland), who's fighting to remain in his chair of power without a majority of the majority in his Democratic caucus and now with the lower house members from his home county throwing in with Oliver.

Poised to become the first African American woman speaker, Oliver is generally seen as a North Jersey counterweight to South Jersey state Sen. Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford), who has the Democratic Party votes in the senate to take Codey's job. The more support she builds, the tougher it becomes for Codey to justify sticking around as a double dose of Essex in both the speaker's and Senate president's chairs.

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PATERSON - Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville) won't deny that he's the missing link from Middlesex as part of a new legislative leadership package that would make him the next state Democratic Party chairman and successor to Assemblyman Joe Cryan (D-Union).

"'If there's anyway I can augment that team, let me know,'" is how Wisniewski sums up his communications with the power brokers, describing the ins and outs of those talks as "internal party politics."

Appearing tonight at the Brownstone in Paterson at a fundraiser for Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange), he said he would be interested in the job.

"One of the things that the state party chair needs to do - and this goes for whoever holds that position - is to build the roots of the party and encourage among young voters and new voters an identification with the Democratic Party," said Wisniewski.

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