Susan Bass Levin

Senate Budget Committee member Steve Oroho, R-Sussex and Hunterdon, said it's disgraceful that the Corzine administration approved a grant of $12 million today under the so-called Special Municipal Aid program without producing the performance audits required by law.

From our first year, the Best & Worst Campaigns of 2000:

Susan Bass Levin, the former Cherry Hill Mayor and state Community Affairs Commissioner, became the Acting Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – the first woman and the first New Jerseyan to run the powerful bi-state agency.   She will hold the post until the authority picks a replacement for Anthony Shorris.  Traditionally, New Jersey gets the Port Authority chairmanship and New York gets the Executive Director post, which means that the top job now goes to Gov. David Paterson.

James Saxton parlayed a series of narrow victories and political opportunities into a successful career in New Jersey politics that spanned four decades.

Saxton was the 32-year-old Bordentown Republican Municipal Chairman in 1975 when he made his first run for the Legislature, challenging Democratic Assemblyman John Sweeney in a politically competitive district that included parts of Burlington, Ocean, Monmouth and Mercer counties. Sweeney, who later became Chief Counsel to Governor James Florio and is now a Superior Court Judge,  had been elected in the 1973 Democratic landslide, ousting GOP incumbent Kenneth Wilkie.  Saxton ousted Sweeney by 3,018 votes - 24,831 to 21,813.  He had no trouble holding the seat in 1977 and 1979.

Rep. Jim Saxton (top), a 12-term Republican, will face State Sen. John Adler next yearThere’s been a lot of speculation about State Sen. John Adler running for Congress, so his announcement today that he was filing a campaign committee didn’t startle his opponent.

“It’s early, but there have been signs he was going to run. We are not surprised,” said a statement from Rep. Jim Saxton, who declined to offer any other comment.

Adler’s decision to run for Congress means that Democrats are launching their first serious challenge to U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton since Susan Bass Levin ran against him in 2000, spending over $1 million but losing by a margin of 57-42 percent. In 2006, a bad year from the GOP nationally and in New Jersey, Saxton beat the low-budget campaign of newcomer Richard Sexton by an even wider margin.

With apologies to Don Henley, I don’t make my living off the evening news.

I really do want to know what’s going on.

The folks at PoliticsNJ.com feel the same way. So they asked me to blog about political reporting, with an emphasis on potential biases by the media, actual conflicts, factual errors, and shortcomings in news stories.

‘Cause sometimes when it’s said and done the press hasn’t told us a thing.

Okay, enough with the ‘80’s rock lyrics.

For a couple of decades, I was in the State House press food chain. I fed ‘em and occasionally got chewed on by them. I’ve also gagged on plenty of smoke in those back rooms where the “people’s business” really gets done.

The Jersey Journal is reporting that the New Jersey State Police has begun a background check on State Senator and Bayonne Mayor Joseph Doria, who has been rumored as a possible candidate for Commissioner of Community Affairs.  Doria's name has been in the mix for the DCA post since Susan Bass Levin left to become Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Rabner’s nomination hits a bump, lawmakers reach agreement with Corzine on budget, Mathesius’s poison pen, Menendez officially endorses Hillary, Susan Bass Levin’s local finance board post pads her pension, Dina Matos McGreevey blames ex-husband for poor book sales, Rice maneuvers against Booker.

Corzine administration sources say that Kim Ricketts, an administrator at the Department of Law and Public Safety, is a possible candidate for Commissioner of Community Affairs.  The current Commissioner, Susan Bass Levin, has accepted a new post as Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.  Ricketts, 40, served as Deputy DCA Commissioner under Levin before becoming state Consumer Affairs Director.  She is a former Highland Park Councilwoman.