Tom Kean

PARSIPPANY, NJ - Today, Governor Tom Kean released the following statement on the NJEF's endorsement of Chris Christie:

"Chris Christie has an impressive record of prosecuting polluters. In Christie, the state would once again have a Governor capable of protecting our environment while attracting clean new jobs."

Hours after the New Jersey Environmental Federation endorsed Republican Christopher Christie for Governor, State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) said that Christie would "turn back the clock on common sense environmental initiatives" that Gov. Jon Corzine has worked on over the last four years.

Weinberg, the Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor, says that under Corzine's leadership, "New Jersey has become a national leader on environmental policy."

"We are committed to making sure our kids will have clean water and fresh air for generations to come, while Christie is committed to the same failed environmental policies of the Bush Republicans," said Weinberg, who noted that Corzine's Commissioner of Environmental Protection, Lisa Jackson, was named to President Obama's cabinet as EPA Administrator.

"Chris Christie has boasted that he would fight the Obama administration's efforts to protect our air.  He has said that his first target for budget cuts would be environmental protection and that he'd roll back regulations that protect our air and water," Weinberg said.  "Christie has vowed to follow Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford's lead and reject more than $70 million in federal funds to invest in our state's energy programs and he is opposed to the open space bond issue which would protect our remaining green space.  I don't know about you, but I will take the recommendation of the President and the former Vice President when it comes to matters of the environment."

Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) said that Corzine was "willing to throw away the promises he made to New Jerseyans on the environment as soon as it was politically expedient to do so.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) says he has not closed the door to making a deal that could deliver seventeen Republican Senators to help re-elect Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland).  The problem for Kean is that his caucus is sharply divided over the race for Senate President, and it would be difficult for Kean to deliver the seventeen GOP Senators as a block for either Codey or Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford).  Sweeney already has commitments from fourteen of 23 Democratic Senators, so he really doesn't need to make a deal with Kean. 

What's more, Sweeney is believed to have at least seven votes from the Republican side.  Kean can't make a deal if more than one-third of his caucus seeks to stop him.

Sweeney's biggest threat to becoming Senate President could be the election of Republican Christopher Christie as Governor.  If Christie, as Governor-elect, wants to play in legislative leadership contests, he could make a compelling argument to Republican Senators to support him. But Christie might have little interest in making Codey, already popular with real voters from his fourteen months as Governor, the most visible Democrat in the state.  Instead, he might need to capitalize on the rift between Codey and Sweeney and the possibility that some Senators could be motivated by spite.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean (R-Westfield), left, and Senate Minority Whip Kevin O'Toole (R-Cedar Grove)

State Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean (R-Westfield) won't rule out the possibility of backing state Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) over Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) in a battle for the senate presidency that to this point has been mostly confined to the Democratic caucus.

"My focus going forward is for the people of the State of New Jersey to have more a affordable quality of life, a more accountable government, and real job creation," said Kean, when asked by PolitickerNJ.com if he had ruled out throwing the support of the 17 members of his caucus to the embattled sitting senate president.

"We will work in a bipartisan fashion to achieve those ends," added Kean.

Codey earlier in the week learned that Sweeney had mustered 14 Democratic votes in a 23-member caucus, propelling the labor leader senator from South Jersey past the 62-year old veteran senator and former governor in their majority Democratic caucus.

If Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) wins her bid for Assembly Speaker, she will become the first woman Speaker since Marion West Higgins (R-Westwood) held the post in 1965, the first African American Speaker since the Rev. S. Howard Woodson (D-Trenton) served in 1974 and 1975, and the first from Essex County since Thomas Kean (R-Livingston) was Speaker in 1972 and 1973.

Frank "Pat" Dodd (D-West Orange), above, wanted to serve as second two-year term as Senate President, but dropped out when Majority Leader Matthew Feldman (D-Teaneck) had the votes.

Post-Election Day politics in New Jersey might feature as many as five contested races for Legislative leadership positions: Senate President, Assembly Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, Assembly Majority Leader, and Assembly Minority Leader. 

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Roseland) faces a challenge from Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford).  Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D-Camden) is retiring; Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman is running for Speaker against John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville), and possibly against Democratic State Chairman Joseph Cryan (D-Union) and Sheila Oliver (D-Adubato).  Those races create openings for Majority Leader; perhaps more importantly, the contests create campaigns for Senate Judiciary Chairman and for Budget and Appropriations committee chairmanships in both houses.

Some of New Jersey's best leadership fights:

If these allegations are true, then it is very important that New Jersey find and aid any state patients victimized by political failures, Kean said. Governor Corzine should order the health commissioner to start her inquiry today.

Incurable Form of Cancer Can Kill in Just Four Months

Senator Tom Kean (R-21) would like to help raise awareness of a deadly form of cancer that kills more than 3,000 Americans each year. Mesothelioma is an incurable form of cancer that involves the cells lining an organ, usually the lungs, abdominal organs and heart. The expected survival time of those diagnosed with the disease is as little as four to fourteen months.

Senator Kean has introduced legislation, SJR-77, to declare September 26th of each year as “Mesothelioma Awareness Day” in New Jersey.

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The two major party candidates for governor are not likely to agree on a rather complex issue: does the private investment firm Texas Pacific Group (TPG) have a clear connection to TPG-Axon, a hedge fund run out of the same office?

Gov. Jon Corzine has some of his personal fortune invested with TPG-Axon, which sounds similar to TPG.  Corzine maintains that the two companies have separate identities, and that it is unfair to accuse him of having a financial interest in casinos when it's TPG, not TPG-Axon, that invests in the gaming industry.   Republican Christopher Christie thinks that two companies run by the same people sharing the same office are essentially the same company.

The 2009 campaign includes other allegations where both sides have very different views of the world.  And New Jersey politics has a history of similar unsolved mysteries:

N.J. State Library Photo

Thomas Kean and David Friedland, both Assemblymen, in 1971.

Assembly Minority Leader David Friedland said he entered Mayor John V. Kenny's hospital room at Jersey City Medical Center and handed him the kris knife he had collected on a recent honeymoon excursion to Nepal.

"Mayor, I want your assurance that you'll get the votes to make Assemblyman Tom Kean the Speaker of the Assembly," said Friedland, a flamboyant Hudson County labor attorney who was already politically radioactive as someone "entirely too comfortable with organized crime," in the words of U.S. Attorney William Brennan.

Sure, sure, said Kenny, but what's with the knife?

Friedland told Kenny about climbers in Katmandu who link themselves together by a rope and jump one by one over treacherous mountain chasms. The first man in each chain who jumps is vulnerable because the others behind him outweigh him and can jerk the rope back, knocking him into the chasm.

If that happens, and he survives, it is understood, according to folklore, that the man will seek revenge with the kris knife and disembowel those climbers who double-crossed him.

"I'm going to jump across that crevice first," Friedland told Kenny. "Just make sure your guys follow me."

He left the knife with Kenny. It was a gift.

And a symbol.

For Friedland had other ways of disemboweling Kenny politically if it came to that, if the mayor of Hudson County's biggest city didn't deliver at least four Assembly votes he said he could as part of a deal sprung by Friedland when his fellow Democrats, jittery over his reputation, balked at making him speaker and instead lined up behind Assemblyman S. Howard Woodson (D-Trenton).

Democrats had won a narrow 40-39 majority in the 1971 mid-term election, and were looking to reclaim leadership in the lower house. Powerful Assemblyman John Horn (D-Camden) forged an alliance with Woodson to block Friedland, who was in line for the speaker's chair.

Denied the top Assembly post by his own party, Friedland planned to back Kean, a rising star from Essex County. In exchange, Friedland wanted 50% control of committee chairmanships, 50% control of the money in the lower house, a conference committee that had the power to remove any bill from committee, and a generous North Jersey aid package for Essex and Hudson counties.

He had four votes - including his own - without Kenny. Kenny's contribution would give him a total of seven to add to the Republicans' 39, which would propel Kean well past Woodson for the Speakership.

"On the night before the vote, I was at the governor's mansion playing 'Waltzing Matilda' on the piano," Friedland told PolitickerNJ.com. "It turned out to be prophetic, because that was the theme song for a movie at the time where the planet was destroyed by atomic energy."