Josh Hodes will leave Public Strategies Impact, a top Trenton lobbying firm, to become Chief of Staff to Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Cryan (D-Union).  Hodes joined the firm in 2007 after working as Associate Director of Athletic Development for the Rutgers University Foundation. He worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Hodes is the son of Harold Hodes, a veteran Democratic insider and lobbyist who served as Gov. Brendan Byrne’s Chief of Staff.  Harold Hodes is a partner at Public Strategies Impact, along with Republican Roger Bodman, a former Kean administration cabinet member, and Bill Maer, a Democratic strategist who helped run Gov. Jon Corzine’s re-election campaign.

Gov. Christopher Christie, ripping apart the embattled Passaic Valley Sewerage Authority for hiring lobbyists, will likely take some money out of the pockets of Republican partners at bi-partisan (that’s a nice way of saying playing both sides and covering all their bases) lobbying firms.  Lobbyists for the PVSA include Public Strategies Impact, Cammarano & Hagan, Winning Strategies, and Daniel Becht.  And 1868 Public Affairs has a public relations contract with the authority. 

The Public Strategies Impact contract actually belongs to Bill Maer, a Democratic operative who took a leave of absence from his lobbying firm to help run Gov. Jon Corzine’s re-election campaign.  Maer continues to assist Democratic candidates – he’s helping Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney and Passaic County Sheriff Gerald Speziale get re-elected – but he’s protected by his GOP partner, Roger Bodman, a former Kean administration cabinet member and a productive member of Christie’s fundraising team.

Cammarano & Hagan are Peter Cammarano, a former Chief of Staff to Gov. Richard Codey (and a Metuchen Councilman, not a former mayor of a Hudson County city), and Kevin Hagan, a former Deputy Chief of Staff to Gov. James E. McGreevey and Frank Lautenberg’s 2002 campaign manager.  After Christie beat Corzine, they added a Republican partner: Burlington County GOP Chairman Bill Layton.

Becht is a former PVSC Chairman and Republican fundraiser.  In 2001, he resigned from gubernatorial candidate (now Education Commissioner) Bret Schundler’s finance committee in a public protest over Schundler’s attacks on his then primary opponent, Gov. Donald DiFrancesco. 

Richard Ambrosino, a former Whitman staffer and GOP operative, is the spokesman for the PVSA.  His partners include Michael Torpey, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman’s former Chief of Staff and a Christie fundraiser, and former Assemblyman LeRoy Jones (D-East Orange).

Bergen County GOP Chairman Robert Yudin says that a lobbyist working for Gov. Jon Corzine’s campaign should not be helping casino clients find political pollsters.

Bill Maer, who works for the state’s second largest lobbying firm, took a leave of absence in August to work full time for Corzine.  He has agreed not to lobby while working for the governor, but then helped Harrah’s hire a pollster to test the mood of the New Jersey electorate.

“Even if it is technically legal, it is a typical Democratic conflict of interest,” said Yudin.  “It goes right to the heart of what is wrong with New Jersey over the last eight years of Democratic rule.  Everything is for sale to the highest bidder.”

After lobbyist Bill Maer took a high ranking role in Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election effort, a client of his lobbying firm asked him to recommend pollsters for a survey.

That client was Harrah's, represented by Joseph Tyrrell, a veteran political operative and currently the company's Regional Vice President for Public Affairs.  Tyrell requested the recommendations on behalf of the Casino Association of New Jersey, which Harrah's and the other big name Atlantic City casinos belong to. 

Maer recommended three pollsters, including the one that the trade group ultimately selected: Anzalone Liszt Research, a firm that has polled for New Jersey Democratic candidates.

When he signed on to Corzine's campaign, Maer - who works at Public Strategies Impact, the state's second biggest lobbying firm --  signed a contract that he would not lobby any government officials.  He can still play the other side of the field, however, and share his intimate knowledge of the political world with clients. 

Among those clients is Harrah's - a company that has already been dragged into the gubernatorial race by GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie, who accused Corzine of owning a stake in a hedge fund related to a company that has a stake in Harrah's (Corzine maintains the companies, TPG and TPG-Axon, are completely separate). 

Maer declined to comment for this story, but did provide a copy of a portion of his contract.  It bars him from lobbying activity on behalf of his company, but allows him to "communicate with clients of his firm for a purpose other than lobbying." 

Tyrell, for his part, would not say what exactly the trade group polled about or whether Maer would be able to see the results.

"It's an internal poll for the industry," he said.  "The association is part of other casinos in New Jersey in Atlantic City, and they want to go out and do a poll about casino issues.  The lobbyists that they all work with make recommendations."

Bergen County Republican Organization (BCRO) Chairman Bob Yudin reads Gov. Jon Corzine's decision to hire Democratic strategist Bill Maer, a former spokesman for the Bergen County Democratic Organization (BCDO), as one more flailing sign from the incumbent governor.

"This shows the absolute desperate nature of Jon Corzine," said Yudin, referring to a report that the Corzine '09 team bringing Maer into the campaign fold. 

"Bill Maer is the ultimate political hachet man, and this clearly shows Corzine's people will have to do desperate things," the GOP chairman added. "By selecting the former spokesman for the Ferriero organization, they are willing to resort to politics at its filthiest in an attempt to reverse their fortunes. I can't be more emphatic about this. This shows desperation."

Maer's former boss, former BCDO Chairman Joe Ferriero, faces federal corruption charges in court this fall.

Chairman of a massive battleground county where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, 159,771 to 104,084, but where 225,753 voters call themselves independents, Yudin said GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie's nine-point lead in this morning's Quinnipiac University poll is good news.

"Consider the fact that Corzine is spending a million per week," he said. "For Chris to maintain a lead of nine points shows the rock-hard support he has. As he is not relying on public financing, Corzine can spend tens of millions of dollars - and is. Chris is limited by public financing and can't do any advertising until after Labor Day but he's still up by nine points. It's outrageous that the governor in these ads can't talk about any accomplishments. It's clear that Corzine can't buy this one."

Bergen County Democratic Organization spokesman Bill Maer called the lawsuit filed against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa that includes Freeholder Tomas Padilla as a co-defendant a “political hatchet job.”  

“This is politically motivated. There’s no basis of fact. It’s being done for political reasons,” he said.  "Anyone can file a lawsuit... and it's important for people to withold judgment until it's been adjudicated."

Maer said that he can’t speak to the accusations against Zisa, a former assemblyman who has played a prominent role in the local Democratic Party, but that the linkage to Padilla in the complaint is a stretch.

Charles Stile's must-read column in The Record today underscored what many in Bergen County and around the state have been saying for many months: newly-elected Bergen County Democratic Chairman Michael Kasparian has been reluctant to put an infrastructure in place that would ensure a Democratic victory this November for Jon Corzine and freshmen Freeholders Vernon Walton and Julie O'Brien.

Unlike his predecessor Joseph Ferriero, Kasparian has never served as an elected official and has no experience in running any type of political organization.  He has surrounded himself with Ferriero holdovers, including BCDO spokesman and Trenton lobbyist Bill Maer, leading some to complain that he is sending the wrong message to the voters about cleaning up the county organization even as he has refused to utilize some of the organizational methods Ferriero had in place to turn Bergen County into a Democratic stronghold.

Update: "The leadership of the Hackensack University Medical Center Board of Governors consulted with the hospital administration and everyone agreed to reverse the decision regarding The Record. We apologize to our patients and our staff for any inconvenience, and we apologize to The Record.  We are putting this incident behind us and moving forward." -- Statement issued by Rubenstein Associates on behalf of the HUMC Board.

Ignoring Mark Twain's advice about not picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel, the increasingly tone deaf Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) will no longer advertise in The Record, and has banned the newspaper from being sold or distributed on hospital property.  The move appears to be retaliatory: The Record ran a story on Sunday that "detailed how various board members help to underwrite Bergen County's Democratic leadership and how several trustees do business with the hospital - a practice prohibited at some North Jersey hospitals." The Record also ran a hard-hitting story this week on contractor Joseph Sanzari, a major donor and HUMC player. 

HUMC may have a stronger case on pulling advertising than it does by banning the newspaper from their property.

The relationship between the hospital and politics was underscored recently by the conviction of former State Sen. Joseph Coniglio (D-Paramus) on federal corruption charges.  HUMC, which was not prosecuted and where one individual received immunity in order to testify, had hired Coniglio as a $5,000-per-month plumbing consultant, a move a jury found was to facilitate a the receipt in millions of dollars in state funds.

The feud between The Record, which actually defied the newspaper industry with an increase in circulation this year, and HUMC can't be good news for Bergen County Democrats.  Michael Kasparian, who succeeded Joseph Ferriero as County Chairman, is also a major player at HUMC, and Bill Maer, a political consultant for the BCDO, is also a HUMC lobbyist.  Kasparian ran on a platform that included a pledge for mandatory ethics training for party leaders; he has since decided that ethics training will be optional.  (And to The Record's credit, they noted that their Vice President and General Counsel, Jennifer Borg, is also on the HUMC board.)

Barack Obama has pledged to ban lobbyists from holding positions in his administration, something that is the norm in New Jersey politics.  According to documents filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, 226 different lobbyists serve as members of governmental authorities, boards and commissions at the state and local level.

Like predecessors from both parties, Gov. Jon Corzine has appointed numerous lobbyists to state positions.  His possible Republican opponent, former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, would not dismiss the idea that he would put lobbyists in his administration.

"The test is a conflict of interest," Christie told PolitickerNJ.com's Max Pizarro today. "If there is a specific conflict of interest, that person shouldn't be on a board or commission."

With two prominent Democratic leaders indicted, a subpoena dropped on the clerk of the Democratic controlled freeholder board shortly before the election, and running against three incumbents who all had been voted out of municipal offices in their hometowns over the last couple years, Bergen County Republicans still could not pick up a single freeholder seat.

“Those guys did an outstanding job, to be honest. We were in this thing right until the end. So from that perspective, I thought it was a huge improvement – especially over four years ago,” said Republican consultant Thom Ammirato, who ran the campaign.

It’s not as if the Republicans had everything working for them. Ammirato argued that, despite the corruption issue, Democrats had a myriad of advantages, most of all having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, not to mention the power of incumbency. Presidential years in Bergen County are generally the strongest ones for Democrats. It’s the off years that Republicans tend to come closer.