Joe Biden

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Salem Freeholder Bruce Bobbit to GOP opponent: "Don’t tell me I’m a freaking tow truck driver. He can kiss my ass."
In often overlooked Salem, a competitive freeholder race.

Republicans in New Jersey’s least populated county have an opportunity this year to take back a majority on the freeholder board that’s been controlled by Democrats since 2002, but they’ll need to sweep the election to do it.

“We’re counting on it,” said Salem GOP Chairman Paul Reed.

It’s not impossible.  While Democrats hold a 6-1 majority on the board, Salem is a true ticket-splitting swing county.  National and statewide voting trends don’t always correlate with local election results in this county of 64,000, where voters tend to judge local candidates by personal interaction rather than the letter next to their name.

And the county’s votes on national and statewide elections are unpredictable.  Ingrid Reed, Director of the Eagleton Institute for New Jersey Politics, noted that the county went for Al Gore in 2000 by six points and George W. Bush in 2004 by the same margin.  In the 2005 Assembly races, it picked Democrats over Republicans 58% to 42%.  But Jon Corzine only edged out Doug Forrester by two points.

In 2007, Salem elected one Democrat and one Republican to the Board of Freeholders -- each by comfortable margins.  In 2006, voters elected a Republican Sheriff and two Democratic Freeholders.  And in 2005, Sullivan won his Freeholder seat by exactly one vote over GOP incumbent David Sparks.

Quinnipiac: Obama 48%, McCain 45%: Getty Images Photo
The contest between Barack Obama and John McCain in New Jersey is too close to call, with a new Quinnipiac University poll showing the battle for the state's fifteen electoral votes at 48%-45% among likely voters.  Obama led McCain by ten percentage points, 51%-41% in an August Quinnipiac poll.

This is the fourth independent poll within the last week to show New Jersey as an emerging battleground state in the presidential campaign.  A Monmouth University/New Jersey poll released this morning shows Obama leading by 8 points, and a Marist College poll released Friday night had identical numbers to Quinnipiac, 48%-45%. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll from last week had Obama up by six points.

“The McCain-Palin ticket has narrowed the gap dramatically, but it will take more than this post convention bounce for the Republicans to win in true blue New Jersey.  The upcoming debates probably will provide a clue to whether Sen. McCain can build on his current momentum, or whether the tide will turn back to the Democrats,” said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. 

Sen. Kevin O'Toole (R-Essex).: Politicker file photo 

MINNEAPOLIS - It’s several hours until Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) takes the stage downtown at the Xcel Center and one of his supporters sits in a hotel where the New Jersey delegation is housed, and he reflects on the years he’s spent in support of this man who would be president.

Soon he will again observe McCain in person.

State Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex), a state campaign co-chair for McCain, goes back to 2000 in his support. But it was during the 2008 Republican presidential primary that he deepened his respect for the Arizona senator and recognized up close what he sees as McCain’s particular leadership qualities.

"He came into Hamilton - and look, I’ve been in politics going back to 1984, I’ve been around presidents and the rest of it, it’s heady stuff - but we were sitting in the back of a bus that day in Hamilton: Baroni, and Sean Kean and others who have long supported McCain," O’Toole says. "Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman were there, and so was John McCain."

The presidential candidate talked strategy, and seated with him, O’Toole, the Essex County political insider who came up in politics the hard way, says unabashedly that he felt he was in the presence of greatness.

And now we go back in time, to Mr. Dembo's eighth grade science class and JHS 278, and a sixteen millimeter film about the seasonal migration of a very special species of ‘birds'----the Politicus Presidentius Candidatus. This year, the migration started particularly early....

In the quadrennial running of "the presidential candidates" [Politicus Presidentius Candidatus], within both ‘Republicanus' and ‘Democraticus' varieties, there seems to be one common similarity amongst the species: it is how those who previously attacked opponents viciously during their year long migration around the country in search of the nourishment of ‘votes', now lavish praise upon the most popular presidential candidate, as they settle in for a brief gathering before the hard ‘political season'.

Sarah Palin may be the first vice presidential candidate since Sargent Shriver to enter a national campaign without ever taking a campaign contribution from a single New Jerseyan – and that’s because Shriver had never run for office before George McGovern picked him in 1972.  According to reports filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission (their version of the Election Law Enforcement Commission), Palin received no contributions from New Jersey residents in her bids for Governor, or for Mayor or Councilwoman in Wasilla.

To view more cartoons by Politicker.com editorial cartoonist Rob Tornoe, click here.

Check back tomorrow morning to view my sketchpad for day three of the Democratic National Convention, and go to my national blog to follow convention coverage by cartoonists from around the country.

West Ward Councilman Ron Rice, Jr. pounds pavement with Obama volunteers.: Politicker file photo 

DENVER - Months and months ago, when West Ward Newark Councilman Ronald C. Rice used to display his Obama button, friends would laugh.

"No chance," they told Rice, who went on organizing and serving as an Obama surrogate.

Tonight, from his vantage point among the New Jersey delegation, Rice said he felt inspired when he heard Sen. Joseph Biden’s (D-Del.) speech and saw the vice presidential nominee stand on-stage with Obama.

Not surprisingly, the New Jersey delegation was thrilled with Joe Biden’s speech tonight.  But among three delegates, the most powerful moment was Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden’s introduction of his father. 

Beau Biden’s recounting of the family’s tragic narrative, when he and his brother survived a car wreck that killed his mother and infant sister, struck State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) particularly hard.

Listening to his son speak and seeing him come out, that was very powerful,” she said.  “You could see the son’s eyes welled up with tears, appropriately so.”