Joe Biden

Cumberland County Democratic Chairman and Freeholder Director Lou Magazzu said that Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate will add five or six points to Obama’s vote in South Jersey.

Cumberland sits just across the Delaware River from Biden’s home state of Delaware.

“I think it’s an amazing day,” said Magazzu, who’s in Chicago on business and for a moment considered making the three-and-a-half hour drive to Springfield to watch Obama and Biden this afternoon.

Republican State Chairman Tom Wilson said that an Obama/Biden ticket will seek to raise taxes, which will be “about as popular Corzine’s toll hike plan.”

Below is Wilson’s full statement.

“With his selection of Joe Biden, Senator Obama has made crystal clear his commitment to raising taxes. The Obama-Biden ticket has a long history of voting for and advocating tax increases on those making as little as $42,000 a year. New Jerseyans already pay more in state and local taxes than anyone else in the nation. Senators Obama and Biden want to make sure that we also pay more in federal taxes too. That idea will be about as popular as Corzine's toll hike plan and makes John McCain's no tax increase platform all that more attractive. This sets up a major contrast that we will drive home from now until Election Day: if voters want a President who will raise their taxes, vote for Obama. If you want a President who won't, support McCain.

Attorney Larry Stempler, who helped run Joe Biden’s small New Jersey campaign operation, didn’t originally have plans to go to Denver. But now, with the news Biden is Barack Obama’s vice presidential pick, he’s scrambling to see if he can arrange a flight to get there by Wednesday.

“As of this moment I was not planning to go, but my plans may have changed,” he said.

Stempler said that Biden’s legislative experience and appeal to various groups of voters who may have reservations about Obama outweighs and geographical downsides to picking a running mate from a small state on the eastern seaboard that already tends to vote Democratic.

New Jersey superdelegate June Fisher said that she’s “in ecstasy” over Barack Obama’s pick of Joe Biden as Vice President.

Fisher was one of three New Jerseyans who headed up Biden’s small presidential campaign in this state. She’s known him since 1974, when he came to speak at a convention in Atlantic City.

“It’s incredibly positive for New Jersey. There are people in some parts of New Jersey who think of him as our third Senator,” said Fisher, who’s been walking around the lobby of the Inverness Hotel in Denver and hugging everyone she knows.

DENVER - Joe Biden’s blue collar roots, support from police and firefighters, his regular guy commute to and from his job in Washington, and his foreign policy credentials all contribute to helping Barack Obama’s presidential campaign effort in New Jersey, according to spokesman Andrew Poag.

"He has a real connection to middle class voters," said Poag of the Delaware senator and presumptive vice presidential candidate, with whom Obama will stand today in Springfield, Illinois.

"He’s never lived in Washington, and he’s almost like a third senator in New Jersey," said Poag, who received a text message at 3 a.m. Saturday confirming Biden as Obama’s veep pick.

In a conversation with PolitickerNJ.com earlier this summer, Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden), noted Biden’s special connection to South Jersey, where his wife, Jill, has roots.