What will Corzine do?
From the WSJ OpinionJournal's Political Diary:
Who You Gonna Call?
They laughed when the Wright Brothers tried to fly. They laughed at the electric fork. Yet another great vindication was PD's insight last week that Gov. Jim McGreevey's most quoted line -- "I'm a gay American" -- was the carefully crafted contribution of outside crisis consultants. Yesterday the New York Times reported exactly whose contribution: The phrase was a "poll-tested" line developed and recommended by the Human Rights Campaign, a prominent gay rights group in Washington.
Whether Mr. McGreevey can survive in office until his self-imposed quit date of Nov. 15 will be the real test of how well the line succeeds. Not everyone is prepared to go along. New York Times Metro columnist John Tierney bestowed his "Misdirection Award" on McGreevey's magic act for outing himself as a way of making "his real political problem vanish." His nemesis, Golan ("I'm not gay") Cipel, hasn't helped either by describing Mr. McGreevey to an Israeli newspaper as a kind of gay masher.
But the most serious dissent is coming inside the New Jersey Democratic Party, where hustling Mr. McGreevey offstage is increasingly seen as the best hope of holding onto the governor's office with its rich patronage opportunities. U.S. Rep. Robert Menendez is apparently leading the charge to draft Sen. Jon Corzine to run in a special election this November -- and Mr. Corzine, the Newark Star-Ledger carefully reports, is "willing" if not "eager."
Of course, the more he thinks about it, the less eager Mr. Corzine might become. He spent $60 million of his own money to win his Senate seat, and his Goldman Sachs wealth has continued to serve him well as insulation from the seamier aspects of New Jersey Democratic politics. Now he's going to step forward as the machine's savior? The machine might want to think twice too, since Mr. Corzine would obviously have to run as a "reform" governor -- and might actually mean it.
Nonetheless, expect big pressure from the Kerry campaign if it fears that the November vote in New Jersey will become a referendum on Mr. McGreevey with Mr. Kerry as the nearest available whipping boy. Not exactly lost amid the McGreevey revelations was a front-page report showing that New Jerseyans had suffered the biggest tax hike of any state in the union -- $417 per person, compared to a national average of $80 -- during the period when the governor was putting the target of his affections on the state payroll at $110,000 a year.
--Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
The Corzine Moment
New Jersey Governor James McGreevey told his staff he decided to stay in office until November 15 because he couldn't ask his wife to leave the governor's mansion and look for a new home on any shorter notice. It turns out he may have to disappoint her. The real decision maker on when the governor resigns his position is probably New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine. If Mr. Corzine gives the word he wants to run in a special election for governor this November, look for a delegation of party bosses to visit the governor with a pointed message that he should leave before September 3, the cutoff date for holding a special election.
"There's a big push on now to get McGreevey out sooner rather than later," a senior McGreevey administration source told the Associated Press on Sunday. While the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry isn't eager to share the November ballot in New Jersey with a special election for governor, party bosses fear that more revelations are coming that will taint the state Democratic Party and make it more difficult to hold on to the most powerful governor's office in the country.
There's no doubt that Mr. Corzine wants to be governor, but in order to run in a special election he would probably have to give up his chairmanship of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the middle of the party's effort to retake control of the U.S. Senate. Even though he would be able to appoint his own successor in the Senate should he become governor, there's no doubt that Mr. Corzine does not want to be blamed should the party fall just short of a Senate majority.
--John Fund |
