Over the last few days I've traded a fair number of e-mails with folks very familiar with New Jersey politics.
The consensus is Jon Corzine will not be living in Drumthwacket in January
Now I'm not saying that Chris Christie is an absolute lock to win--this is New Jersey after all. But Corzine already has lost and the power structure in the national and state Democratic party is going to have to hold a "Barry Goldwater" meeting with him in the next few weeks. They will execute the old "Torricelli switch"
The internals of recent New Jersey polls are horrid for Corzine. His job approval wasn't very high to start with, and now it's down to 33%. He loses badly on handling the state budget and dealing with corruption. And , oops, looks like the corruption issue got back on the front pages in a big way.
The problem with Corzine is he sold his background as a former honcho of Goldman Sachs as evidence that a) he would manage state budgets and the economy well and b) he was too rich to be corrupt. Since neither problem got resolved on Corzine's watch, all he has left is to try and trash Christie. But that means that a rather large number( 17% +/-) of NJ voters who already have rejected Corzine will need to decide Christie would be even worse. That's a tall order even with unlimited resources. And now it may be simply impossible in the wake of the corruption dragnet.
Were this just about Corzine, the NJ Democrats might just let the chump lose and figure out how to make Christie a one term wonder. The problem is that NJ voters think the State legislature is equally incompetent. They are now running at 28% approval. And yep, the Democrats control the legislature. Good for them only one house is up this year, and they hold a 48-32 edge.
But here's where Corzine kills the rest of his party. The Democrats took over the Assembly primarily by flipping seats in South Jersey. And Corzine is well on his way to getting crushed in all the counties south of Trenton; losing the Philly suburbs by 18 points and the shore counties by 35 points.
A 10 point Corzine loss might look respectable if he can still win huge in Newark and Hudson County, but if he loses most of the state's real estate by high double digits the GOP could flip the four legislative districts they would need to oust the Democrats from Assembly control.
So the rest of the party is gonna want to find someone who gives the party a fighting shot at holding the Governor's office, or at least, giving suburban swing voters a reason to hit the reset buttom before sweeping the Republicans back in downballot. And an alternative is right in the wings, State Senate President and former Acting Governor Richard Codey. While Codey's proposals weren;t always popular, he left office in pretty good stead.
Codey would at the minimum force the Christie camp to relaunch their message as well; and might well serve to reduce turnout of apolitical suburban fiscal conservatives eager to spit in Corzine's eye.
So, I expert Corzine to start getting veiled messages from his co-partisans in New Jersey that they would prefer an alternative. He may be getting them under the radar already; I suspect the visibility will increase so as to drive the point home. How many times can your allies say "no f**king way" before people stop believing you?
I then expect Corzine to be summoned to DC for a "strategy session" with Rahm Emanuel. The purpose of this meeting will be to determine what prestigious sounding economic post can be presented to Corzine so he can drop out "to serve the nation in this time of economic crisis". Maybe make Corzine yet another "czar" of something like Third World debt relief or what not.
The White House will not want to see both Democratic held governorships flip to the Republicans this fall.. They already probably have done all they can in VA to save the seat; but VA's demographics provide little room for error for even the best Democrat. NJ's clearly a better bet to hold; but not with a candidate the voters have no use for.
Both parties have done this in New Jersey--swapped out an unpopular nominee right before an election. In 2002 the NJ Democrats swapped out sleazemeister Senator Robert Torricelli for the aging but respectable Frank Lautenberg. And the GOP had Acting Governor Don DeFrancesco step down for former Congressman Bob Franks; who still lost his primary to Bret Schundler.
The deadline here is whatever a pliable New Jersey Supreme Court will allow to be; so I suspect one more batch of bad polls will appear before the impetus to execute this reaches a boil. My guess is this all comes to a head in the first half of September.
The NJ and national GOP needs to start thinking now about how it is going to react to a "Torricelli Switch". Forewarned is forearmed!
