Gloves Off in the Garden State (Page 3)

Corzine's wealth is clearly going to be a big issue in the primary. "If there's a major focus of my attention," Florio says, "it's going to be the corrupting influence of money in the political process. I'm going to Washington to wreck that process--the McCain-Feingold bill is embarrassingly modest, and even that can't get passed. All the other things I want to do will get stymied if we can't get around the power of money." Ask him about Corzine and he fumes: "He's just one more example--if it weren't for his checkbook, nobody would take him seriously. Why don't we forget the primary and just conduct an auction?" An eight-page exegesis of press quotes being circulated by Florio's supporters charges that Goldman, Sachs' role in mergers and acquisitions cost the jobs of 79,000 workers, and a leaflet aimed at trade unionists headlined Fight Corporate Greed! Boycott Corzine! says Corzine is "a man who's made his fortune off the backs of working families" and has the "profit-making and downsizing record of one of corporate greed's biggest advocates."

Shrum, Corzine's media gun-for-hire, claims that his candidate is "remarkably progressive"--even though Corzine's official biography boasts that he is a supporter of the center-right Democratic Leadership Council and a board member of its Washington think tank. In a truncated interview, Corzine says that his priority issue is education: He wants to "lead a fundamental and unique debate" on the issue and on "how to spend the surplus" but provides no specifics, adding, "I'm studying how that should work." Corzine asserts he's against the privatization of Social Security but argues for investing a major portion of Social Security funds in Wall Street. (He can't use the borrow-and-spend pension fund raid against Whitman, since Goldman, Sachs made a handsome profit handling the bond deal.)

If Corzine turns out to be another Al Checchi--a wealthy newcomer to Democratic politics whose lavish primary campaign for governor of California failed miserably--it will be one in the eye not only for the North Jersey bosses but for Senator Robert Torricelli, said to be a prime mover behind Corzine's candidacy and whom the Florio camp accuses of drying up money for their man. "With Corzine as Senator, Torricelli solidifies his position as the state's top Democrat and can lead this guy with no experience around by the nose," says a top Hudson County pol. "With Florio he's got competition."

If Florio survives the primary, one constituency in the general election over which there'll be a major battle is the black vote. In 1993 Whitman got 20 percent of the African-American vote against Florio, and in 1997 she got 17 percent against Jim McGreevey. That's unlikely to happen again, in part because Whitman has found herself engulfed in bitter controversy over the use of racial profiling by the state police to stop and search motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike and over the firing of state police superintendent Col. Carl Williams for making racially insensitive remarks. The racial profiling scandal, which has provided Whitman with weeks of bad press, has hurt the governor's 2000 prospects doubly. On the one hand, her firing of Williams alienated conservatives (polls show that 84 percent of white New Jerseyans don't buy the criticisms of the state police). On the other, she has turned off black voters by failing to deal with the racial profiling issue until late in her administration and by bungling the cleanup of the state cops, as well as by backing down on the appointment of the state's first black police superintendent.

Black leaders are already disenchanted with Whitman's failure to provide a coherent program for jobs and economic development for the central cities. Says Henry Johnson, publisher of the Plainfield-based City News, which serves North Jersey black communities, "If you ask the Whitman people, 'What's the plan?' I don't think anyone can give you an answer."

Depressed black turnout helped Whitman win her squeaker victories in '93 and '97, but turnout's always higher in a presidential year, which should help the Democratic Senate candidate. However, it's the Bob Grant candidacy that knocks the biggest hole in the Florio-can't-win argument. The increase in the state's indebtedness under Whitman has been "devastating" to conservative voters, says Harry Hurley, a conservative morning talk-show host on Atlantic City's WFPG who is promoting the Grant candidacy. "She's betrayed her base--they feel like they were played for suckers. My callers say, 'I don't want to vote for Whitman, and I can't vote for Florio'--that's why there's so much interest in the grassroots movement for Bob Grant."

As Whitman flip-flops to protect her right flank against Grant, she also risks losing any gender-gap advantage. On abortion, Whitman's pro-choice stance has always been a matter more of convenience than gut principle. At the GOP presidential convention in 1996, when pro-choice pols William Weld, Pete Wilson and Olympia Snowe grabbed headlines with a convention-floor press conference, Whitman absented herself. And now she's endorsed the ban on late-term abortion, while also taking the NRA position opposing protective "smart gun" legislation. These maneuvers are not enough to satisfy conservatives who, as Hurley puts it, consider her "the Antichrist," while at the same time they undercut her support with moderates.

"Look," says Roger Stone--already talking like a campaign manager--"with just half a million dollars on radio ads, building on the fact that Bob Grant will be cutting her up on his mike until next June's primary, when he has to announce, he can make a serious showing. The same people who are pooh-poohing him now are the same people who dismissed Jesse Ventura." Or, as Grant himself recently put it in an appearance on Hurley's program, "It's time to cut off the head of the Wicked Queen."

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