Economy, tax issues have some N.J. Dems seeing red

GOVERNORS stand behind official-looking podiums. They shake hands with constituents in large crowds. Sometimes they even get to pose on stage with the president.

The "What a Governor Looks Like" photo galley on New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine's campaign Web site has pictures of the Garden State's top elected official doing all of these things.

But as Democrat Corzine continues to show dismal poll numbers in his bid for re-election, there are more than a few who think Republican candidate and former U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie looks like a governor, too.

Crystal Evans, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Corzine in 2005, is one of them.

"I can definitely picture him in Trenton and I can see him making some real changes," said Evans, a Democratic councilwoman in Gloucester Township, Camden County. "We have to fix our state."

In a state that's widely known to be the deepest shade of Democratic blue in presidential elections, New Jersey voters aren't afraid to change their hue when it comes to their own messy backyards, political analysts say.

"I would say it's more of a purple state for this race," said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. "The voters in New Jersey are simply not thinking about national implications. They are thinking about their mortgages, stretching their paychecks, and paying their property taxes."

Local issues have dominated past races.

"Impeach Florio" bumper stickers were seen around the state in the early '90s, when one-term Democratic Governor James Florio raised taxes.

His successor, Republican Christie Todd Whitman, a self-made millionaire like Corzine, nearly lost her re-election bid to future Gov. James E. McGreevey in a campaign marked by rancor over the state's car-insurance rates. Whitman was the state's last Republican governor.

Corzine, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, has acknowledged that the economy would be the burden of his re-election campaign and in a recent statement, his press secretary said he's still the only leader who can be trusted at the helm in dark financial waters.

"While Governor Corzine has made the right choices for New Jersey in the face of the worst global economic recession since the Great Depression - investing in education for our economic future, passing the first economic-recovery plan, overseeing private-sector job growth - Christie has never created a job and has no plans to create one now," said press secretary Lis Smith.

Jerry Cantrell, president of the New Jersey Taxpayers Association, said, however, that residents expected more economic prowess from Corzine, particularly when it came to easing the state's property taxes, which are the highest in the nation.

"He was the financial genius, for God's sake, and things have gotten worse since he's been here," Cantrell said. "He keeps saying 'It's not my fault, it's the global meltdown,' but New Jersey has been heading in the wrong direction for years."

The two most recent polls by Quinnipiac University and Fairleigh Dickinson University showed Christie gaining considerable momentum heading into Labor Day.

Quinnipiac's Sept. 1 poll found Christie leading by 10 percentage points, 47 to 37 percent, up from a six-point lead just weeks earlier. The Fairleigh Dickinson poll, released the same day, had Corzine down by five points.

Quinnipiac's poll also found independent candidate Chris Daggett getting 9 percent of the expected vote.

Christie campaign adviser Mike DuHaime said the polls are a clear indicator of the state's dissatisfaction.

"There are voters who believe [Corzine's] out of touch. He made hundreds of millions of dollars on Wall Street, and he just doesn't feel the pain that the average person does," DuHaime said.

Peter Woolley, a political science professor and director of Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll, said the difference in the race so far is party support. Republicans are backing Christie wholeheartedly while the hearts of loyal Democrats, like Crystal Evans, have wandered.

"When you ask Democrats who they are going to vote for, 73 percent say Corzine," Woolley said. "It would be one thing if the other 25 percent were undecided, but about three out of four say they like Chris Christie and they're going to vote for him."

Despite polling results, Christie could still succumb to the great blue tide of Democratic voters that rushes in come November. New Jersey has roughly 700,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans and its 2.4 million unaffiliated voters outnumber both.

"In the end, the Democrats often just out-muscle the Republicans," Woolley said.

Corzine also has plenty of time and tons of money.

"All the numbers are lousy right now for Corzine except for the calendar and his bank account," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

While Christie and Daggett are using public financing, Corzine is funding his own campaign and he has spent more than $100 million on his previous campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate.

The variable will be how Corzine spends that money on advertising in October, Dworkin said, noting that negative ads in the campaign began way back in the spring.

Christie, in one Web video ad, mockingly calls Corzine "the Wizard of Wall Street" to the sounds of the O'Jays' "For the Love of Money."

Corzine has taken on Christie's reputation as the Wyatt Earp of corruption by pointing out his abysmal driving record, his ties to the Bush administration and an unreported $46,000 loan to an aide.

The negative ads, according to Dworkin, are effective, regardless of what polls say, and will most likely be coming heavier and harder in coming weeks.

"Both candidates will have to focus on contrast ads, less about personality and more about issues positions," he said.

President Obama, who stumped for Corzine in July, "has a real stake in the election," Dworkin said, and will most likely visit at least one or two more times in the next two months.

But for voters like Crystal Evans, a married mother of two, property taxes, unemployment and the entrenched corruption that has plagued state politics for decades have driven a wedge between her and Corzine.

"I'm a proud Democrat and I'm ashamed of what I'm seeing," said Evans, the first African-American woman voted onto council in Gloucester Township.

As the eyes, ears and pocketbooks of the nation begin to pay closer attention to the current purple haze in New Jersey, Woolley said each party will come away with a different conclusion after Election Day.

"Everybody will spin the tale in their own direction," he said. "If Republicans win, they will claim this is part of a resurgence. If Republicans don't win, they'll say it's been a blue state anyway."