Charges put Democrats on defense

ATLANTIC CITY - For the second time in two years, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie has crashed New Jersey Democrats' annual convention with allegations of official wrongdoing, knocking the party into a defensive stance and Republicans into attack mode.

The roundup of 11 public officials on federal bribery charges - 10 of them Democrats - left leading Democrats yesterday calling for resignations and taking about stricter ethics.

Gov. Corzine, State Senate President Richard J. Codey, Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, and party chairman Joseph Cryan called for the two Assembly members snared in Thursday's corruption arrests to resign by tomorrow.

Neither Assemblyman Mims Hackett Jr., who also is mayor of Orange, nor Assemblyman Alfred E. Steele, a Paterson Baptist minister, responded. Their lawyers said both men would plead not guilty to charges they took cash bribes of $1,500 to $17,500 in exchange for influencing public insurance and roofing contracts.

Roberts (D., Camden) said he asked both lawmakers early yesterday to immediately give up their Assembly committee assignments and leadership positions. Both complied, he said.

The Democrats at yesterday's convention did not single out others arrested in the sting, who include two current Pleasantville school board members, the Passaic mayor, and a Passaic city councilman.

Some did raise eyebrows at the timing of the arrests by Christie, coming as campaigns in this fall's legislative election shifts into high gear. None, however, publicly questioned the U.S. attorney's motives.

Christie is considered by many New Jersey Republicans as their best hope for the 2009 gubernatorial race.

Last year, it was different. News that federal investigators had subpoenaed records of a home that U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez had leased to a federally funded day care center were met with Democratic charges that the Republican U.S. attorney was trying to taint the U.S. Senate election.

Menendez did win, but his campaign endured one of the worst Septembers in modern New Jersey campaign history.

Menendez has not been charged in that investigation. A grand jury is now probing a former Menendez aide who is now a lobbyist.

This year, at a convention whose featured speaker was presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrats moved to distance themselves from taint of scandal.

In the last five years, 108 public officials in New Jersey have been convicted on corruption charges.

Roberts said that he may revisit ethics legislation, possibly increasing the penalties for corrupt officials.

"When somebody violates the public trust, the penalties ought to be extraordinary," he said.

Codey, of Essex County, said: "This isn't about laws. This is about crooks, if indeed they are found to be so."

That wasn't enough for Republican critics, who said Democrats are too tolerant of official wrongdoing. GOP leaders said they plan to pound the corruption issue during the election season, in which the entire Legislature is up for grabs.

"We need to see real ethics reform now, not next month, not next year, but next week," said Assemblyman Bill Baroni (R., Hamilton), who called for an immediate legislative emergency session to write tougher laws. Baroni, who has sponsored several failed ethics reform bills, is running for a state Senate seat in a tight race.

"These arrests bruise New Jersey's already battered reputation and feed the public's distrust of government," said Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance (R., Hunterdon).

Outside Trenton, in a handful of tough legislative races, Republicans jumped to the offensive.

"It's kind of difficult for the Democrats to argue that they have lived up to the campaign promises of six years ago to end the culture of corruption," said Bill Pascoe, a Republican strategist working on contentious legislative races in Cape May and Cumberland Counties. Referring to the arrests, he said: "I don't think that's what the voters had in mind."

Cape May County Democratic Assemblyman Jeff Van Drew, running against Republican State Sen. Nick Asselta, immediately called for his arrested colleagues to resign. He called their alleged crimes "disheartening, disappointing and disgusting."

Asselta rapidly dismissed Van Drew's comments as "political showmanship."

In Atlantic County's tough race - where the sting began with the Pleasantville school board - Republican Chairman Keith Davis said Democratic state Senate candidate James Whelan, a former Atlantic City mayor and current assemblyman, had a political relationship with one of the officials arrested this week. Whelan said he and Davis had feuded for years.

Laying naked the kinds of attacks voters will see in the coming weeks, Davis said: "This year, we need wholesale reform in Trenton. We need to throw out politicians like Whelan who continue to play old Democrat city politics."

These themes will continue to echo, though there is little chance seen that Democrats will lose their tight grip on the Senate and Assembly.