Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney, a Gloucester County Democrat who is poised to become Senate President, said today that Democrats should focus on the economy, not same-sex marriage.

"One of the things that’s wrong with the Democrat party is that the focus is on this issue when we have many others that should be really taking priority," Sweeney said at the New Jersey League of Municipalities convention in Atlantic City. He called same-sex marriage "an important social issue that will have its day," but said that after November's election his party should realize that the economy is the most important issue. 

His comments may further chip away at the chances for same-sex marriage passing in New Jersey. Gay rights advocates had hoped to move marriage legislation through the "lame duck" session of the Legislature that kicks off Monday. For them, the timing has become more urgent because Gov.-elect Christopher J. Christie, who takes office in January, has said he would veto a same-sex marriage bill.

Senate President Richard J. Codey (D., Essex) and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts (D., Camden) have said they would not put the bill up for a vote unless it has the support to pass. Roberts, also on the panel with Sweeney, said he supports same-sex marriage, but reiterated that he won't bring it for a vote until it has sufficient backing.

Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R., Morris), said the issue should be put to voters, drawing applause from a number of municipal officials watching the panel.

The topic came up at a leaders' panel hosted by NJN's Michael Aron. After Aron led a political discussion for NJN'S On The Record television show, the audience got to ask questions. When one person asked about the lame duck session, Aron specifically asked about same-sex marriage.

"I thought you were finished with your questions," Roberts quipped, winning laughter. 

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The post-mortems are in, and the consensus among reporters is that Gov. Corzine lost for three big reasons:

- he failed to ease the property tax burden and repair state finances, two of the key promises of his 2005 campaign

- he never mastered politics, standing aloof from the political players he needed to help move his agenda, backing off of too many fights and failing to connect with the public he was leading

- he was hit with an economic storm that made all his inherent problems worse.

Here are some takes. Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger says it was a "pointed personal loss" for Corzine, who he described as the state's "unabashed liberal leader."

"He promised to ease the burden of property taxes and failed. He promised to use his Wall Street savvy to fix the state’s ever-broken finances, and he failed again," Moran wrote.

The Record's Charlie Stile writes that "For all his smarts, ambition and, of course, his money . . . Corzine never mastered the art of politics." He says the governor didn't learn he had to promote his own ideas, failed to take care of image problems and was stubbornly attached even to "politically radioactive" ideas.

Ross Baker, a Rutgers political scientist, told David Kocieniewski of The New York Times that Corzine was too timid to see his visions through. Kocieniewski writes that Corzine's "inability to stare down the state’s free-spending Legislature and its public employee unions doomed his efforts to straighten out New Jersey’s troubled finances."

My story took a look at how economic issues -- taxes, the recession, Corzine's ill-fated attempt to deal with state debt -- cost the governor who was sold as having economic expertise.

Those stories examined the four year arc of Corzine's time in Trenton. The particulars of Election Day came down to two big story lines: motivated Republicans turned out huge for Christie, while unenthusiastic Democrats delivered diminished margins in their party's strong holds.

We look at how the GOP-heavy Shore counties gave Christie a massive boost. The Star-Ledger examined the low turn out in Democratic bastions.

The most thorough vote break-down I have seen comes from Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. On his blog, Murray takes a look at region-by-region results. His biggest conclusions: turnout was down overall, but way up among Republicans in Ocean and Monmouth counties, and down in key Democratic counties, Hudson and Essex. And that Middlesex, which swung from a 17.6 point Corzine win in 2005 to a 2.7 point loss this year, may be the state's new bellwether.

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Republican Gov.-elect Chris Christie spent the second day after his election much like the first: with a Democratic leader in a Democratic town talking about bipartisanship.

Christie went to Woodbridge Thursday, a blue collar Middlesex County town, one of the biggest municipalities in the state, that typically votes Democratic but backed the Republican Tuesday. Christie greeted residents on Main Street alongside Democratic Mayor John McCormac, a former state Treasurer. The previous day Christie was greeted at a Newark charter school along with Democratic power broker Steve Adubato, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo.

The message today was just like Wednesday's: Christie said he would work with anyone who is effective, Democrat or Republican. "New Jersey's problems are too big for the petty kind of politics of the past," he said. It's a practical message -- Christie will still have to work with a Legislature controlled by Democrats.

Christie has always been a forceful presence, and it appears that that will continue, including in his dealings with the press. While reporters normally shout over one another to get their questions in, the former prosecutor was in control of his press availability, calling out reporters by name to take their questions and imposing some order on the normally chaotic scrum.

Christie said he had spoken with President Obama, who campaigned for Gov. Corzine, and that there are no hard feelings between himself and the president. He said he also spoke with Corzine and expected the transition to go smoothly.

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In a story in today's New York Times, Gov. Corzine appeared to want to bring back some form of his wildly unpopular "asset monetization" plan, which involved raising tolls by 800 percent over 14 years to raise money for transportation projects, state debt reduction and open space preservation. The plan was so poorly received by both lawmakers and the public that Corzine cut short a planned 21-county road show to pitch the proposal directly to the public.

"This idea worked," Corzine was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "So maybe we just need to scale it back."

At a press conference this morning, after what seemed like every Republican official in the state had sent out a press release condemning the possibility of a new toll hike plan, Corzine said the newspaper's characterization was inaccurate. Asked if he believed the toll plan should be brought back, Corzine said, according to a transcript provided by the administration, "No! No toll increases, no leasing. Off the table. Not gonna happen. Period!”

Asked if the Grey Lady got it wrong, Corzine said, "They got it wrong because they focused on the fact that we may raise money out of our rest stops on properties that surround the turnpike. No toll increases...no leasing of the turnpike. Off the table, not happening, period! And you know I think if you read that article you will also see that Mr. Christie has backed away from every single promise that he talked about during the campaign, particularly during the primary, about how he was gonna roll back the sales tax, how we was gonna increase rebates, how he was gonna put more money into school funding. All of those things are out the window."

That doesn't mean tolls won't increase in New Jersey, though. Last year, Corzine approved toll hikes of about 50 percent for both the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, which will take effect in 2012.

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I'll be on talking about the governor's race along with the Star-Ledger's Tom Moran Friday morning at 10 a.m. on Radio Times, on WHYY.

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He has been creeping closer and closer for months. Now, Gov. Corzine has a 5 point lead in his re-election bid, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll out this morning.

Corzine is up 43 to 38 over Republican Chris Christie, with Independent Chris Daggett getting 13 percent of the vote.  

The survey of 1,267 likely New Jersey voters has a 2.8 percent margin of error.

Two weeks ago Quinnipiac had Christie up by one. He had been leading by 10 points on Sept. 1 and even more over the summer.

But poll director Maurice Carroll said the election isn't over, because 38 percent of Daggett's voters say they may change their minds - and 43 percent of his backers listed Christie as their second choice, giving the Republican a potential path to victory, if he can sway the Independent's supporters to his column.

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With just one week to go until Election Day, we may have the first instance of total agreement from the top three candidates for governor in New Jersey: Let's Go Yankees.

While New Jersey sports fandom is typically split between loyalties to Philadelphia (in the South) and New York (in the North), all three gubernatorial candidates are pulling for the Yankees over the Phillies in the World Series.

Only Independent Chris Daggett is a Yankees fan at his core, but both Democratic Gov. Corzine and Republican Chris Christie have more personal ties to North Jersey than South.

Corzine, who grew up in Illinois as a White Sox fan, has lived in the northern part of the state since moving to Jersey and spent much of his professional career working in Manhattan. His spokesman Sean Darcy wrote in an e-mail that Corzine is rooting for the Yankees.

Christie, born and raised in North Jersey, is an avowed Mets fan -- surely making the Phillies-Yanks World Series sting more than a little. In this radio interview on WCBS 880, the Yankees' radio carrier, he said, "I'm a North Jersey guy so I'll be pulling for the Yankees."

Daggett's policy director Mark Magyar said the Independent who played short stop in Little League at the Shore grew up as a Yankees fan.

"Unlike some candidates for office who tailor their positions, Chris Daggett is a Yankee fan," Magyar said, but added, "I can say if this was the Phillies-Red Sox, I know where he would be." 

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After President Obama campaigned there Wednesday to boost Gov. Corzine, Bergen County -- the most populous county in the state -- is back in the news, this time with a piece of good news for Republican Chris Christie.

The Thursday corruption conviction of one time power broker Joseph Ferriero, who ruled Democratic politics in the county, was both a feather in the cap for Christie, who brought the indictment when he was U.S. Attorney, and a weight on Corzine, who, according to Republicans, gave more than $440,000 in political donations to Ferriero and former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio, another convicted member of the county's Democratic machine.

Christie, in a hastily arranged conference call Thursday afternoon, said Corzine, who once decried "the toxic mix" of money and politics, was one of the system's "leading chemists."

"I'm not saying the governor knew he was a crook, what I'm saying is the governor enabled somebody who was a dictator up in Bergen County," Christie said on the call.

The issue came up at a gubernatorial debate Thursday night. Corzine said the money he gave to the county organization Ferriero controlled was part of his support for national Democrats. He also noted that he backed his lieutenant governor candidate, Loretta Weinberg, when she battled Ferriero over the state Senate seat she now holds.

"The idea that I have somehow enabled Joe Ferriero, when I stood up to him first along with Loretta Weinberg when he tried to run her out of the party, is just a joke," Corzine said in the debate.

Republicans continued pressing the issue today. Christie's running mate, Kim Guadagno, said "For Jon Corzine to imply that his considerable and consistent contributions to Ferriero's political operation were simply to elect federal candidates is laughable and isn't fooling anyone."

For at least two days it brought back ethics as an issue, which we all thought would be a key to the race after 44 people were arrested on stunning corruption and bribery charges this summer, but which faded after the Corzine camp raised questions about Christie's ethics.

What impact could it have now? The guru of Bergen politics, Charlie Stile, says not much: "Most polls show property taxes as the top concern in this election — corruption and ethics reform barely register," he wrote.

Meanwhile, his Record colleague Alfred Doblin penned a song for the situation. If you like Jersey politics, or Frank Sinatra, click the link.

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Voters here don't particularly like Jon Corzine or Chris Christie. So each candidate has tried to tie themselves, to different degrees, to a politician that the New Jersey public does like, President Obama.

For Corzine, a fellow Democrat, the link is easier. Obama himself made the case for re-electing Corzine Wednesday night in Hackensack. The message: the "change" that Obama promised in Washington will do better with a Democrat in the Statehouse in Trenton.

But Christie has also seized on Obama's "change" message, casting himself as the outsider who would uproot business as usual in Trenton, notably by lowering taxes.

But Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray says today that Christie's message is missing a key piece of the Obama theme. It wasn't just change, Murray writes on In The Lobby and his own blog, it was "change and hope."

The change message is easy enough: Corzine, whether for his policies or just because he happens to be in office during a national recession, is not popular. But, Murray writes that Christie has not provided hope for better days ahead:

"A common refrain from Chris Christie is that New Jersey is broken.

And therein lies the problem. Attacking the incumbent is one thing, especially if done well (which it hasn’t been in this case). But who wants to vote for a guy whose underlying campaign theme is that we are all headed down the toilet? Maybe his delivery is just a byproduct of the prosecutorial personality. But it doesn’t resonate with independent voters who need a positive reason to go out and vote."
 

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