In today’s Inquirer, Jon Tamari looks at the brewing battle for the Senate presidency, with State Sen. Stephen M. Sweeney (D-Gloucester) proclaiming himself the winner yesterday.
 

Does it strike anyone else as odd that with Gov. Corzine still behind in the polls and less than five weeks left until Election Day, the Senate Democrats are squabbling over power instead of concentrating on getting their candidate re-elected?
 

Codey claims that’s exactly what he’s doing. “My focus and energies are on reelecting Jon Corzine as governor and helping Assembly candidates throughout the state," he said in a press release yesterday.
 

If that’s true, he may be the only one, which raises some interesting questions, namely: Isn’t there plenty of time after Nov. 3 to worry about who will be the next Senate president? If Corzine isn't re-elected, aren't all the Democratic lawmakers going to have a lot bigger headaches to worry about?
 

So what does this all too public battle tell us about the Senate Democrats? Does it show a lack of discipline in the party? Why do the senators appear less interested in re-electing the governor than in preserving their own political futures?

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The Monmouth University Polling Institute has posted a fascinating at-a-glance look at the governor's race.

The Institute did a study with unaffiliated voters and asked them to write the words that come to mind when they hear the names Jon Corzine, Chris Christie and Chris Daggett. They put the responses into a word "cloud" which gives a visual representation of the public images of each candidate. The more a word came up in the responses, the larger it appears in the modern-art-looking "cloud."

For Corzine, the dominant response by far was "taxes." On the next level down, roughly equal weight went to words such as "Democrat," "liar," "corrupt," "governor" and "liberal." Slightly smaller, though still large, were "tax," "rich," "spend" and "failure."

Responses for Christie were dominated by "corruption," "change," "conservative" and "Republican." "Fat" and "honest" were other big answers.

For Daggett, the main response was "who" or "nothing."

The images can be found on the blog run by Patrick Murray, head of the polling institute.

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The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club has endorsed independent candidate Chris Daggett in the governor's race, the group announced Monday.

Daggett is an environmental consultant who has served as the state's commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection and before that as the regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Reagan.

This is the first time the state chapter of the Sierra Club has endorsed an independent candidate for governor.

"By endorsing Chris Daggett for governor, the Sierra Club not only made the principled choice but the right choice," said Jeff Tittel, director of the group. "Chris Daggett has shown leadership and a real commitment to protecting our environment. He has demonstrated his willingness to stand up to special interests and politicians to do what's right for the environment."

Daggett said that if elected, he plans to establish a permanent and stable source of funding for open space protection. In recent years, the state has relied on bond measures to pay for open space. He said he would also bolster the Department of Environmental Protection, whose work force has been cut from 4,000 employees when he was commissioner to less than 3,000 today, he said.

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Gov. Corzine's re-election bid only got tougher when 29 public officials, almost all Democrats, were arrested in a sweeping corruption sting last week, according to several takes in the weekend newspapers. In all 44 people were arrested, including a 15 on money laundering charges.

No one in Corzine's administration was charged. The closest the scandal got was a cabinet member, Joseph Doria, whose office was raided, but Doria was not arrested and Corzine quickly called for, and got, his resignation. Still, the image of a parade of Democrats in hand cuffs won't help the governor.

The Record's Charlie Stile calls the arrests a "body blow." Aside from the optics of the situation, Corzine will lose many of the people Democrats depend on to get out the vote in vote-rich Hudson County, where many of the indictments landed, Stile writes.

The New York Times describes Corzine as "discouraged and frustrated" and says some Democrats were discussing the possibility of replacing the governor on the ballot. (For his part, Corzine does not appear to have any intention of walking away). The Washington Post writes that Corzine will have to change tactics after spending much of the early part of the campaign assailing Republican Chris Christie's ethics.

Corzine, however, moved to quickly change the subject on Friday, a day after the arrests, when he announced that he was choosing Sen. Loretta Weinberg as his lieutenant governor candidate and running mate. Weinberg has strong reform credentials - she fought and won against Bergen County's entrenched Democratic leaders - and the campaign has played up that strength. Weinberg was long on Corzine's short-list, but several Democrats said she was put over the top as his choice after Thursday's arrests.

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It has been a busy week for the Corzine and Christie campaigns despite heading into what is typically the slowest part of the political year.

Gov. Corzine has spent two days this week playing up his gun control credentials, attempting to further press an issue that he believes shows a clear divide between himself and Republican Chris Christie. In Washington Tuesday, Corzine joined New Jersey's two Senators to bash a proposal that would extend individuals' concealed weapons permits nationwide, regardless of which state they got permission from. Wednesday Corzine joined Attorney General Anne Milgram for a press conference praising a partnership between the state and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that led to gun trafficking charges against 12 people. Corzine has made gun control one of the top "values" issues he has stressed in his attempt to paint Christie as out of touch with New Jersey's blue state sensibilities.

But polls show that Corzine continues to trail and that voters are focused far more on taxes and the economy than issues such as abortion and gun control. Christie got an assist on this front from Senate Republicans, who obtained a memo from the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services showing that Corzine's latest budget could leave an $8 billion deficit heading into next year, if all programs are funded to the levels written in law. (They almost never are, but that hasn't stopped governors, including Corzine, from using such doomsday projections in the past when it helped sell their ideas). Christie said the looming shortfall should make Corzine quit the race in shame.

Christie, meanwhile, has been making the round with his lieutenant governor pick, Kim Guadagno, the Monmouth County sheriff. Speculation has continued to grow about who Corzine will choose as his running mate.

A Monmouth University poll out Tuesday had more bad news for Corzine: voters gave him a C- as governor and most don't think he has any major accomplishments. That prompted an analysis from The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza that concludes that, if the poll is to be believed, Corzine "is rapidly approaching the point of no return."

One last note, to update my earlier post on a problem spelling - the Corzine campaign quickly fixed the error, when they spelled the Inquirer as Enquirer.  

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Gov. Corzine unveiled a Web site today called "Christie Facts," which aims to play up all things negative about Republican candidate Chris Christie.

It's about what you would expect from a political attack site, including unflattering photos, slices of video meant to portray Christie as a hard-right conservative and a carefully selected crop of newspaper articles that the site says will provide "Shocking Facts."

One of those articles is an editorial attributed to the "Philadelphia Enquirer" (sic).

Framing an argument, spinning it and hammering your opponent is one thing, and seems to be fair game in a hard-fought race. But can we get the campaigns to at least agree that spelling is sacrosanct?

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The Washington Post took a look at the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races Sunday. As the nation's only two gubernatorial elections this year, the Post says the campaigns are drawing attention from Democratic and Republican leaders, who will be watching to see what political indicators they can glean from the results.

Gov. Rendell, weighing in as head of the National Governors Association, said both races feature good Republican candidates and that Gov. Corzine has "the higher hill to climb."

Meanwhile, The Star-Ledger wrote about Corzine's aggressive early stance in the campaign.

The Press of Atlantic City eyed the biggest parlor game going in Trenton right now, the guessing over who Corzine and Republican Chris Christie will select as their lieutenant governor running mates.

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U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is due in Newark this afternoon to tour a charter school there with Gov. Corzine and state Education commissioner Lucille Davy.

The event is billed as an education-based visit as Duncan tours the country looking for examples of schools that work.

But it also fits well with a theme we can expect from the Corzine re-election campaign: stressing ties to President Obama and to education in New Jersey.

Corzine is passionate about education reform. It's the area where he left his biggest imprint during his first term, pushing for new borrowing for school construction and overhauling the state's education funding system after decades of court battles. (That win for Corzine was consolidated by a Supreme Court ruling in his favor last week).

The event today will mark his second school event in the three days since officially kicking off his re-election bid Tuesday. On Wednesday Corzine was in Newark to promote construction plans at a school there.

In other campaign news, a concert with Bon Jovi raised $2 million for Corzine Thursday night, according to the Star-Ledger. Meanwhile Mitt Romney is coming back to Jersey to raise money for the state's Republicans, according to PolitickerNJ.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie was scheduled to continue a swing through the state today in which he is criticizing Corzine's handling of the economy, blaming the incumbent for job losses. Two of the three stops, however, were rained out.

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Yesterday I wrote here about an editorial's appeal for a clean general election campaign. Within hours of that post, Democrats and Republicans went for each others' throats with arguments that basically went: elect our man, because the other guy is terrible.

Gov. Corzine hit Republican nominee Chris Christie for the lack of specifics in his platform. Fellow Democrats called Christie an "ultraconservative" and tried to tie him to former President George W. Bush with a video of carefully-edited snippets of his public appearances.

Meanwhile, Christie went to a closed pipe foundry and blamed Corzine for the bad economy, saying the governor is out of touch with regular New Jerseyans who are out of work. The Inquirer's Cindy Burton had the details from both camps, as did the Star-Ledger.

It's quite early still, but so far neither side has said much of what they would do in the next four years. Corzine on Tuesday night said he would maintain New Jersey's "values" and be a partner with President Obama. But he avoided making new promises, even on some social issues he touted. For example, he criticized Republicans' stance on same-sex marriage, but pointedly did not call for approval of gay marriage himself. (He has said he would sign a gay marriage bill if it reached his desk, but has not pushed the issue publicly).

Christie, on the other hand, has said he would cut income and business taxes, but has not said by how much. He says he will increase property tax rebates, but again, has not said by how much or how he would pay for the new costs after slashing state revenues. Maybe Christie is being realistic, given that if he wins he'll have to work with a Democratic Legislature that is tough even on its own governor. But he also hasn't laid out much detail that voters and the press can evaluate, other than that he's not Jon Corzine.

The Record noted the lack of specifics in an editorial today, and called for more details.

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