U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.) and Republican challenger Richard Zimmer, a former congressman, are miles apart on most issues.

But they do agree that neither can play a very good game of golf.

As the political corruption trial of former state Sen. Wayne Bryant (D., Camden) resumed this morning, his attorneys called several witnesses in an attempt to re-frame many of the allegations against Bryant in a different context.

One witness, George Hampton, was a vice president at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the public college where prosecutors say Bryant was given a low-show job in exchange for his influence in steering state money. Bryant was chair of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.

Prosecutors contend Bryant did almost no real work, spending just one morning a week at the job and reading newspapers and talking on the phone for most of that time. Hampton facilitated that job, arranging a meeting between Bryant and R. Michael Gallagher, a dean at one of UMDNJ's campuses, the School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford.

Gallagher now stands accused of rigging Bryant's hiring process and, essentially, giving him a job as a bribe.

Hampton said he thought Bryant's job was a "community relations" position. Hampton supervised others who held similar jobs at UMDNJ. Bryant attorney Lisa Mathewson asked Hampton if people who worked in that field had to be out of the office.

"There was a great deal of time spent away from their desks," he answered.

Mathewson also asked if community relations workers were required to read newspapers. Hampton said they were required to do so in order to keep up with current events.

Hampton also that he facilitated the meeting between Bryant and Gallagher "to see if there's any interest to collaborate."

"It wasn't a big deal to me," he said.

Former UMDNJ President Stuart Cook testified earlier in the trial that Bryant solicited a job from him during a meeting. Hampton said top UMDNJ management discussed whether hiring Bryant was a good idea, and Cook took the position that, "if it was okay with everybody else, it was okay with him."

Prosecutors will cross-exam Hampton in the afternoon.

The defense also called Colletta King, a former member of the Gloucester County Board of Social Services. Bryant worked for the board as an attorney, but sent his law firm associates to cover nearly all of his work. King said that was not uncommon among the lawyers who worked for the board.

Bryant was accused of pension fraud because that job counted toward his existing state retirement plan. He also signed time sheets every two weeks for the board, certifying that he had done the work. Under cross-examination from prosecutors, King said she had never seen those time sheets.

"We just assumed that as long as it got covered, we were not concerned," she said. 

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He has a touching life story that may be made into a movie, he is a Navy reservist, and a successful businessman with degrees from Georgetown, Notre Dame law and Harvard Business School. And he is eyeing the political world.

John Crowley, of Princeton, may be a dream Republican candidate.

The Star-Ledger has a profile today that looks at Crowley, a Princeton resident, who considered jumping into this year's New Jersey Senate race before deciding against it.

That's when Crowley's name, and his personal story, became widely known in political circles. He was a successful businessman whose two children were diagnosed with a rare muscular disorder, Pompe disease. There was little doctors could do, so Crowley left his job to create a bio-technology company to develop treatments and a research cure. He has raised millions for the cause.

According to the Ledger story, Crowley could jump into the 2009 gubernatorial race if U.S. Attorney Chris Christie does not run, or he may enter the 2012 Senate contest. Crowley, who hosted a well-attended political party at the Republican National Convention, doesn't make any commitments in the story.

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An odd thing happened on an otherwise routine day of lawmaking Monday: a Republican proposal to reform a program that mostly helps big Democratic cities gained some momentum.

Normally, Republican gripes about the budget become, at best, fodder for political ads, while Democrats, who control all aspects of New Jersey government, make policy. That's why even Republicans were surprised when a bill sponsored by Burlington County Republican Phil Haines sailed through a committee Monday, with amendments that would make it even tougher than first proposed.

The plan targets a program that sends $145 million in extra state support - Special Municipal Aid - to eight "distressed" cities, including Camden. While supporters of the program say it helps struggling cities provide vital services, Republicans have taken aim at the aid, noting that there is no formal application process and that some cities seem to remain "distressed" for years, despite the state's help.

The bill would place tighter restrictions on the program. It advanced out of the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee. It was also backed by the panel's chairman, Sen. Ronald Rice, a Democrat from Newark, one of the Democrat-heavy cities that benefits from the program. Others include Jersey City, Paterson and Union City, all Democratic strongholds, along with Asbury Park, which lies in a strong Republican district.

The bill would limit cities to five years of Special Municipal Aid, with the amount of support decreasing each budget and, for the first time, require that every town get an application for entry into the program.

The plan still has a long way to go before it becomes law, though. It still must go through another Senate committee, the full Senate, Assembly committees and the Assembly floor. It will be interesting to see if Haines' luck holds out.

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Mahmoud Omar, the main government informant who recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with the five foreign-born Muslims accused of plotting an armed attack on Fort Dix, took the stand this morning in federal court.

Omar testified briefly before the lunch break and will return to the stand this afternoon. Prosecutors said they plan then to begin playing some of the hundreds of hours of conversations Omar secretly-recorded with the five men.

Omar said this morning that he met defendant Mohamad Shnewer in 2005 at the grocery store Shnewer's parents owned. The FBI asked him to start wearing a wire after authorities were given a video the defendants made at a Poconos shooting range, depicting 10 men firing guns.

Defense attorneys have said their clients never would have carried out an attack on Fort Dix, describing any talk on the tapes about an attack as nothing more than bluster. They said Omar directed the conversations and basically entrapped the defendants.

For most of the morning, the defense cross-examined John Stermel, a counter-terrorism task force officer who handled Omar as an informant. Yesterday, Stermel described Omar's background as an Egyptian citizen who immigrated to the U.S. illegally and was ensnared in a bank fraud before going to work for the FBI.

Shnewer's attorney, Rocco Cipparone, showed Stermel several transcripts of recorded conversations in which Omar complains that Shnewer was delaying any action on a plot, and that Shnewer didn't coordinate with other defendants and he didn't answer Omar's phone calls.

Another defense attorney, Mike Riley, questioned Stermel about the surveillance Shnewer and Omar supposedly conducted on Fort Dix and other military installations, such as Dover Air Force Base. Riley said the men essentially drove past the bases on public roads, sometimes filming from the car with a cell phone recorder.

"You consider driving down a road and looking at a base reconnaissance?" Riley asked.

"Yes, sir," Stermel answered.

Riley also noted that Omar was paid more money as the investigation gathered speed, until he had reached $1,500 a week.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Hammer noted an August 2006 debriefing in which Omar said that Dritan and Shain Duka, two of the defendants, were not "serious" about an attack.

"That statement about the Dukas not being serious, those aren't the words of a cooperator trying to get people in trouble so he can get paid?" Hammer asked. Stermel agreed.

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A small piece of Gov. Corzine's sweeping poll detailed by The Star-Ledger, and linked to here on the Grapevine, could prove politicially huge.

Among the many findings, the poll found that almost half of the New Jersey electorate is unaware of anything Corzine has accomplished as governor. That's not good news for a man up for re-election in a year's time.

Internally, there are elements of the Corzine administration that are acutely aware of this weakness and worried about it. Whether their fears were stoked by the poll, or the survey reflects what their own observations, I'm not sure. But it will be interesting to see how Corzine responds, and if he starts hammering home his own accomplishments once this Election Day passes and eyes turn to 2009.

If Corzine were to try to highlight his own achievements, we'll be likely to hear about reducing state spending (this year), limiting borrowing, revamping school funding, paying for new school construction and putting more money toward public education. Recently he called for far-reaching ethics reforms and put a spotlight on his Wall Street experience with a broad plan for dealing with the economic crisis.

His opponents are likely to hit Corzine for raising the sales tax, borrowing billions of dollars to pay for school construction, raising spending overall during his time in office and coming too late, they say, to ethics reforms.

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