Acting New Jersey governor Richard Codey has taken his name out of the running for Jon Corzine’s vacant seat in the US Senate [Codey doesn't want Corzine's Senate seat]. Codey has been in the New Jersey legislature for nearly three decades and has amassed a lot of good will and power as president of the NJ Senate. I never thought he would trade that in to be a junior senator in a minority party with no seniority in the US Senate for a year at which point he would then have to run an expensive state wide race to retain the seat in 2006. And if Corzine stumbles badly or gets bored and decides to run for presidenet, Codey will have a clear path to the governor’s job.

Without Codey, the conventional wisdom is that representative Bob Menendez is the front runner for the senate seat with reps Rob Andrews and Frank Pallone also in contention. Pallone is an empty suit, and Andrews committed the cardinal sin for a 2005 democrat and that was to vote for the Iraq War. That leaves Menendez, who has lots of baggage but democrats must think voters won’t care about that stuff. Probably right. I’d still put Representative Rush Holt as a dark horse candidate.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 24th, 2005 at 10:07 am and is filed under New Jersey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.