The reviews are in. Clinton steals the show!!

• The Bergen Record notes the fired up crowd at Kean University was a bit more interested in the ex-president than Jon Corzine [link]. “I’ll shut up, because you didn’t come to hear me,” said the bearded wonder as young women in the front row began to swoon at the sight of the Slick One. During the speech, Bill compares Jon Corzine to his wife, Hillary. I guess in some political circles, that’s a compliment.
• In the Asbury Park Press [link], it’s noted that during the speech, Clinton quotes the “Show me the money” line from the movie “Jerry Maguire”. Given Clinton’s fundraising exploits during the White House years, I’m sure that line was used a lot.
• The Star-Ledger notes that the ex-president’s speech touched on topics of concern to NJ voters, including ethics. Hmm…. It sounds like Bill had such a good time that it wouldn’t surprise me if he made another Corzine campaign appearance in October. The guy has an ego the size of the Hindenburg, and he doesn’t get this rock star treatment during his high paid speeches to industry groups and such.

Looks like I spoke to soon about the polls. After three months of polls showing the race for New Jersey governor as basically unchanged, today Quinnipiac University has a poll out that shows the race tightening [link]. That poll shows the democrat, Jon Corzine at 48% and republican Doug Forrester at 44% in a poll of nearly 900 likely voters. The 4% gap is the smallest of any poll to date in the NJ governor’s race.

The article also notes that the FDU-PublicMind poll had Corzine up by 8% and a Monmouth University poll had Corzine by 9%. The Monmouth University poll was done in partnership with Gannett.

One good poll is better than none for Forrester, who hadn’t broken 40% in any poll until this one when matched up against Corzine.

The article also quotes Corzine’s reaction to the poll, and if he did say that, it’s a sign he may be in trouble. When asked about the poll, Corzine gave the Loser’s Lament : “The only poll that counts is on Nov. 8.”

Doug Forrester must think he’s starring in the movie “Groundhog Day”. Every day he wakes up to find a new poll on the New Jersey governor’s race, and no matter what he does, the poll results are the same. Today, it’s time for the Fairleigh Dickinson-PublicMind poll, and it shows Jon Corzine leading with 44% of the vote and Forrester trailing with only 36% [link]. When FDU counts leaners, the results are Corzine at 48% and Forrester at 38%.

This looks like just about every poll I’ve seen since the June primary. Corzine at 50% or just below and Forrester at 40% and just below. OK, Doug, you’ve got Corzine just where you want him. Time to kick the campaign plan into high gear.

Other poll results: 49% say the state is on the wrong track, but Forrester hasn’t been able to reach those voters. Acting governor Richard Codey has a 57% approval rating, with 49% of republican voters rating Codey’s performance as good or excellent. And 58% of republican voters expect Corzine to win. Ouch!!

Oh, joy, Bill Clinton to appear at a campaign rally for democrat governor candidate Jon Corzine. Thursday, September 29th, at Kean University. Perhaps someone told Bill about the pretty co-eds at Kean.

A few weeks back I wrote about how boring the summer was for the NJ governor’s race. I was glad the summer was over, and in September we would have some real action. So far, I’ve been wrong. Except for the debate last week, September has been a real snoozer, too. Very few ads, no real conflict. No sense of excitement. Borrrrr-ing!

This may be a positive for Doug Forrester. Low enthusiasm will mean low turnout, and democrat voters may be more likely to stay home. Democrats in New Jersey know this, which is why come Election Day, you have that great Jersey tradition of “walking around money”, hundreds of thousand of dollars in unmarked bills passed around to community leaders for get out the vote efforts on Election Day. While Corzine might be lacking enthusiasm, he’s certainly not lacking in cash, and you can expect him to spread the wealth to get his voters to the polls.

I haven’t seen any polls since the first governor’s debate, but Forrester needs to start showing some momentum, even something small like getting more than 40% in a poll, something he has yet to do.

Has he tapped into the Republican voter network here in New Jersey, a grass roots network which did a very successful effort to turn out many republican voters in November 2004?? If he has, he’s keeping it secret. The election is five weeks away. I’d be happy to see a bunch of lawn signs. The only Forrester signs I’ve seen appear to be leftovers from the June primary.

NJ Conservative agrees, asking “Where’s the Buzz??”

What’s going on here?? Just a few weeks ago, Gilligan (Bob Denver) passed away and then yesterday it’s Maxwell Smart [link]. Don Adams has died at age 82, the most recent death in a suspicious string of deaths of 1960’s TV stars.

Other 2005 deaths of famous 1960’s TV stars was Eddie Albert of “Green Acres”, James Dohan from “Star Trek, Frank Gorshin (The Riddler from “Batman”) and Johnny Carson. I may have missed one or two, but these are big time names from 1960’s television. And 2005 isn’t over yet.

There’s either some kind of plot to bump off 1960’s TV stars, or else I’m getting old.

My favorite episode from “Get Smart”: the one where Larry Storch (Agarn from “F Troop”) plays the Groovy Guru, the host of a psychedelic TV show who is actually planning to brainwash America’s youth by using subliminal messages buried in the music of his rock band “The Sacred Cows”. A classic.

• Matt Stoller over at CorzineConnection was nice enough to link to DynamoBuzz and Bob at eCache in his blog round-up of critiques and reviews of the first NJ governor’s debate [link]. In another post at the Corzine blog, Stoller says he got lots of e-mail from supporters who thought Mr. Corzine needed to brush up on his media skills. Other than that, Stoller says Corzine was better, and Forrester is a dirty, rotten liar.
• In an editorial, the Philly Enquirer says Forrester won on points but it was no knockout. The writers noted “..Corzine’s performance was surprisingly weak.”
• The Bergen Record quotes Corzine campaign chairman Tom Shea stating about the debate format “..It’s not his best format”. The editorial writers noted the poor style of Mr. Corzine and that Mr. Forrester came across as “confident and relaxed”.

More about Tuesday’s first debate between NJ governor candidates Jon Corzine and Doug Forrester:

• I noted last night that PoliticsNJ had an on-line poll up asking “Who won the first governor’s debate?” and that at the time Forrester was ahead. Well, (Thursday AM) the poll has Corzine ahead by an almost 2 to 1 margin. Seems like at least one far left political blogger, MyDD, put up a post noting the results and a link to the poll asking his liberal blog readers to “..Go and push Corzine over 50% to reflect reality.” The first commenter posted that he didn’t live in New Jersey, didn’t see the debate but went and voted for Corzine. I heard some dead people voted for Corzine, too.
• Charles Webster from the Trentonian has his review of the debate [link], saying that he thought Forrester did better. Webster felt that Corzine was knocked off message by the fact that the first question he got was about Carla Katz. Don’t know about that. Did he really think that nobody was going to ask him about it?? If they had asked him about his beard, he may have been totally thrown for a loop.

This article answers a question I had earlier today. What happens when they run out of names for hurricanes??

As most of you know, the National Hurricane Center picks all the names for hurricanes ahead of time, taking care to alternate between male and female names. Right now, they’re up to “R” for Rita. They only have four names left, Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. What happens if there is a hurricane after Wilma?? They then start using Greek letters. So after Wilma, we would get Hurricane Alpha, then Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, etc …. This might be a learning experience for school kids, since I doubt many are taught the Greek alphabet.

PoliticsNJ has an on-line poll asking “Who won the first gubernatorial debate?”. As of 7:50AM, it was Forrester at 46%, Corzine 44%.

Political scientist David Rebovich didn’t pick a “winner”, but at the Star-Ledger he noted “I think the Corzine camp is going to realize his debating skills are rusty and will need to be worked on before the next one” [link]. As always, Rebovich is the master of the obvious.

Another Star-Ledger article quotes political scientist Brigid Harrison, who thought Forrester did well but not enough to close the gap in the polls [link]. Hey, it’s a start.

The Star-Ledger article quotes Senator Nasty himself, Frank Lautenberg, complaining about Forrester’s agressiveness and “… disparaging tone”. Give me a break!!

It was 8 o’clock and the Rangers weren’t doing so hot against the Islanders in their NHL pre-season opener, so I switched over to NJN to watch the debate between Doug Forrester and Jon Corzine. This was the first debate between the two candidates for NJ governor.

My impressions:

• Neither guy is that dynamic, but Forrester actually seemed more confident and sure of himself, and I think if someone had never seen Forrester before he would have been more impressive. Corzine seemed to stumble over his words a bit at the beginning, but he improved as the debate went on.
• The debate featured three reporters taking turns asking each candidate a question, allowing the other candidate a rebutal and so forth. Bob Ingle and Michael Aron asked both candidates tough questions. Aron started off right away with Jon Corzine on Carla Katz. Kaitlyn Gurney tossed Corzine three softball questions (on the smoking ban, legalized gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research) while going after Forrester pretty hard, twice, on his political contributions.
• Neither guy likes the New Jersey School Construction Corporation.
• Bob Ingle asked about the bear hunt (both candidates oppose the bear hunt).Correction:Forrester was in favor of the bear hunt. I just remember him making some comment about a family in Sussex county having breakfast with a bear.
• Both candidates are against the Newark Arena.
• Michael Aron asked about a potential disaster at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Reactor, and suprisingly Forrester was to the left of Corzine, opposing re-licensing of the power plant while Mr. Corzine wanted a study of the plant’s safety.
• Both sides tried to play up their property tax plans while attacking the other guy’s plan, but neither side won that argument. As I’ve said before, both plans stink.
• Every time Forrester mentioned Norcross, McGreevey, Torricelli and Kushner, Mr. Corzine would respond with George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.
• Overall, the tone was pretty civil. I was afraid Forrester would try some gimic like holding up a piece of paper with a no tax pledge and carry it over to Corzine for his signature.

I don’t believe in scoring these things like a high school debate. Each candidate goes into a debate needing to achieve something and as long as you don’t make a major gaffe then you really can’t lose. Forrester is trailing by at least 10 points and my gut feeling is he got much more out of this debate than Jon Corzine, though certainly not enough to close the gap.

I would have mentioned the democrat corruption a lot more than Forrester did. There was a question from Bob Ingle about the Kelo supreme court decision and the use of eminent domain to seize private property. Forrester should have mentioned that the beneficiaries of eminent domain seizures are usually politically connected developers and power brokers, and two of the more controversial land seizure projects in New Jersey, Petty’s Island and Kramer Hill in Camden can both be linked to George Norcross.

I think the next debate will be one of the state sponsored debates featuring the third party candidates.

UPDATE: Sharon at Center of NJ life thinks Corzine got spanked [link]. She’s a Corzine supporter, thought he had only two good minutes out of the whole hour.

Bob at eCache thought it was a draw, also noting how totally uncomfortable Corzine was on stage [link].

Enlighten-NewJersey scored it Forrester by a knockout, noting how uncomfortable Corzine was as a speaker [link]. Corzine was making those Katrina/Bush comments to appeal to his base, the rabid Howard Dean/Daily Kos crowd who he needs to turnout in November.

Given that not too many people watched this debate, most voters will get their impressions from the media coverage, so the spin from the MSM will be interesting. Let’s see if the Star-Ledger and the Bergen Record see it as Sharon, Enlighten-NewJersey and I see it, a net gain for Forrester.

Rasmussen Reports has a new poll out for the NJ governor’s race, showing pretty much the same percentages as the Strategic Vision poll from three days ago. Democrat Jon Corzine at 47% and Republican Doug Forrester at 36%. The poll was a telephone survey of 500 likely voters taken on September 14th.

Rasmussen finds that both candidates have low favorability numbers with Corzine viewed favorably by only 41% of the poll respondents and Forrester at 34%. By comparison, the poll respondents gave President George Bush a 42% job approval rating.

Finally!! No, it’s not the first debate between Jon Corzine and Doug Forrester that has me all excited. Tonight is the first NY Rangers pre-season hockey game, the Rangers vs. the Islanders [link]. Pre-season hockey games are usually not too exciting, but it should still be a lot better than the debate between the two charismatically challenged NJ governor candidates.

Tonight’s NJ governor’s debate will be covered by NJN. It will be covered on TV, radio and via live webcast [details]. Corzine and Forrester will be questioned by an all-star panel featuring Michael Aron, Gannett’s Trenton bureau chief Bob Ingle and Caitlin Gurney of the Philly Inquirer. Next time, I want Paul Mulshine on the panel.

Philly Inquirer reporter Tom Turcol has a good pre-debate analysis, says Forrester needs to concentrate on property taxes and state spending and leave the personal ethics stuff alone. I would recommend that Forrester continue to remind the voters about the scandal plagued NJ democrats (McGreevey, Torricelli, Kushner, etc) and making the link to the democrat, Mr. Corzine.

Yesterday was Liliana’s second birthday, and we invited some friends and family over to the DynamoBuzz mansion for a little birthday/barbeque celebration. Weather was nearly perfect, sunny, temperatures in the low 80’s and not much humidity. Kids played, grown-ups dined on hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken and a variety of adult malt based beverages.

My father made the trip down to the party which was nice to see. His health has not been too good lately, but he looked fine. Both of my brothers and my mom were able to make it, so it was one of those rare opportunies for the whole family to get together.

Liliana wanted a “Dora the Explorer” theme for her party, so we had decorations and stuff, and a Dora cake covered with little plastic figurine type thingees. Last year she had trouble blowing out the candle, not so this year (see below). We also had a pinata which was made out of some kind of indestructible material. The little kids couldn’t break it open so Daniel had to get a baseball bat and whack it a few times. Overall, a fun afternoon.

The headline from FoxNews:

N. Korea Pledges to Drop Nuclear Arms

Hopefully they don’t plan to drop them on an American city.

UPDATE: FoxNews has since changed the headline to read the much more calming headline “N. Korea Agrees to Stop Building Nukes”. That’s better.

Strategic Vision has a poll out, querying 800 registered voters in New Jersey on the November governor’s race [link]. Like every other poll since June, the poll has Jon Corzine beating Doug Forrester, with Strategic Vision showing it Corzine-47% to Forrester-36%. The poll had 15% undecided.

The bad news for Forrester: he still hasn’t broken 40% in any poll so far when matched up against Jon Corzine.

The good for Forrester: Corzine hasn’t gotten greater than 50% in any poll. Only 44% of the poll had a favorable view of Corzine while 40% had an unfavorable view.

Other results from the poll: Only 35% are happy with the candidates. 52% would prefer a different candidate. Acting governor Richard Codey had a favorable rating of 51%.

They also asked republican and democrat poll respondants who they want to bear the party nominees for the 2008 presidential race. Democrats overwhelmingly picked Hillary with Al Gore and John Kerry trialing badly. Republicans want Rudy Guliani with John McCain a close second.

NJ Senator Jon Corzine is denying that his 2004 vote on a tax bill was a special benefit inserted into the bill for his own financial benefit [link]. The clause in the bill gave a bailout to investors who had lost millions in a Japanese banking industry investments. Jon Corzine and his investment buddies were beneficiaries of the specially targetted tax break.

Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity called it a clear conflict of interest. One of Corzine’s aides told the newspaper that the senator did not know the clause was in the bill. Do these guys actually read the bills before they vote on them?? I guess not.

The Doug Forrester campaign has jumped on the news, noting that this is part of a troubling pattern in the senator’s personal finances [link].

Auto insurance and New Jersey. Our favorite topic. After years of haggling and maneuvering, after Jim McGreevey’s reforms, the results are in. For the most recent year, 2003, New Jersey drivers paid the highest auto insurance rates in the country [link]. The average New Jersey auto insurance premium was $1,188 dollars in 2003, 44% higher than the national average. New York and Washington DC were second and third.

Auto insurance industry representatives say one reason NJ rates are so high is because NJ drivers are wealthy and drive newer more expensive cars. Normally competition drives down the price of a product, but not so here. At one time insurance companies were refusing to write policies for NJ drivers, but now they are flocking to the state because the auto insurance market is so profitable, so says John Dyke, the chairman of the NJ Auto Agents Alliance.

One of the myths of auto insurance is that as you get older, your rates go down. Mine never have, they’ve gone up just a bit every year. And I have a clean record. In past NJ elections, auto insurance reform has always been a big topic, but I don’t think that will be the case this year. Apparently the big issue is Doug Forrester’s part ownership in a DC based captive insurance company.

The NJ Republican State Committee will be asking Attorney General Peter Harvey to investigate potential election fraud concerning the voter rolls in New Jersey [link]. This may be a pre-emptive strike in case the November election is close.

In particular, the NJ GOP is arguing that they found 170,000 voters who are registered in more than one state and, shockingly, a total of 17,000 who are officially deceased. Of those 17,000 corpses the GOP found that 5,000 voted in the last election. My reply: that’s it?? Only 5000?? In my hometown, North Bergen, you had a few hundred residents of Flower Hill Cemetery every election who cast their absentee ballots for the local democrat machine (Mocco, DiVincent, Sacco). I don’t think they’re looking to hard if they only found 5000.

All the debate talk in this 2005 NJ Governor’s race has been a bit confusing, but this APP article by Gannett Bureau writer Jonathan Tamari clears it up.

There are actually five debates. Three are sponsored by private entities. Only Jon Corzine and Doug Forrester will be in these debates. All three will be televised. The first one is next Tuesday, September 20th.

There are two other debates sponsored by the State of New Jersey’s Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC). Any candidate who qualfies for state funded public financing of elections is required to attend the ELEC debates, and the two third party candidates, Hector Castillo and Jeffrey Pawlowski, are both participating in these debates. However, because Forrester and Corzine are not accepting public financing, neither is required to attend the ELEC debates. Forrester has said he will attend the ELEC debates with the two third party candidates, but Corzine says he won’t.

Politically, it makes sense for Corzine to avoid debates. He’s leading in the polls, and he has enough money to buy ads to get publicity. But it is a bit hypocritical of him since I thought the idea of the campaign was to present choices to the voters and not avoid forums, right??

UPDATE: to the update  This article at the Philly Inquirer says there are four debates, not five, and that Corzine and Forrester have agreed to participate in the ELEC debates with the third party candidates.