Matt Yglesias

Electoral Reform and the NJ Governor’s Race

Jonathan Martin writes about the crucial role being played in the New Jersey gubernatorial race by former moderate Republican Christopher Daggett’s surprisingly strong independent bid:

Christie, who had been running a traditional anti-incumbent campaign against Corzine, must now reckon with a perennial question faced by candidates who are imperiled by a lesser-known, third-party contender: To attack Daggett is to elevate him, effectively acknowledging that he’s a serious candidate and offering him free publicity. But ignoring him could amount to disregarding the most serious threat to Christie’s campaign, leaving Daggett to siphon away a significant amount of voters who are intent on registering their opposition to Corzine.

Ed Kilgore observes:

But Christie really doesn’t control that decision, since his major funding source, the Republican Governors’ Association, has already started going after Daggett with sledge hammers. It appears their theory is that attacks on Daggett as a “tax-and-spend liberal” will either flip Daggett voters to Christie, or perhaps even drive liberal voters who would otherwise support Corzine to the third-party candidate (who already has significant support from environmentalists). Again, the operative assumption is that Corzine’s vote has hit its “ceiling,” so there’s relatively little risk in drawing further attention to Daggett.

But you have to wonder: does Christie’s vote (now that he’s increasingly campaigning like a conventional conservative Republican) also have a “ceiling,” based on the Republican Party’s legendary handicaps in NJ?

This is the kind of thing that makes you pine for Instant-Runoff Voting (or actual runoffs). Wouldn’t it be nice if Daggett’s voters got to actually register their second-choice preference, thus ensuring that the winner of Christie-Corzine would actually be the one the voters prefer? What’s more, right now it’s clear that a lot of New Jerseyites find Daggett appealing. And the polls almost certainly understate the true level of preference for him, since voting Daggett in a first past the post system doesn’t really make tactical sense. If people knew that a vote for Daggett wasn’t a “wasted” vote, it’s possible he could win the election.

Corzine Attempting “Juvenile Schoolyard Taunts” Strategy

Um, really?

It is about as subtle as a playground taunt: a television ad for Gov. Jon S. Corzine shows his challenger, Christopher J. Christie, stepping out of an S.U.V. in extreme slow motion, his extra girth moving, just as slowly, in several different directions at once. In case viewers missed the point, a narrator snidely intones that Mr. Christie “threw his weight around” to avoid getting traffic tickets.

In the ugly New Jersey contest for governor, Mr. Corzine and Mr. Christie have traded all sorts of shots, over mothers and mammograms, loans and lying. But now, Mr. Corzine’s campaign is calling attention to his rival’s corpulence in increasingly overt ways.

On the one hand, this seems like it couldn’t possibly work. Who’s going to be anything but repulsed from Corzine by these tactics? On the other, it does often seem that prejudice against the overweight is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice. But this really looks to me like a (deserved) backlash waiting to happen.

Chris Christie’s Slide

I haven’t been following the New Jersey governor’s race very closely, but GOP contender Chris Christie’s recent slide in the polls certainly seems noteworthy. If incumbent John Corzine can somehow pull this out, that would be a real sign of what lousy shape the GOP is in politically.

After all, when you’ve got an opposition incumbent as unpopular as Corzine running amidst an economic catastrophe, those are the races you’re supposed to win. If you can’t hold on to a lead in the polls that just goes to show that your party’s brand has become totally toxic in the state in question. Twenty years ago, New Jersey was a solidly conservative state. Mike Dukakis got 42 percent of the vote there, less than Obama got in South Carolina.

A related issue will be the Delaware Senate race. Republicans have persuaded Mike Castle, probably the least-conservative member of the House GOP caucus, to challenge Beau Biden for the seat. Castle is super-popular in Delaware and stands a good chance of winning. But obviously the Republican leadership as a whole is very much not popular in Delaware. Will Castle be able to persuade people that he won’t just be a lockstep obstructionist? If he wins, will he deliver on that promise and build a more robust moderate wing of his party’s caucus? Or will his popularity melt away in the cold light of a campaign?

Dirty Jersey

(adapted by right from cc photo by TheTruthAbout)

Illinois and Louisiana have been making most of the recent headlines, but New Jersey is renewing its claim to fame as a land of political corruption. Federal agents swept up “about 30 people including several mayors, in a federal investigation into alleged public corruption and a high-volume, international money-laundering conspiracy.” But there’s more!

The probe also involves the trafficking of body parts, according to a person familiar with the matter. One of the individuals who was arrested Thursday morning is an alleged organ dealer, this person said.

According to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Newark, the arrests related to the public-corruption probe included Peter Cammarano III, the newly elected Democratic mayor of Hoboken; Dennis Elwell, mayor of Secaucus, also a Democrat; state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, a Republican; and Democrat Leona Beldini, the deputy mayor of Jersey City.

Mostly just funny.