WHAT DID SHERRY SAY TODAY?
Mon., May 24, 1999GONNA BE UGLY: Carville joins Florio camp
When former Gov. Jim Florio announced last week that the "Ragin Cajun" Democratic political strategist James Carville would be returning to New Jersey to help him in his campaign for Frank Lautenberg's seat in the U.S. Senate, I was shocked. Only a month ago, Florio told The Trentonian editorial board that he would not bring Carville back to the Garden State for this campaign.
Carville tried to ignite a class war against Gov. Christie Whitman when Florio ran against her for governor in 1992, most memorably producing television ads attempting to convince voters that Whitman was soft on drunken driving.
After slightly more voters decided that they didn't hate the upper class (symbolized by Whitman) as much as they hated Florio, Carville took complete credit for the defeat.
At election post mortems in Washington and New Jersey, Carville repeatedly proclaimed that he was the one who had lost the race, not Florio. Humbly, he confessed that he had let the former governor down, as if what candidates do doesn't matter nearly as much as what their handlers do.
That kind of arrogance has made Carville a legend, not only in this country, but around the world. Fresh from his recent campaign victory in Israel backing Ehud Barak, Carville is sure to be insufferable in New Jersey during the coming year.
Immediately upon returning to U.S. soil last week, Carville exclaimed that Florio will become New Jersey's next United States senator and called Whitman's claims of being a fiscal conservative "a big joke."
When Carville went after Whitman in 1993, he condemned her for being a rich woman.
But we have since learned that
Carville doesn't like poor women either. In defending President Clinton against Paula Jones, it was Carville who said that you never know what you'll get when you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park.
Florio's camp in South Jersey stressed that Carville has not been signed as a consultant in the campaign and will not be collecting a paycheck. They say he'll just be raising money. But you can bet he'll be mouthing off too, because that's what he does best.
Carville isn't the only big time handler who has already checked into the locker room for next year's race Senate race. Doug Schoen, the president's pollster, has been running the numbers for Jon Corzine, the North Jersey alternative to Florio being pushed by State Sen. Ray Lesniak, D-Elizabeth, and Sen. John Lynch, D-New Brunswick. Schoen seems to be making a specialty of big moneybags candidates who come out of nowhere. He was the numbers guy for Al Checchi, the multi-millionaire who went nowhere in the California gubernatorial race last year and he just wrapped up Marty Weinberg's mayoral campaign in Philadelphia. Weinberg also had lots of money. He lost too.
Corzine's primary qualification for office is that his net worth is somewhere around $400 million. The former Goldman-Sachs executive has announced he's willing to share his pot of gold with the party bosses if they let him run on the Democratic ticket. Corzine says he doesn't want to buy the race. Instead, he wants to run on "Democratic ideas." That's why he paid Schoen six figures to pin point what those ideas are.
Ironically, the Democratic team that most often wins in New Jersey, Brad Lawrence and Steve D'Amicco in New Brunswick and Mark Mellman, the Washington pollster for Lautenberg and Sen. Bob Torricelli, are all working for the congressman who has become the dark horse in the U.S. Senate race, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-Monmouth. Pallone has a fund-raiser tonight which should keep him in the race, but veteran county leaders know that, unlike Corzine, he'll never have enough left over to give to them, so the guy with the money is still in the lead for second place, after Florio and Carville.
One reason the jockeying among the Democratic consultants is so heated is that they all believe they can easily come up with a winning strategy against Whitman, the likely Republican candidate.
Whitman was able to beat Florio and Carville in 1993 only because she had the GOP's best general on her team, Mike Murphy. In 1997, Murphy came back to run the Whitman campaign again. If he hadn't, Whitman would have run a gushy campaign on her "political accomplishments" and Woodbridge Mayor Jim McGreevey would be governor.
Murphy was able to drag Whitman over the victory line in this state where Republicans are fast becoming an endangered species because he understands how Democrats think. Only 19 percent of New Jersey voters now say they're loyal to the GOP compared to 35 percent who call themselves Democrats.
But Whitman doesn't pay much attention to consultants. As soon as the last campaign was over, Murphy was banished from the Whitman camp where insiders report that John Whitman and the governor's brother Dan Todd have veto power over the professional strategists. Neither of them have a clue how Democrats think.
It's obvious to anybody who knows about politics that New Jersey Democrats are light years ahead of Republicans when it comes to campaign strategies. Of course, when you point that out to State GOP Chairman Chuck Haytaian, he always says that if Republicans are so bad at winning elections, how come they control everything that matters in New Jersey politics -- the Senate, the Assembly and the Governor's Office.
Most Democrats will tell you that the answer to Haytaian's question is Jim Florio.
It will be interesting to see what Carville has to say to that.
Sun., May 23, 1999SEARCH WINDS DOWN: Soaries: Trooper supe hunt nearly over
The eyes of New Jersey's black community will be on Secretary of State DeForest "Buster" Soaries next week as the search for a new police superintendent moves into the final stages.
Soaries, who became Secretary of State in January, is one of four people Gov. Christie Whitman appointed to screen applicants for the top trooper post which became vacant when she abruptly fired Col. Carl Williams earlier this year for making racially-charged comments regarding racial profiling. The Selection Committee has interviewed four candidates for the top position and is expected to pass along three to five names to Whitman early this week so she can make the final choice.
Soaries says the task is to make sure the governor gets the best candidates to choose from. But, as the highest ranking African-American in the Whitman administration, Soaries is also clear that it is his job to represent the interests of the minority community in the screening process.
Last week, Rev. Reginald Jackson, Executive Director of the Black Ministers Council, said Whitman must choose a new police leader from outside the ranks of the state police force.
"Anyone who is pushing someone from inside he state police is not serious about ending racial profiling," Jackson said, drawing a line in the sand on this issue between African-Americans and the governor.
Soaries, who is also the pastor of one of the largest African-American churches in New Jersey, understands Jackson's frustrations.
"For black people, denying racial profiling is like denying the Holocaust must feel to Jews," Soaries said. "This is the last issue of its type from the era of overt discrimination in this country. It's Jim Crow discrimination."
But Soaries calls Jackson's argument disqualifying state police insiders as "weak."
"There may be insiders who have been working for change," Soaries said. "Some black troopers have filed lawsuits. We shouldn't disqualify everybody."
Soaries admits that he plays two roles in the current debate about racism that surrounds the selection of the next police superintendent.
"My mission to the black community is to say that the governor is honest," Soaries said.
"She may not get there exactly the way we want, but she'll get there."
Soaries says his other mission is to make sure that the governor understands the nuances and depth of passion surrounding the issue of race for black people. He believes Whitman has taken appropriate action to end the practice of racial profiling.
"Al Sharpton is not camped out on the steps of the State House because he see what's happening here as authentic," Soaries said, noting that there is no high ranking African-American leader in the Giuliani administration who plays a similar role to his as Secretary of State.
Soaries believes the politics of next year's Senate race, sexism and the general antipathy against Whitman because of her wealthy background has "muddied" the debate over racial profiling.
"If this governor were a middle-income Democratic woman, they'd be naming schools after her," Soaries said. "If she were a man, they'd be trying to change the Constitution so he could run for a third term."
Soaries said that despite the secret deliberations of the Selection Committee, there has been intense lobbying, including recommendations from two former governors. Acting Superintendent Michael Fedorko is considered a strong contender, favored by many who believe Whitman must choose someone inside the state police for superintendent.
But Soaries says there are also candidates who have the support of some state troopers.
Other sources have confirmed that a bipartisan group of state legislators, including several minority lawmakers, are backing a candidate who is a former state trooper with additional law enforcement credentials and an existing relationship with the black community.
Jackson said last week that he had "no doubts" that Soaries represents the interests of the black community on the Selection Committee. Soaries says he does not know how soon Whitman will select the new superintendent once she interviews the finalists.
Fri., May 21, 1999
WHO'S TO BLAME? HIP merger officials deny mistakes
Christie Whitman administration officials denied that they had made any mistakes yesterday in overseeing the controversial merger of HIP-New Jersey and PHP Healthcare Corp. in 1997. The HMO went belly-up shortly after the merger, leaving almost 190,000 people without health care.
Jayne LaVecchia, Commissioner of Banking and Insurance, told the Senate Health Committee yesterday that HIP-NJ begin losing money in late 1995 and was sustaining quarterly losses approaching $25 million before the merger in late 1997.
HIP-NJ losses continued after the merger was completed.
"These are such hard decisions to make," LaVecchia said, "HIP-NJ had lived well past nine tries to save its life."
LaVecchia said that the approval of the merger was an effort to save the HMO and insisted that HIP could have been financially revived if PHP had abided by the contract agreement it signed with HIP.
But LaVecchia said her office ultimately could not control PHP because, unlike HIP, they were not subject to state regulation.
Whitman spokesman Pete McDonough also responded to charges that the merger was pushed through days before Whitman's 1997 re-election in order to save the administration from the pre-election embarrassment of a failed HMO.
"The intention was to keep HIP operating," McDonough said. "This may have been a bad business deal between HIP and the parent company, but the priority was to make sure people could get health care."
McDonough also said it was "downright silly" to suggest that Whitman would have tried to shore up HIP for political reasons, because the HMO was run by Democrats including Amy Mansue a HIP-NJ Vice President who served in the administration of former governor Jim Florio.
State Sen. Jack Sinagra, R-East Brunswick, said he did not call the hearings to affix blame for the HIP-PHP debacle, but to prevent such merger disasters from occurring again.
"What happened, happened," Sinagra said. "I would have done it differently."
Sinagra questioned why the Department of Banking and Insurance did not try to stop HIP's financial hemorrhaging by forcing them to raise their premium rates.
"They were being mis-managed," Sinagra said. "We allowed them to continue operating with massive losses."
Sinagra also said that healthcare providers at HIP-NJ told him that their payments became irregular almost immediately after the merger.
Cash from the premiums that subscribers paid to HIP flowed directly into PHP and have not been fully accounted for.
State Sen. John Adler, D-Cherry Hill, asked LaVecchia for documentation of internal memos regarding the merger to determine if there was disagreement within the department over the controversial merger.
"We're trying to determine if this was just a colossal bureaucratic screw-up or something that requires legislation," Adler said.
But LaVecchia said she would not provide internal documents to the Committee because the state is currently pursuing litigation against HIP-NY, which received a $40 million dollar loan as part of the merger deal and possibly PHP.
Adler and Sen. Joe Vitale, D-Middlesex, both expressed disappointment that only cabinet officers appeared at yesterday's hearing. LaVecchia, Acting Attorney General Paul Zoubek and Health Commissioner Christine White all testified regarding the merger but none of them were in their current jobs when it occurred.
The Associated Press has reported that lower level managers in the Banking and Insurance Department knew that PHP's financial portfolio was shaky before the merger but their warnings to department heads went unheeded.
Sinagra said lower level state officials who were involved with the merger would be invited to testify before the committee next month.
WORDS OF ADVICE: Rev. demands outsider to head cops
Black leaders demanded yesterday that Gov. Christie Whitman choose a new police superintendent who is not currently a state trooper.
The Rev. Reginald Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, said that if the governor promotes a trooper to the top job, it would be a "stinging message" to the black community which could cause an angry backlash and possible civil disobedience.
Jackson said only an outsider could change the racial profiling practices that are part of the culture of the state police.
"You have to change the culture," Jackson said. "If you have been part of it and you have tolerated it, how can you change it?"
Jackson said even minority troopers were not good candidates for promotion to the top job.
The African-American Leader said he had spoken with New York's Rev. Al Sharpton, who has agreed to join the Black Ministers Council in New Jersey to protest if an insider is hired to head the state police.
Jackson also charged that state legislators "among the Senate leadership" were advocating current troopers for the superintendent job. He said that anyone who was pushing to promote a trooper for the superintendent job was not serious about ending racial profiling in the state police.
But Rae Hutton, spokesperson for Senate President Don DiFrancesco, R-Scotch Plains, said the Republican Senate leader had not indicated a preference for the state police job.
"Don is confident that the governor will select the best candidate," Hutton said.
Secretary of State DeForest Soaries, who serves on the governor's search committee for the state superintendent, confirmed that some state legislators had recommended particular candidates to the search committee, but he said other groups, including state troopers and at least two former governors, had also provided recommendations for candidates.
Soaries said the search committee has interviewed about 15 candidates from within and outside the state police.
"We have not disqualified anybody," Soaries said.
The Secretary said the search committee would give the governor a list of five finalists within the "next week to week and a half" and that she would make the final decision.
Soaries said he had spoken with Sharpton about Whitman's commitment to ending racial profiling. He said the New York leader sees the governor's commitment as far more genuine than Mayor Rudy Giuliani's in New York City.
"New Jersey is admitting what Sharpton has been trying to get the rest of the country to admit," Soaries said.
Jackson denied there was a rift between the Black Ministers Council and the Whitman administration and said the ministers had written a letter to the governor requesting a meeting.
"We don't want to fight, but we will fight for what we feel is in the best interests of the state," Jackson said. He also expressed support for Soaries, the highest ranking African-American in Whitman's administration. Soaries is also a minister.
"I have no doubt that he represents the interests of the black community on the selection committee," Jackson said.
Jackson said the black ministers were also awaiting the findings from the grand jury that was convened by former Attorney General Peter Verniero to investigate that shooting of three minority men on the New Jersey Turnpike last year.
Jackson said Attorney General-designee John Farmer had indicated that the grand jury report may be released in the next two weeks.
Farmer also serves on the superintendent search committee.
Beverly McNally, President of the New Jersey Council of Churches, joined Jackson in demanding that an outsider be chosen to run the state police.
"Racial profiling is morally indefensible," McNally said.
Bishop Alfred Johnson, Resident Bishop of the New Jersey Area United Methodist Church urged the governor to "strongly consider" appointing a superintendent from outside the ranks of the New Jersey State Police.
Mon., May 17, 1999POLL-ARIZED!: Survey shows Gov would beat Florio ... today
With only 533 days to go until New Jerseyans select a replacement for U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Gov. Christie Whitman has a narrow lead.
A Star Ledger-Eagleton poll released yesterday found that if the election were held today, Whitman would beat former Democratic Gov. Jim Florio 46 percent to 39 percent.
Florio's supporters in South Jersey will undoubtedly try to sell these statistics as good news for the ex-Gov. They'll insist that being five points behind with 18 months to go is just like being dead even. And if they're dead even now, they'll say it's obvious they can win.
In fact, Florio's crew released its own poll earlier this month which shows the former governor whipping Whitman by 2 percentage points. According to that poll, conducted by the Democratic polling firm of Schroth and Associates, when they first asked people who they would vote for next year, Whitman beat Florio two to one.
However, after they gave voters a "test argument" regarding Whitman, they turned that all around. They didn't say what the "test argument" was so we can only assume that they asked voters something like, "If you were to learn that Whitman kicked dogs and hated children would that make you more or less likely to vote for her?"
That's about the only way we'd get a ground swell of support for Florio.
There are lots of polls floating around these days because the candidates coming out of nowhere, like Jon Corzine, the retiring Godman-Sachs chairman Lloyd DeVos, the other rich lawyer, are "testing the waters." But although they've all got some very statistical looking data, it doesn't mean much this early in the game because nobody knows who any of these people are and most regular folks could care less who will be elected to the U.S. Senate next year. It will take millions of dollars to persuade them to care enough about it to vote next November, but just now, nobody wants to be bothered.
Still, Whitman is the big winner in this Eagleton poll. Whitman spokesman, McDonough, told The Trentonian yesterday that the big news is that "nobody comes close to her," in the poll. McDonough quickly dismissed news reports yesterday that Whitman might drop out of the Senate race for a potential vice presidential spot on the Republican ticket with George W. Bush. "She's already got plans for 2000," McDonough said.
In a state where lots of people can't stand politicians, what comes through in this poll is that people know who Whitman is and they don't hate her. Over half those surveyed think she was a better governor than Florio, and the same percentage think she'd do a better job in the U.S. Senate than he would. Her favorability rating is back up to 53 percent after reports last week from the same pollsters that her favorables were down to 46 percent. Perhaps most remarkably, people say that Whitman, the WASPY, millionaire Republican from New Jersey's horse country "cares more about people like them" than Florio, the hardscrabble, self-made ex-boxer from Brooklyn.
Whitman wasn't the only big winner in the latest Eagleton Poll. In the mind-numbing struggle for the Democratic Senate nomination, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-Monmouth, whose campaign has been dying an agonizing death in Middlesex County, did almost as well against Whitman as Florio does. So does Princeton's Tom Byrne, the son of former governor Brendan Byrne and the former chairman of the State Democratic Party.
Corzine, the billionaire, wasn't mentioned in the Eagleton Poll, but the truth is that he did pretty well too. Sometimes being a nobody is better than being somebody. Pollsters will tell you that its much easier to "fill empty heads" than it is to try to persuade people to stop believing something they already believe.
That's why Florio will probably never get more than 40 percent of the general election vote, unless he can make the "dog kicking" charges against Whitman stick. This isn't the first poll to find that people just don't like him. A Quinnipiac College poll taken last month showed that almost half of New Jersey voters have an unfavorable opinion of him. A poll taken for the Assembly Democrats last month found that Florio is the only Democrat in the state with "negative favorables," which means that he's the only potential candidate with a broad base of enemies.
A big surprise in yesterday's poll is that 42 percent of New Jersey voters say they have "heard of" State Senate President Don DiFrancesco, R-Scotch Plains, although only 2 percent know that DiFrancesco will get to ascend to the governor's office for a year without an election if Whitman wins the U.S. Senate race next November.
DiFrancesco is an example of one of those times when being a somebody is better than being a nobody.
May 14, 1999Whitman's Lack of Leadership
Immediately after State Senate President Don DiFrancesco, R-Scotch Plains, successfully shepherded Gov. Christie Whitman's nomination of Attorney General Peter Verniero to the Supreme Court through Senate on Monday, some of my younger colleagues in the media had questions for him.
What kind of arm twisting went on behind the scenes?
What deals were made in exchange for yes votes?
Will there be retribution against those who didn't vote with the Republican majority?
DiFrancesco seemed a little amused by the naivete of the questions, not only because they were the kind of inquiries no one would expect him to answer candidly. The questions also reflected little knowledge of the process that is involved in marshaling a legislative majority vote and also of his leadership style.
"I'm not known for that, I don't believe in that," DiFrancesco said. "The idea of retribution never crossed my mind."
Similarly, Minority Leader Richard Codey, D-West Orange, maintained that he had applied no pressure to ensure that all the Democratic senators voted against Verniero, although more than one member of the minority joked privately that a "yes" vote simply was not an option.
Both Codey and DiFrancesco demonstrated the kind of masterful leadership during the weeks of debate on the Verniero nomination debate that is fast becoming a lost art in politics, not only in New Jersey, but everywhere.
Compare the leadership styles of Codey and DiFrancesco to Whitman's in this matter.
Whitman made the decision to push Verniero's nomination forward without first consulting DiFrancesco or Senate Judiciary Chairman Bill Gormley, R-Mays Landing, both of whom could have told her that if she tried to push the Attorney General through fast there would be an ugly battle.
More importantly, it is likely they would have presented her with any number of strategies to get Verniero on the high court without the ugly confrontation that ultimately resulted.
That's how good legislative leaders work. They figure out how to win and they don't start a fight unless it will give them an advantage.
Sometimes Whitman seems to understand how this works. Take her stand in favor of tenure for principals. She knows she has little chance of winning that battle, but it was valuable for her to start a fight about it so that she is able to position herself on the right side and force others to stand up on the wrong side.
But the Verniero war had no right side. It was only a power play and in the end, the governor ended up looking like a bully, and not a very bright bully at that. She spent lots of political capital to get something that she probably could have gotten for free if she'd played her power cards better.
The governor never served in the legislature. She has no skills in the art of legislative persuasion which are essential to creating an environment where a majority can be convinced to vote in favor of something they care very little about in order to please the leader.
Of course, as the governor has just demonstrated, brute political force works too. In fact, the reality of politics these days is that brute force may work better. Most political experts think a steam rolling leadership style like Whitman's sells better to voters than the consensus building leadership style displayed by DiFrancesco and Codey.
When House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt dropped out of the presidential race earlier this year, New York Times columnist Gail Collins noted that good legislators generally make bad presidential candidates. "The qualities necessary to pass bills — attention to detail, love of the artful compromise, the inclination to keep promises--get in the way of a presidential campaign. The characteristics that are important in a run for President — star quality, willingness to abdicate control of your life to handlers, an agile attitude toward facts — are not much use in Congress."
That works for governors and other top jobs too. I recently asked a New Jersey Democratic campaign consultant why Codey was not a stronger contender for his party's nomination for U.S. Senate. As Minority Leader, theoretically he should be able to edge out a has-been like Jim Florio or a never-been like Jon Corzine. I thought that perhaps Codey's lack of flashiness was his downfall.
But the consultant told me flatly that legislators don't make good candidates because their records are all over the map and they can rarely point to anything that they have single-handedly accomplished. That's why DiFrancesco is working so desperately to get into the governor's office a year early. He knows his 23 year record in the state legislature is not much of a platform.
These days, stars and political bullies have better political prospects than nice guys like the Senate President. Just look at New Jersey Senator Bob Torricelli.
Trouble is, the kind of narcissistic and insular thinking that makes politicians like Whitman, Torricelli and Bill Clinton appeal to voters can also backfire when real leadership is required.
Earlier this week, the London Times noted that in Kosovo Clinton has "proved his absolute inadequacy as Commander-in-Chief...stumbling on a stage that is bigger than his talents can match..."
The political bullying and pandering to the masses that has made Clinton a political star have proved to have no value in a situation where real leadership is required. Kosovo is a test of Clinton's leadership and he has failed.
Verniero was a test of Whitman's genuine leadership. She failed too.
Bill Bradley Inspires Dream of a Different Kind of Politician
When Bill Bradley entered the dining room, hundreds of New Jersey Democrats gathered in Atlantic City for their annual state conference last weekend jumped to their feet. For some, the excitement was simply home team pride...their guy is running for president.
But for others, Bradley's true believers, the former basketball star and U.S. Senator has become a beacon of light in a political world that has become dark and sinister. His magnetism has the same pull that makes folks want to believe in miracles. Perhaps Bradley's message could be so honest and compelling that he might actually be able to overturn the seemingly inevitable nomination of a sitting vice president. Even jaded political insiders want to believe in Bradley.
A new poll released this week by the Center on Policy Attitudes shows that 80 percent of Americans believe politicians are controlled by special interests. When asked whether Democrats or Republicans are better at standing up to special interest groups, a majority of Americans replied with a resounding "neither."
Bradley purports to offer some relief from that kind of cynicism. In his reports of pick and shovel campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, he talks about the need to speak with "open candor" and talk to small groups of people "eye to eye."
He wants us to think big.
"We need people who are not afraid of thinking big things," Bradley said. "We've always stepped up to big things."
Social Security, the Marshall Plan, Medicare and Medicaid are some of the big things Bradley gives Democrats credit for.
Now, he says the country needs to tackle the problem of the 44 million people who have no health insurance and the 20 percent of children who still live in poverty.
He also wants to make racial unity a priority. Fighting racism has always been high on Bradley's agenda and in Atlantic City, he reminded the crowd of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.
"We all saw the videotape which showed how Rodney King was beaten 56 times in two minutes," Bradley said. "I made some notes. I didn't know what I was going to say, but I knew I had to say something."
Bradley then went onto the Senate floor and delivered the most famous speech of his career, pounding the podium 56 times in two minutes to demonstrate the intensity of the policy attack on King.
The "56 Blows" speech was Bradley's best moment in Washington, a point in time when a politician seemed real, as outraged as the rest of us with institutions that let society's evils go unchecked.
When it comes to race, Bradley says he wants to "play to our better angels."
It would be wonderful to believe that Bradley could be the politician who brings America to a place of new honesty and fair play. But something else happened in Atlantic City which raises doubts.
Embedded in Bradley's call for "big ideas" were a couple of cheap political shots aimed at Gov. Christie Whitman's appointment of Attorney General Peter Verniero to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
" We cannot have state police profiling people on the basis of race," Bradley said, "and we can't have politicians rewarding them for that fact."
After the speech, I asked Bradley if he believed any Democrats were to blame for the decades of racial profiling on New Jersey highways.
"There could be others at fault, but he (Verniero) is one. Let's leave it at that," Bradley said brusquely.
Of course, one of the "others at fault" might be him. In a book released in 1989 entitled "Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike," former Turnpike Authority chairman Joseph Sullivan said, "sometimes a trooper stops somebody because he's black or Hispanic or ‘looks suspicious' and he's a perfectly good citizen. I'm trying to stop this."
Bradley represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate in 1989. He never called any hearings or took any steps to stop racial profiling by state police.
Perhaps Bradley bares no blame. Its a state issue. But playing the race card to snipe at Republicans doesn't sound like the new "open candor" Bradley says he wants to bring to the country.
In the poll, only 9 percent of the public believed that gridlock occurs because politicians have honest disagreements. Ninety percent think politicians are just trying to score political points.
Bradley hasn't done anything yet to prove them wrong.
PETE'S NEW SEAT
After an intense and mostly partisan debate, the New Jersey state Senate narrowly approved the nomination of Attorney General Peter Verniero to the Supreme Court yesterday.
By a 21 to 18 margin, the senators made Verniero the youngest person ever to be confirmed to the high court. He is 40.
Gov. Christie Whitman praised the senators' actions, predicting that "Peter Verniero will be a unifying force for justice in New Jersey."
State Senate President Don DiFrancesco, who marshaled the necessary Republican votes to get the governor's nomination through, also said that the contentious process would ultimately prove positive for the state.
"It was the right thing to do," DiFrancesco, R-Scotch Plains, said. "This is not a setback because Peter Verniero is on the Supreme Court and this exercise has made very public a problem [racial profiling] that has been long-standing."
All 15 Democratic senators voted against the nomination.
State Sen. John Lynch, D-New Brunswick, made the most critical case against Verniero's nomination. He called yesterday's vote "a sad day for the New Jersey Supreme Court."
Lynch, the only senator to speak twice during the four hour debate, charged that Verniero did not have the legal skills or professional judgment necessary to serve on the high court. He criticized most aspects of Verniero's resume, including his academic record, and accused Verniero of effectively "taking the Fifth" during last week's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings by failing to respond to questions regarding investigations currently proceeding in his office.
Lynch also accused Verniero of working for the past five months to secure the Supreme Court nomination and said that "if Verniero was a real lawyer" he would have understood the judicial implications of his decisions regarding the settlement of two high-profile sexual harassment cases in the state.
Minority Leader Dick Codey, D-West Orange, charged that only political loyalty could make Republicans support Verniero.
"Sometimes loyalty demands too much," Codey said, noting that he'd seen a newspaper headline stating "GOP won't let Whitman down."
"I'd like to suggest that the governor has let you down," Codey said.
Verniero called the harsh debate "difficult" but said that he had "no regrets" regarding the process.
DiFrancesco said he would have liked a wider margin of victory for Verniero, but "21 was enough."
Three Republicans, Republicans, Sen. Robert Martin, R-Morris Plains, Sen. Jack Sinagra, R-East Brunswick and Sen. Robert Littel, R-Franklin also voted against the nomination.
Verniero pledged to be "a justice for all New Jersey, for those who supported me and for those who did not."
The Rev. Reginald Jackson, Executive Director of the Black Ministers Council, spoke immediately following the vote, saying the Verniero nomination might have gone differently if the attorney general had apologized for not acting sooner to end racial profiling in the state police.
"If he had said, ‘I made a mistake,' I don't think he would have had the opposition he had," Jackson said.
Jackson, who has worked closely with Verniero on the current investigation of racial profiling in the state police, said that African-American opposition to Verniero's nomination "isn't about vengeance or getting back at anybody."
"We as a community have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies," Jackson said, "we have permanent interests."
State Sen. Shirley Turner, D-Lawrence, charged that Verniero would never have focused on the issue of racial profiling in the state police if he had not been forced to by last year's New Jersey Turnpike shooting.
"It was 11 slugs of lead fired from the guns of state troopers," Turner said.
Turner also said that Whitman had created a "political affirmative action plan" for Supreme Court nominees based not on "what you know but on who you know."
State Sen. Bill Schluter, R-Pennington, a noted independent who represents Verniero's home district, supported the nomination and told the senators that the attorney general had received the unanimous endorsement of the Hunterdon County Bar.
"Sometimes it takes guts to vote yes," Schluter said.
Verniero said he will step down as attorney general on May 15 and will be sworn in to the Supreme Court sometime around Sept. 1.
Mon., May 10, 1999RACISM ON WHEELS
Unless Republican leaders make a last minute change, the vote on Gov. Christie Whitman's appointment of Attorney General Peter Verniero to the New Jersey State Supreme Court will take place this afternoon.
If today's vote is anything like last week's Judiciary Committee hearings, it will be heated and ugly.
Former Gov. Tom Kean praised Verniero's appointment and predicted he will be an excellent judge. Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Clifford called Verniero's academic credentials "stunning" and suggested Verniero might be another William O. Douglas, the famous federal Supreme Court justice.
But their voices have been drowned out by what the Rev. Reginald Jackson has called a "demonization of Verniero." Today's vote is being portrayed by many as a showdown between good and evil, a referendum on racial profiling in the state police.
Racial profiling is racism on wheels, and it is evil. It has also been the status quo on New Jersey highways for at least a decade. In a book released in 1989 entitled "Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike," former Turnpike Authority chairman Joseph Sullivan said, "sometimes a trooper stops somebody because he's black or Hispanic or ‘looks suspicious' and he's a perfectly good citizen. I'm trying to stop this."
Obviously Sullivan was not successful.
Former Gov. Jim Florio told The Trentonian editorial board a few weeks ago that when he was in office a group of African-American clergymen complained to him that blacks were being stopped for no reason by state troopers. Florio ordered then Attorney General Bob Del Tufo to check it out and a memo resulted in 1991 directing troopers not to racially profile.
Obviously Florio and Del Tufo were not successful either.
Bill Bradley chastised Whitman and Verniero last week for racial profiling, but during his 18 years representing New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, Bradley never tried to stop the practice either. He took the Senate floor when Rodney King was beaten in Los Angeles, but apparently ignored his constituents in New Jersey when they told him about State Trooper profiling.
At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last week, State Sen. John Lynch, D-New Brunswick, said that in order to judge Verniero's actions on racial profiling it was critical to learn "what he knew and when he knew it."
Lynch ultimately proclaimed Verniero guilty on the racial profiling issue because he didn't move fast enough to stop it when a Gloucester County lawsuit revealed statistics that seem to document the practice.
Lynch made the Gloucester County lawsuit a smoking gun.
But Sullivan's comments in 1989 were a smoking gun too. Lynch was majority leader of the Senate in 1989. What did he know and when did he know it? What did he do?
Del Tufo came to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last week to speak in support of Verniero's nomination. There wasn't time for him to testify so we don't know what he was going to say. But many former attorneys general say privately that the New Jersey State Police systematically resists any interference from the AG's office that might affect status quo.
Del Tufo might also have had to courage to say what Senate Judiciary Chairman Bill Gormley, R-Mays Landing said last week -- that too many people are culpable on the issue of racial profiling to make Verniero take the fall. The fact that the practice of racial profiling has been allowed to continue for so long in New Jersey is a mark of shame for every public official who has failed to challenge it.
Racial profiling isn't the only issue senators will weigh when they vote on Verniero's nomination today. Some insist that the state's top lawyer is too young and inexperienced to go to the Supreme Court. Others will vote against Verniero as a political move designed to damage Whitman.
Politics is a rough game and Whitman has played this particular match very badly.
But her opponents' attempt to equate a vote against Verniero as a vote against racism goes beyond rough politics. It is the height of hypocrisy and an insult to every African-American in the state who has been ignored for the last 10 years by governors, legislators and congressmen in both parties. Those who stood by and let it happen have no right to take any comfort by opposing Verniero today.
Mon., May 10, 1999SHOWTIME: AG faces state Senate confirmation vote
Attorney General Peter Verniero has gone 15 rounds and today he'll get the final decision.
After nearly 15 hours of sometimes heated and noisy debate within the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Gov. Christie Whitman's appointment of Verniero to the New Jersey Supreme Court goes to the full state Senate in what promises to be one of the most dramatic legislative debates in recent years.
State Sen. President Don DiFrancesco says he has the 21 minimum votes he needs to get Verniero's nomination through. But there is little margin for defectors since all 16 Democrats have pledged to vote against Verniero and two Republicans say they will join them.
State Sen. Robert Martin, R-Morris and State Sen. Jack Sinagra, R-Middlesex have declined to back Verniero because they say he does not have adequate legal experience to sit on the high bench. Their views were reinforced by a report from the State Bar Association Judicial and Prosecutorial Appointments Committee last week. Several other Republicans including State Sen. Peter Inverso, R-Hamilton, reportedly spent the weekend weighing their decision.
Democrats have focused their criticism of Verniero on his behavior as Attorney General during the current racial profiling controversy.
State Sen. Wayne Bryant, D-Camden, said Friday that Verniero has "a record of neglect and indifference to the civil rights of minority residents."
Also on Friday, Senate Minority Leader Richard Codey, D-West Orange, asked DiFrancesco to delay today's vote in order to further investigate whether Verniero acted as quickly as he should have to stop racial profiling by state police.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman William Gormley, R-Mays Landing, closed the hearings last week by noting that the practice of racial profiling had pre-dated Verniero's tenure as Attorney General and said all the state's leaders should have taken the issue more seriously sooner.
DiFrancesco said last week that the Bar Association opinion was irrelevant to the Senate vote.
"I am better qualified to judge his qualifications than someone who has served a few months on a committee, "DiFrancesco said. "As someone who has worked with him and as an attorney, I know him."
Fri., May 7, 1999ONE LESS HURDLE: Verniero clears nomination obstacle
Attorney General Peter Verniero cleared one more hurdle yesterday on the road to becoming a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Both Democrats and Republicans denied their actions were partisan, but the vote split precisely along political party lines.
Seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee supported Verniero's nomination while the four Democrats opposed it, ending two days of intense and frequently heated hearings.
The nomination goes to the full Senate on Monday. Senate Minority Leader Richard Codey, D-West Orange, says all 16 Democrats have told him they will vote against Verniero's nomination.
But Senate President Don DiFrancesco, R-Scotch Plains, told reporters he was confident he had enough Republican votes to approve Verniero's nomination. He also charged that Democrats had politicized the appointment process.
"I have worked closely with him [Verniero] for six years now," DiFrancesco said, "and I am confident that he is qualified for the job."
Sen. Robert Martin, R-Morristown, is the only Republican to indicate that he plans to vote against Verniero's nomination. Another Republican member of the committee, Sen. John Mattheussen, R-Washington, said he had not yet decided how he would vote.
Martin, a law professor, repeated his concerns that Verniero does not have the requisite legal experience to serve on the high court. Martin also expressed doubts about Verniero's handling of racial profiling allegations while he was attorney general.
But Martin said he did not believe Verniero "is biased in any way."
However, Sen. Ray Zane, D-East Greenwich, charged that Verniero's inattentiveness to racism in the state police had resulted in a worsening of the situation.
"I would have to say to black people, you were better off in 1992," Zane said, noting that "rightly or wrongly" Verniero was responsible for the findings of racial profiling in the State Police.
Zane's remarks echoed Assemblyman Joe Charles, D-Jersey City, who testified before the committee for the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus.
"Attorney General Peter Verniero has failed by his actions and inactions to vigorously safeguard the civil rights of minority citizens," Charles said.
In casting his vote, Sen. John Bennett, R-Little Silver, repeated his concern that the State Bar Association Judicial and Prosecutorial Appointments Committee, which had declared Verniero "unqualified" for the Supreme Court, was not truly "non-partisan and non-political."
DiFrancesco said the Bar Association panel's recommendation was irrelevant to his decision making process.
"I am better qualified to judge his qualifications than someone who has served a few months on a committee," DiFrancesco said. "As someone who has worked with him and as an attorney, I know him."
DiFrancesco said that even when he and Verniero disagreed politically over the years, they always shared a strong working relationship.
But Codey said the Bar Association's "overwhelming, negative assessment" of Verniero should be enough to convince senators to vote against him.
Codey called on Verniero and Whitman to withdraw the nomination.
"If the governor persists in pushing the nomination -- in light of the Bar panel's negative finding -- she's moving from loyalty to arrogance."
Thurs., May 6, 1999AG takes heat at hearing
In a marathon session that at times exploded into a food fight, the state Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings yesterday on Gov. Christie Whitman's appointment of Attorney General Peter Verniero to the Supreme Court.
Former Gov. Tom Kean spoke in support of Verniero's nomination and former Supreme Court Justice Robert Clifford said Verniero "has all the skills required for a good lawyer and a good member of the court."
But Karol Corbin Walker, chairwoman of the state bar association's Judicial and Prosecutorial Review Committee, brusquely told the lawmakers that her group had determined Verniero did not have the professional experience to serve on the Supreme Court.
"He demonstrated an inability to understand the day-to-day practice of the law."
Walker said that due to a "compact" with the governor's office which requires confidentiality, she ordinarily does not comment on attorneys who fail to obtain the state bar association's recommendation.
"That would be a disservice to those individuals because it would ruin their reputations," Walker said.
Walker also said the agreement prohibited her from telling the legislators how the Hunterdon County Bar Association, which first reviewed Verniero's nomination, had voted.
But Walker shared anecdotes from the state bar association confidential investigation regarding Verniero including information from unnamed individuals who did not believe the attorney general had adequate knowledge of the law. Walker also gave the lawmakers the vote tally from her statewide Committee: 17 members had determined Verniero was not qualified, six said he was and one had abstained.
Obviously stunned, state Sen. Bill Gormley, R-Mays Landing, said Walker's revelation of the secret ballot put her previous objections regarding confidentiality into question.
State Sen. John Bennett, R-Little Silver, went even farther, calling Walker's breach of confidentiality "outrageous and an embarrassment to the bar."
"It's bulls---," Bennett said. "She was playing a game with us."
Late in the afternoon, the state bar association revealed that the Hunterdon County bar group had unanimously found Verniero qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.
Kean told the committee that he had ignored bar association recommendations three times while he was governor. Kean said he did not believe government service, which makes up the largest portion of Verniero's legal resume, is weighted as strongly by the bar association as private law practice.
But Senate Democrats praised Walker's "candor."
"The attacks on the Bar Committee are obvious, but pathetic red herrings by those who cannot deal with the failure of their nominee to be found qualified," said State. Sen. John Lynch, D-New Brunswick.
Lynch grilled Verniero throughout the afternoon on a wide range of issues including his handling of racial profiling allegations in the state police.
Verniero did not wilt under the unrelenting assault from Lynch and other Democrats including Sen. Ray Zane, D-East Greenwich, who repeated many of the questions he'd asked Verniero during last week's hearing on racial profiling.
Verniero, who turned 40 last Friday, wistfully admitted that he had aged quite a bit in the last few days.
The hearings are scheduled to continue today.
Sun., May 2, 1999Are pols guilty of ‘borking'?
Former Gov. Thomas Kean knew he opposed "borking" even before it was invented. In 1986, Kean's own Republican Party tried to block his renomination of Robert Wilentz as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Kean refused to go along because he did not believe there should be a litmus test for judges based on their opinions on particular issues.
On May 22, 1986, Kean told The Bergen Record, "If any judge in the state is worried about how he should make a decision ... and that would affect his or her renomination decision, then the quality of justice is not going to be what you and I would want it to be in the state of New Jersey."
Like his fellow Republicans, Kean bitterly opposed the Mount Laurel "affordable housing" decision made by the Wilentz-led court and frequently said so. But he did not believe he could disqualify a Supreme Court justice simply because he disagreed with his point of view.
The very next year in Washington, Democrats demonstrated no such scruples as they mounted a successful effort to block Judge Robert Bork from the U.S. Supreme Court because they disagreed with his positions on abortion and judicial restraint. Using an advertising smear campaign and dirty tactics, which included going after the records of his movie rentals, the "Borkbusters," as they proudly called themselves, were able to block the appointment of a judge to the nation's highest court because they didn't like the way he thought.
Today, that practice has been exposed as "borking" and has been generally renounced in federal judicial appointments. But there is evidence that the practice may be making a comeback in New Jersey.
Last week, some African-American leaders indicated privately they were being pressured by Democratic lawmakers to speak out against Gov. Whitman's nomination of state Attorney General Peter Verniero to the state Supreme Court because of Verniero's role in defending the state in the 28-year lawsuit involving the state's poorest school districts.
Presumably, the object would be to push the governor to name a Supreme Court nominee who agreed with their view on how the schools should be funded.
That's Borking.
Verniero spokesman Roger Shatskin points out that as the state's lawyer, Verniero's job in the school-funding appeal was to argue the case for the state (unsuccessfully at first, then successfully) based on the Dept. of Education's proposals.
But Shatskin agreed that such questions regarding education policy "don't go to Peter's qualifications or legal expertise at the highest levels."
State Sen. Joe Kyrillos, R-Middletown, agrees: "If we cherry-pick one issue, whether it's education, abortion or Mount Laurel and just look at that issue, there will be nobody left in the room."
Kyrillos also believes that the other questions being raised regarding Verniero's nomination, including racial-profiling allegations against the State Police, go beyond the question of his qualifications.
"We have to look at the total record, at what he has administered from the Attorney General's Office," Kyrillos said. "Crime is down; Megan's Law, which we all wanted, is in place. There is a whole array of policy and social goals that are driven by that office."
Kean is expected to testify in support of Verniero's nomination at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings next week. A number of other key players in the 1986 Wilentz showdown will also be on hand. State Sen. William Gormley, R-Mays Landing, was one of three Republicans to vote with the Democrats in support of Wilentz's renomination. He now chairs the Judiciary Committee. State Sen. John Lynch D-New Brunswick, has been one of Verniero's most strident critics. But during the Wilentz hearings, Lynch was majority leader and praised Kean for resisting pressure from within his own Republican Party.
"It is heartening to see that the governor has not been persuaded to follow the example at the federal level, where judges are expected to pass a litmus test on the issues as a condition of reappointment," Lynch said at the time.
That was before they called it "borking."
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