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GLOVES OFF IN THE GARDEN STATE
by DOUG IRELAND
The newly regilded dome of Trenton's state capitol may be shimmering under
the intense summer sun, but if New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman's
entourage is sweating bullets these days, it's not because of the weather.
In the Front Office, as the term-limited GOP governor's executive suite
is known, her staff is fretting that Whitman's ascension to the US Senate
seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Frank Lautenberg could be derailed
by a high-decibel, right-wing radio shock-jock named Bob Grant.
The proprietor
of an afternoon drive-time program on New York City-based WOR-AM--whose
powerful signal reaches a huge audience in New Jersey--Grant is preparing
his own race for the Senate as an independent. Whitman has never won a statewide
election by more than 1 percent of the vote, and a poll of 600 New Jersey
voters taken in late April by the Washington, DC, firm Schroth and Associates
shows Grant drawing 14 percent in the general elections--more than enough
to tip the scales in favor of the putative frontrunner for the Democratic
nomination, former Congressman and Governor Jim Florio.
Because New Jersey
is bereft of broadcast TV outlets of its own--and thus dependent on New
York City and Philadelphia stations, which offer little coverage of New
Jersey affairs--drive-time radio has played a hugely important role in the
politics of the Garden State, where commuters avidly fuel their electoral
road rage with daily doses of extremist rantings. When Whitman won her gubernatorial
race in 1993 (defeating incumbent Florio by just 26,000 votes), it was thanks
in part to a revolt against a Florio-imposed $2.8 billion tax increase sparked
by Jim Gearhart, a neopopulist conservative morning talk-show host on Trenton's
WKXW. Whitman publicly credited Grant--who relentlessly bashed "Flim-Flam
Florio"--and the other talk-jocks for her victory (she even went so far
as to fulfill a campaign promise to the odious Howard Stern by having a
comfort station on the New Jersey Turnpike named after him).
A regional
radio fixture for decades and a longtime Monmouth County resident, Grant
is of Italian descent and has many fans among the state's sizable chunk
of increasingly conservative Italian-American voters. Also fueling Grant's
popularity in this racially tense state is his unabashed racism. He's called
blacks "screaming savages," used to regularly refer to then-New York Mayor
David Dinkins as "the men's room attendant," lamented that Magic Johnson
was infected "only" with HIV and disparaged Martin Luther King Jr. in unprintable
terms. In 1994, under heavy pressure from the Black Ministers Council of
New Jersey, Whitman pledged to halt her frequent appearances before Grant's
microphone. (Grant recalls subsequently running into her at a political
roast: "I told the crowd, 'The Governor really didn't recognize me without
a white sheet.' She gave me a dirty look.")
Grant will say only that he's
"heavily leaning" toward running (FCC equal-time regs oblige--he doesn't
want to lose his microphone prematurely), but his campaign is already assured
of top management in the person of Roger Stone, the echt-Reaganite political
consultant from the GOP's hard right. On the record, Stone says that he's
"likely" to take on the Grant campaign--in fact, he's the one who quietly
set up the Draft Bob Grant for Senate exploratory committee to raise funds,
recruited former Reagan operative Jim Zaimes to run it and is already planning
Grant's no-frills media blitz--on radio, natch. Stone's reputation as a
bare-knuckles brawler in politics has Republicans quaking. Told of Stone's
involvement in Grant's campaign, one prominent GOP county executive who
would like to succeed Whitman as governor let out a surprised "Wow!", adding
(after requesting anonymity) that "with Grant in the race, no Republican
can win, let alone Whitman."
Why are conservative voters so receptive to
Grant's savage attacks on Whitman as an "ultra-country club Republican"?
Because Whitman--first elected on a tax-and-budget-cutting program that
was supposed to help the little guy--has financed those tax cuts with bonds
whose expensively deferred payments will fall on the average taxpayer after
she has left the State House. At the same time, she has been ladling out
fortunes in subsidies to the corporate giants that finance the state's Republican
Party.
The tax increase that defeated Florio in 1993 also cost Democrats
the legislative control they'd maintained for nearly two decades. Flush
with substantial GOP majorities in both houses, Whitman was able to impose
a one-third cut in the state's income tax (a plan cooked up by billionaire
Steve Forbes and his supply-siders). Whitman's principal tool for balancing
her budgets was a raid on the state employees' pension fund, to which she
failed to make $2.5 billion in contributions. To plug the projected hole
in the pension system, Whitman turned to borrowing--floating a $2.8 billion
bond issue with Wall Street's help, which not only financed the raid but
netted her budget $600 million more. Her tax cuts saved New Jerseyans about
$1.4 billion, but their property taxes rose by an equal amount, with the
lion's share falling on those least able to afford it. As the New Jersey
Reporter (the invaluable monthly put out by the Princeton-based Center for
Analysis of Public Issues) noted, "As you climb the economic ladder, the
tax scene shifts because richer residents generally pay a bigger chunk for
income taxes than property taxes." No wonder that, at one of its annual
musical skits, the New Jersey Legislative Correspondents Club lampooned
the governor's tax plan with Fagin's song from Oliver!: "You've gotta pick
a pocket or two."
Florio now says that "New Jersey in the last five years
has tripled state indebtedness. When I left office the debt was $5 billion.
Now it's $15 billion. By bonding everything instead of paying for it, she's
mortgaged the future, and the bills for her borrowing are going to cost
New Jerseyans an additional $1.3 billion in debt service."
Cementing Whitman's
reputation as a Robin Hood in reverse is an extraordinary chain of giveaways
to big business. The most widely publicized of these dips into the taxpayers'
pockets benefited Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas-based casino czar. An equal-opportunity
influence-buyer from both major parties through millions in political donations,
Wynn demanded that the state build a road and tunnel linking his Atlantic
City casino to the Atlantic City Expressway. The Whitman administration
complied, allowing Wynn to control the design of the road, which led right
to the door of his casino--taking business away from a competing casino
owned by Donald Trump. Wynn got his custom-built road for only $55 million,
while the taxpayers' tab was $275 million. Meanwhile, because the roadway
was being built over a 150-acre former municipal dump--which Wynn, with
the quiet help of the Whitman people, acquired for one dollar--a major cleanup
was necessary. But Wynn didn't want to pay for the cleanup, so in 1996 Whitman
shepherded through the Republican legislature a deal that allowed him to
keep $30 million of sales taxes collected at his casino to finance it. The
first fundraiser for Whitman's Senate campaign was a $1,000-a-head affair
at the home of Joe Jingoli, one of the major business subcontractors on
the road's construction.
The Wynn deal is only the tip of the iceberg.
In 1996, after a ten-month investigation, the Record of Bergen County published
a superb sixteen-part series, "Open for Business," that detailed dozens
of cases in which Whitman's corporate-coddling policies had hurt New Jerseyans
through giveaways and lax enforcement of laws designed to protect consumers
and the environment. For example, the Beneficial Corporation, the nation's
largest independent consumer-loan company, got more than $182 million in
taxpayer subsidies in the form of road construction designed to ease traffic
around Beneficial's lavish office complex in Peapack--improvements that
also increased the value of an open 700-acre tract that Beneficial owned
nearby. While all this was going on in 1994-95, Beneficial chairman Finn
Casperson, his family and their political action committee gave state Republicans
$143,250.
In a more recent sweetheart deal, against which the environmental
movement, led by the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, waged a desperate
antisprawl fight, Whitman offered $291.3 million to Merrill Lynch to help
it build a 3.5-million-square-foot office complex on 450 acres of open fields
and woodlands in Hopewell Township in 1998. Whitman's Economic Development
Authority proposed to buy the office furniture, computers and wiring for
the project and lease them back to Merrill Lynch so the company would not
have to pay the 6 percent sales tax, saving the company $13.5 million. All
this was to be paid for by state-floated bonds totaling $225 million. Added
to this gift were $30 million in road improvements and $11.3 million more
in state aid for job creation and training.
Whitman this year unveiled
a $1 billion "open space" program that she claims will purchase and safeguard
a million acres, or roughly 50 percent of the state's undeveloped land.
But the plan is a fraud. "Her numbers are inflated," says Sierra Club policy
director Bill Wolfe. "Her plan will save 350,000 acres at most. You simply
can't buy a million acres with a billion dollars. The math doesn't work."
Moreover, the program is another example of Whitman's borrow-and-spend
prestidigitation,
paid for by floating up to $200 million a year in bonds--so for the next
twenty years, the interest on the bonds will cost a lot of money that won't
go to land. Meanwhile, the environmental movement is fighting tooth and
nail against her giveaway of 300 acres of pristine wetlands to the cranberry
industry (even though last year the industry had a 2-million-barrel surplus).
Principal beneficiary: Ocean Spray Cranberries, which gave over $1.3 million
in campaign contributions to both parties in the nineties. "Ocean Spray
let loose a spray of political contributions, which appear to be overwhelming
the opposition," says New Jersey Common Cause chairman Harry Pozycki.
Whitman's
environmental record is in sharp contrast to Florio's. As a Congressman,
Florio wrote and passed the toxic cleanup Superfund program, and as governor
he passed two major state laws--the New Jersey Pollution Prevention Act
and the Clean Water Enforcement Act--that were among the toughest in the
nation. Whitman, however, downsized the state Department of Environmental
Protection by one-third, and under her administration, enforcement fines
and penalties are down a whopping 80 percent. Any state limits on pollution
that exceed federal standards are now subject to a cost-benefit analysis,
an antiregulatory approach. Whitman has favored a "voluntary compliance"
program, under which polluters are allowed a "grace period" to negotiate
with state agencies before fines and penalties are imposed. "I call it 'Let's
Make a Deal,'" says the Sierra Club's Wolfe. "Whitman is no moderate on
the environment. This administration has done nothing on environmental quality--air,
water and waste issues--but starve the bureaucracy and put enforcement on
a short leash."
Florio, eager to avenge his narrow loss to Whitman six
years ago, announced his Senate candidacy as soon as Lautenberg said he
was retiring, and a gaggle of other Democrats followed suit. But most of
them were frightened out of the race by the unexpected arrival of a candidate
whose huge personal fortune--estimated at more than $300 million--makes
him the primary's 800-pound gorilla: Jon Corzine, the former co-chairman
of Goldman, Sachs. A political neophyte who didn't even bother to vote in
Democratic primaries for ten years, Corzine has bought himself pricey image-makers
like political and media consultant Bob Shrum and Clinton pollster Doug
Schoen. Corzine's wealth made him attractive to the big-county North Jersey
Democratic bosses, who blame Florio for losing the legislature and see the
Wall Streeter as a major source of funds for their local candidates. Most
of these old-line organization bosses are supporting Corzine, including
the county leaders in Union, Middlesex, Bergen and Hudson counties.
Florio's
significant base in his native Camden and the seven southern counties provides
about 30 percent of the primary vote. "He needs to take 40 percent of the
vote in the northern counties to win," says a Democratic analyst. To that
end, Florio is threatening to put up his own full slate of candidates for
county offices, corralling anti-organization dissidents, according to the
weekly Politifax New Jersey, a must-read newsletter for insiders edited
by former political operative Nick Acocella.
Thus, the Democratic primary
is shaping up as a vicious dogfight between the blunt and sometimes arrogant
former boxer Florio--whose years in government allow him to sound off in
detail on almost any issue--and the soft-spoken political tyro Corzine,
whose positions on most issues are a mystery both to active Democrats and
to the state's press corps. While Corzine has been making the handshaking
rounds of party functions and black churches, he has so far failed to give
a single speech and has ducked numerous multicandidate forums. "He's like
Monica Lewinsky before the Barbara Walters interview: We haven't heard the
sound of his voice," cracks one Democratic pol.
Corzine's wealth is clearly
going to be a big issue in the primary. "If there's a major focus of my
attention," Florio says, "it's going to be the corrupting influence of money
in the political process. I'm going to Washington to wreck that process--the
McCain-Feingold bill is embarrassingly modest, and even that can't get passed.
All the other things I want to do will get stymied if we can't get around
the power of money." Ask him about Corzine and he fumes: "He's just one
more example--if it weren't for his checkbook, nobody would take him seriously.
Why don't we forget the primary and just conduct an auction?" An eight-page
exegesis of press quotes being circulated by Florio's supporters charges
that Goldman, Sachs' role in mergers and acquisitions cost the jobs of 79,000
workers, and a leaflet aimed at trade unionists headlined Fight Corporate
Greed! Boycott Corzine! says Corzine is "a man who's made his fortune off
the backs of working families" and has the "profit-making and downsizing
record of one of corporate greed's biggest advocates."
Shrum, Corzine's
media gun-for-hire, claims that his candidate is "remarkably progressive"--even
though Corzine's official biography boasts that he is a supporter of the
center-right Democratic Leadership Council and a board member of its Washington
think tank. In a truncated interview, Corzine says that his priority issue
is education: He wants to "lead a fundamental and unique debate" on the
issue and on "how to spend the surplus" but provides no specifics, adding,
"I'm studying how that should work." Corzine asserts he's against the privatization
of Social Security but argues for investing a major portion of Social Security
funds in Wall Street. (He can't use the borrow-and-spend pension fund raid
against Whitman, since Goldman, Sachs made a handsome profit handling the
bond deal.)
If Corzine turns out to be another Al Checchi--a wealthy newcomer
to Democratic politics whose lavish primary campaign for governor of California
failed miserably--it will be one in the eye not only for the North Jersey
bosses but for Senator Robert Torricelli, said to be a prime mover behind
Corzine's candidacy and whom the Florio camp accuses of drying up money
for their man. "With Corzine as Senator, Torricelli solidifies his position
as the state's top Democrat and can lead this guy with no experience around
by the nose," says a top Hudson County pol. "With Florio he's got competition."
If Florio survives the primary, one constituency in the general election
over which there'll be a major battle is the black vote. In 1993 Whitman
got 20 percent of the African-American vote against Florio, and in 1997
she got 17 percent against Jim McGreevey. That's unlikely to happen again,
in part because Whitman has found herself engulfed in bitter controversy
over the use of racial profiling by the state police to stop and search
motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike and over the firing of state police
superintendent Col. Carl Williams for making racially insensitive remarks.
The racial profiling scandal, which has provided Whitman with weeks of bad
press, has hurt the governor's 2000 prospects doubly. On the one hand, her
firing of Williams alienated conservatives (polls show that 84 percent of
white New Jerseyans don't buy the criticisms of the state police). On the
other, she has turned off black voters by failing to deal with the racial
profiling issue until late in her administration and by bungling the cleanup
of the state cops, as well as by backing down on the appointment of the
state's first black police superintendent.
Black leaders are already disenchanted
with Whitman's failure to provide a coherent program for jobs and economic
development for the central cities. Says Henry Johnson, publisher of the
Plainfield-based City News, which serves North Jersey black communities,
"If you ask the Whitman people, 'What's the plan?' I don't think anyone
can give you an answer."
Depressed black turnout helped Whitman win her
squeaker victories in '93 and '97, but turnout's always higher in a presidential
year, which should help the Democratic Senate candidate. However, it's the
Bob Grant candidacy that knocks the biggest hole in the Florio-can't-win
argument. The increase in the state's indebtedness under Whitman has been
"devastating" to conservative voters, says Harry Hurley, a conservative
morning talk-show host on Atlantic City's WFPG who is promoting the Grant
candidacy. "She's betrayed her base--they feel like they were played for
suckers. My callers say, 'I don't want to vote for Whitman, and I can't
vote for Florio'--that's why there's so much interest in the grassroots
movement for Bob Grant."
As Whitman flip-flops to protect her right flank
against Grant, she also risks losing any gender-gap advantage. On abortion,
Whitman's pro-choice stance has always been a matter more of convenience
than gut principle. At the GOP presidential convention in 1996, when pro-choice
pols William Weld, Pete Wilson and Olympia Snowe grabbed headlines with
a convention-floor press conference, Whitman absented herself. And now she's
endorsed the ban on late-term abortion, while also taking the NRA position
opposing protective "smart gun" legislation. These maneuvers are not enough
to satisfy conservatives who, as Hurley puts it, consider her "the Antichrist,"
while at the same time they undercut her support with moderates.
"Look,"
says Roger Stone--already talking like a campaign manager--"with just half
a million dollars on radio ads, building on the fact that Bob Grant will
be cutting her up on his mike until next June's primary, when he has to
announce, he can make a serious showing. The same people who are pooh-poohing
him now are the same people who dismissed Jesse Ventura." Or, as Grant himself
recently put it in an appearance on Hurley's program, "It's time to cut off the head
of the Wicked Queen."
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Doug
Ireland, who writes frequently for The Nation on politics, has been a columnist for
The Village Voice and the New York Observer.
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