Democratic Party auditions are ongoing for the state’s first lieutenant governor, but if there are any white males interested in playing Banquo to Jon Corzine’s Macbeth, their soliloquies at present are decidedly understated – even inaudible.
Sources close to state Senate President Richard Codey (D-West Orange), for example, say the former governor who shouldered executive office duties after Jim McGreevey’s 2004 bow-out, doesn’t want the lieutenant governor’s job, although some party insiders say the regular guy lawmaker – or someone like him – could provide the right bounce to a ticket headed by Gov. Jon Corzine.
New Jersey’s electorate breaks roughly into three ideological sections: 25% liberal, 25% conservative, and 50% moderate.
Of course, Republicans will seize on spending during the last eight years and a budget ballooned from $25 billion up to $33 billion to brand Codey a bloated government Tip O’Neill lib, but the former governor’s coach and family man cred lends him the kind of Christmas card patriarch appeal arguably doable with suburban white moderates. And if Codey couldn't convince as a moderate, he at least would havelittle trouble wearing the label "political pragmatist."
Now despite state Sen. Ronald Rice’s (D-Newark) summertime vow to withhold support from the governor unless he fields a black LG, insiders say it’s hard to picture African-Americans with 11% of the vote going for anyone but Corzine, particularly given the likelihood of President Barack Obama charging into the Meadowlands to buttress the governor as he heads toward November.
Latinos (9% of the electorate) and Catholics (48%) form two other overlapping voting groups the governor’s campaign team must consider, particularly given the Irish-Italian/factory worker son roots of Corzine’s two most likely opponents – former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie and former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. Once again, Codey, an Irish Catholic, finds himself on comfortable political terrain.
Having served already as the state’s top alpha male, however, sources say he simply doesn’t want the LG job.
In addition to Codey’s disinterest in playing ribbon-cutting backbencher to Corzine, his people insist in the face of plotting cloak room foes that the Senate President doesn’t need to worry about mapping out an escape route through a back hatch like the lieutenant governor’s office. They believe their boss has the required votes to diffuse an alliance between state Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Cedar Grove) and Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-Bridgeton), which would vault Sweeney into the Senate President’s chair. If he doesn’t summon the votes outright, they argue, Codey can always fall back on those passages of instruction from one of his favorite books, Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.”
If that’s true and Sweeney’s convinced in time that he won’t be able to lead a South Jersey uprising with O’Toole’s Republican faction against Codey, then maybe Sweeney himself – and this from sources – could examine his own prospects for the lieutenant governor’s position.
Although Corzine hasn’t publicly mentioned Sweeney’s name, in an interview last week with PolitickerNJ.com, Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer said he believes Sweeney – a white male ironworker and Gloucester Freeholder chief who deflates the double dipper charge by giving his county salary to charity – would be a good choice to help secure the blue collar middle range of general election voters.
Former chair of the labor committee, Sweeney has spent the last several years battling public sector employees, taking a legislative lead role in trying to get them to accept salary cuts and contract concessions, while strengthening his hand with the AFL-CIO and building and trades unions, and now expanding his powers on the joint budget committee. Moreover, with the departure of veteran state Sen. John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) to the U.S. Congress, Sweeney can claim a more commanding place in the Trenton universe of South Jersey, George Norcross-bred politicians.
So he could add some machine power to his own working guy myth, and in that same vein falls U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-Haddon Heights), bludgeoned in last year’s U.S. Senate primary, who nonethelesscanfrontthe same Norcross musclebeside his own statewide ambition nursed over the course of a decade plus.
While undergroundfor the moment- just like the others – Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo likewise hasn’tremoved his namefrom the LG lineup, and he too has close Norcross ties in the South to complement his standing as Newark boss Steve Adubato's political acolyte come of age.
If Corzine picks the South-Jersey-based Sweeney or Andrews – the latter of whom coyly hinted he might again be campaigning in North Jersey in the coming months – such a move would carry particular irony for Codey, especially if Corzine selects Sweeney, the figurehead threat to Codey’s power in the Senate.
The battle avoided would be the battle reclaimed, for if it’s Sweeney, and the Corzine/Sweeney ticket wins, the 2013 gubernatorial field is primed for at least a three-way and maybe four-way Democratic Party fight among Newark Mayor Cory Booker (who doesn’t want LG), Codey, DiVincenzo and Sweeney, with the last of these able to make his case from the platform as the state’s first lieutenant governor.
