It Was Twenty Years Ago Today …

… or at least sometime around today that the new Administration of Governor-elect James J. Florio was working with the outgoing Administration of Governor Tom Kean to effectuate a smooth transition of power. Two days following the November 6, 1989 election, Florio named the top members of his transition team:

• Douglas Berman, Florio's campaign manager, who would go on to become State Treasurer
• Steven P. Perskie, a former legislator who resigned as a Superior Court judge to join the campaign, who would go on to become Florio’s first Chief of Staff and later go back to the bench
• Brenda Bacon, a senior campaign adviser, who would go on to become Policy Chief
• Karen Kessler, the campaign’s finance director
• Angelo Genova, the campaign legal counsel
• And the Campaign’s director of communications, Jon Shure, who would go on to be director of communications

It was Shure’s main job, both during the campaign and in the Florio Administration, to keep the state’s five key political reporters happy:

• Michael Aron, NJN’s political correspondent
• David Wald, political columnist for the Star Ledger
• David Blomquist, political reporter for the Bergen Record
• Jim Goodman, political columnist for the Trenton Times
• Sal Paolantonio, political correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer

Now you can relive those glorious days of old as on Friday, November 27th at 7pm, New Jersey Network will broadcast a special 20th anniversary edition of Reporters Roundtable, hosted by Michael Aron, with the four original panelists from the first season of the show in 1989: Wald, Blomquist, Goodman and Paolantonio. The show will re-air on Sunday, November 29th at 10 on NJN.

I am told that among the topics to be discussed are:

• the transformation of politics and political journalism in New Jersey in the last 20 years
• the chances of the Christie Administration succeeding
• why Corzine lost
• the influence of Norcross and Adubato – the twin political titans in the state – on Trenton

So slap some turkey between two hunks of bread and cozy up to the television on Friday evening.

The League Conference

Joyce and I spent three days in Atlantic City at the New Jersey State League of Municipalities Annual Conference. I noticed three things:

Republicans were smiling more this year.
Democrats weren’t all that unhappy.
People were nicer to me.

What a difference an election makes!

Ten People I Bet You Wished You Had Been Nicer To a Year Ago

Jeff Michaels
Gregg Edwards
Bob Martin
Mike DuHaime
Vernon Hill
David Knowlton
Rick Mroz
Bill Palatucci
Sheila Oliver
Marcia Karrow

Where was the Preventive Services Task Force when we needed them?

An obscure Federal board – the “Preventive Services Task Force” – has opened up a can of worms and a full-blown national debate about whether mammograms are really as useful in preventing breast cancer in women as they are believed to be. (That is a fact. I don’t have an opinion on it. So leave me alone.)

Where was this group hiding when the Corzine Campaign decided to make this issue the most important one facing New Jersey?

Two Things That Matter More Than They Should

The Nobel Peace Prize – People care about the Nobel Peace prize. I have never figured out why. The prize winner is named by five people selected by the Norwegian Parliament. There is nothing else the Norwegian Parliament does that anybody else in the world cares about. But somehow this selection by their chosen five is important. Go figure. Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt and Corazon Aquino never won Nobel Peace Prizes. It would be like the Baseball Writers never inducting Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Sandy Koufax into the Hall of Fame, but us still caring who they named this year.

The Iowa Caucuses – Iowa has selected nine of the last 10 major party presidential nominees for us. Why do we let them do that? There are only three million of the little suckers (less than one percent of the U.S. population). As compared to the nation, they are older, whiter, less bilingual, less educated and poorer than us. There are no major professional sports franchises within their vast borders – presumably they root for losers like the Cubs. Let’s resolve to stop letting them pick our presidents for us.

A Different Kind of Republican Cat

When the smoke cleared –

When the fog lifted off 50 or so million dollars in direct mail and billboards and radio spots and oh, those god-awful television commercials –

When reporters took off their campaign hats and returned once again to the public policy arena –

When the horse race with its near daily furlong by furlong updates from the pollsters and pundits ended –

There stood Christopher J. Christie who will be Governor of the State of New Jersey as we begin the second decade of the 21st Century. What we saw is encouraging and hopeful.

We saw our new Governor in Newark of all places – at a charter school, standing side-by-side with a Democrat ward leader.

We saw our new Governor in Woodbridge, the state’s fifth largest municipality – McGreevey Country – with the Mayor who served as Treasurer in that Administration.

We saw him in the heart of “Republican Country” – Tom’s River in Ocean County – listening to Mayors starved for a little love and affection from Trenton.

We saw him at a high school in Hamilton Township – a swing town, home to thousands of state workers – unflinching and happily answering question after question after question from eager young adults.

In all of those places we saw nary a compromise of his core values and principles. And that is what gives us hope. That is what encourages us.

The man who campaigned – for a change – appears to be the man who will govern.

His message never wavered:

Yes, I will lower taxes.

Yes, I will make the state more business friendly.

Yes, I will cut government.

Yes, I will make that government more competent.

And so on and so on and so on.

We should have known we were dealing with a different kind of Republican cat when in the spring and in the fall he stayed his ground when under a withering attack from different flanks: pointed attacks from the right in the spring and a brutal barrage from the left in the fall.

And NEVER did he cede his moral ground.

I now know what we’ve got as Governor and I like it.

I Told You So

In celebrating the rightly return of baseball’s championship to the Bronx and thinking about how long it has been since the greatest franchise in professional sports history has hoisted the World Series trophy, I was reminded of Carrie Underwood’s sad lament in her hit cover of Randy Travis’ “I Told You So.”

Would you tell me that you'd missed me too and that you'd been so lonely
And you waited for the day that I returned?
And we'd live in love forever and that I'm your one and only
Or would you say the tables finally turned?
Would you say: I told you so, oh I told you so.

In that particular part of the song, a little tear sometimes begins to well in the corner of my eye. So while I am so very happy about my team’s win – and my accurate prediction that the Yankees would win in six games – I am a little sad for my Philly friends in this part of the state and Yankee haters in other parts of the world. I understand how very sad they must feel this morning and I feel for them.

NAH!

Who am I kidding?!

Whoooo …. Whooo!

The YANKEES win, theeee YANKEEEEES win!

So let me give you my top five reasons why I am having a VERY nice day this morning:

1. Winning the championship is satisfying, but smacking down that punk Jimmy Rollins and his ridiculous prediction that the Phillies would win in five adds a little icing to the cake.

2. Beating Pedro Martinez, the elderly abuser, TWICE in New York.

3. Winning with Yankee-hater Tim McCarver in the Fox TV booth grudgingly giving the Yankees “props.”

4. Knowing that Derek Jeter now only has to get two more postseason hits to catch the combined total of the first six hitters in the Phillies lineup (Rollins, Victorino, Utley, Howard, Werth and Ibanez) at 177.

5. And finally, winning one for The Boss one more time!

Have a nice winter. Better luck next year!