Menendez - Bergen Record - Avoid state issues

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Published in the Bergen Record, Monday, July 17, 2006

Menendez's tack: Keep state issues at a distance

By HERB JACKSON
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez was not showing any sign of worry last week that the state sales tax increase and recent state government shutdown would hurt his campaign for a full term in November.

Menendez, D-Hoboken, went from a news conference pledging to oppose pay raises for Congress until the federal minimum wage is increased to fighting unsuccessfully for more risk-based anti-terrorism grants on the Senate floor, to railing against offshore drilling to prepping for this week's Senate showdown on embryonic stem cell research.

The activity demonstrates Menendez's strategy in his race against state Sen. Tom Kean Jr., R-Union: Keep the focus as much as possible on federal issues.

"New Jerseyans are smart cookies," Menendez said last week. "I trust New Jerseyans will cast their judgment about what happened in the state when the elections for state officers come and they'll cast their votes this November on what's happened in their federal government."

Kean, meanwhile, is trying to tar Menendez with everything that's potentially unpopular about Governor Corzine, who appointed Menendez to fill his unexpired term in the Senate, and Trenton Democrats. The strategy is to raise an issue that Kean believes will rile voters -- such as the sales tax increase or Attorney General Zulima Farber's role in keeping her boyfriend's car from being towed by police -- and then condemn Menendez for not condemning it.

"As the governor's handpicked appointee to the Senate, Menendez has given up on the people of New Jersey because Menendez doesn't think the budget crisis which has shut down our government is his problem," Kean said in a radio ad that received limited airplay earlier this month.

Menendez countered by accusing Kean of cutting and running because he served on the state Senate Budget Committee last year and stepped off to run for U.S. Senate. Kean's spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, said Kean believed the state should have cut spending instead of raising taxes.

"We need to weed out waste, fraud and abuse and reduce the size of government," she said. When pressed for examples that would add up to the $1.1 billion in revenue raised by the sales tax, she sent a list totaling $650 million that included reductions in school aid to such districts as Clifton, Garfield, Hoboken, Kearny and North Bergen.

Republicans say history argues that Kean's approach can be effective, and they cite Republican Christie Whitman's surprisingly close loss to the seemingly unbeatable Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley in 1990.

Whitman hounded Bradley to take a position on the tax increases enacted by Gov. Jim Florio, and an aloof Bradley said it was a state issue and he was running for federal office.

Kean starts out with better name recognition than Whitman did because his father is a former governor, while Menendez starts out far less known than the popular Bradley.

But analysts and veterans of the 1990 tax wars say this year is different: The nation's at war, the president's more unpopular than the governor and people were more prepared for higher state taxes this year than 16 years ago.

Florio said that when he took office, the $300 million surplus that the outgoing administration of Thomas H. Kean said it was leaving turned out to be a $600 million deficit because a recession was starting.

"We had to break the news to people," and raise taxes just as unemployment shot up, Florio said. "Now, everyone has been talking for the last year at least about the budget shortfall, and nobody is assigning to Governor Corzine responsibility for the problems. Everybody knows it's the result of the last decade of fiscally irresponsible policies."

A Quinnipiac University poll released Friday showed that Corzine's job-approval rating actually increased after the budget showdown with legislative leaders. The poll found 44 percent of voters approved of the job Corzine was doing and 43 percent disapproved, the first time more people approved than disapproved since Corzine unveiled his budget and tax-increase package in March.

That could change going forward. The sales tax increase only began hitting the public at the cash register on Saturday, and more effects of the budget will hit later in the year in the form of higher college tuition and new taxes for services such as piercings and tattoos. Voters also will be reminded of the tax increase in November when they are asked to ratify a constitutional amendment dedicating a portion of it to property tax relief.

Still, Rutgers University pollster and political scientist Cliff Zukin said he does not sense the same kind of public outrage as in 1990.

"I think [Corzine] did do well conditioning the public that this was needed," Zukin said.

Democrats also note that the anti-Florio backlash that clipped Bradley's aspirations for higher office was fueled in part by gun-rights groups' anger over a ban on assault weapons and the teachers union's outrage at changes to the funding of pensions.

Republicans disagree, but some sound more like they're hoping for a big voter backlash than convinced there's one that can be harnessed.

"I really have wondered when or if the voting public gets fed up with what's going on around here. You had McGreevey resign, Torricelli, the FBI raid on the Democratic State Committee, the budget is ruled unconstitutional, all this stuff," said Roger Bodman, a Republican lobbyist and former member of Thomas H. Kean's Cabinet.

"And there appears to be no political price to be paid when voters get an opportunity to express themselves at the polls. I think people ought to be fed up with this stuff. I certainly hope so."

E-mail: jackson@northjersey.com

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