Corzine in Big Trouble in NJ

Until today, I expected that New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine would, somehow, pull off a comeback against Republican Chris Christie, whom he has been trailing by double digits in the polls. Recent history was on his side. Granted, my experience with New Jersey elections doesn’t go back very far, but I do know that Christie Todd Whitman was the last Republican to win statewide office, and that was 12 years ago. Since then, we saw the retired Frank Lautenberg replace the corrupt Bob Torricelli on the Democratic ticket a mere month before the election… and win by 10 points. We saw Bob Menendez, a machine pol from Northern NJ, clean up against the squeaky-clean son of a popular Republican governor, Tom Kean. We saw Jon Corzine buy victory in two statewide races, despite being liked, let alone loved, by no one. And this was after his Democratic predecessor as governor, Jim McGreevey, got caught in a sex scandal that seemed shocking in those innocent pre-Craig/Foley/Spitzer/Ensign/Sanford days.

So I never really thought Corzine was in that much danger. A few hugs from Obama, a revelation (however tenuous) designed to dirty up Christie, and I thought he’d win in a squeaker.

But after today’s FBI roundup of corrupt New Jersey pols, I think he’s done. Even if his administration’s involvement in the scandal didn’t extend beyond the commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs. I think that these arrests are to Corzine what the Lehman Brothers bailout was to John McCain. They will make corruption the number one issue in the campaign, just as Lehman put the economy front-and-center. Corzine wanted to make this a proxy-national election, with himself as a stand-in for Obama, and I think he would have succeeded if this hadn’t happened. But now this is a local election, about New Jersey and its reputation and self-image. And turning out the Governor who was present during this embarrassment will be emotionally satisfying to us all.

Things might look differently in a few weeks, after we’ve learned the full story and it becomes clear whether this is as big a deal as it seems right now. But at best this is a major setback for Corzine, and I no longer see him pulling it out.