Posted on 10/11/2002 10:34:24 PM PDT by Utah Girl
There will be no Soprano jokes in this editorial. The reality of New Jersey politics outruns the whimsy of HBO.
Sen. Robert Torricelli's campaign for reelection began failing after it became evident that he had shaken down a New Jersey businessman, David Chang, for illegal campaign contributions and little goodies, such as a Rolex watch. The FBI investigated him, the Senate Ethics Committee "severely admonished" him, and the release of a memo by federal prosecutors summarizing the evidence sent Torricelli into a death spiral. Republican rival Doug Forrester catapulted from sacrificial lamb to runaway leader.
So Torricelli pulled out of the race 36 days before Election Day. His farewell address was a classic of modern bathos, weepy, self-pitying, and accusatory: "When," he asked, "did we become such an unforgiving people?" Two days after this performance, the New Jersey Democratic party plugged former senator Frank Lautenberg into his slot on the ballot. Forrester and the GOP challenged the substitution, but the supreme court of New Jersey ruled, 7-0, that it was permissible. The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear an appeal.
The New Jersey maneuver stinks like a toxic waste dump. New Jersey law says that substitutions must be made at least 51 days before the vote. Sen. Torricelli was not dead, or in jail, or otherwise incapacitated. He had simply been revealed as a sleazebag, and was becoming a deeply unpopular one. Yanking him off the ballot canceled the will of New Jersey's Democratic-primary voters; popping in Lautenberg at the last minute deprives all New Jersey voters of the back-and-forth of a normal campaign. In some cases, it will deprive New Jerseyans voting by absentee ballot of a vote. The example for other states is remarkable. New York Democrats could replace the faltering gubernatorial candidate Carl McCall with somebody popular, if they could find anyone. California Republicans unhappy with Bill Simon might tap Arnold Schwarzenegger to terminate Gov. Gray Davis.
Still, the United States Supreme Court was wise to stay out of this one. Corruption at the state level has a long history in American life; one of the first victims to suffer from it was John Jay, author, with Hamilton and Madison, of the Federalist Papers, who was cheated out of a New York governorship by slippery vote-counting in 1792. Rogue politicians (these days, usually judges) must be checked by responsible ones. Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court decision that stopped a Democratic attempt to steal the electoral votes of Florida in 2000, was an unsatisfactory compromise forced on the justices by the gravity of an unresolved election for president, the most important office on earth (how that cliché came to life the following September). NR argued at the time that, in an ideal world, elected officials — county canvassers, the governor and legislature of Florida, and, finally, the House of Representatives — ought to deal with the problem. If they overstepped, they could be punished at the next election.
This is the ground Forrester and the New Jersey GOP must now fight on. Lautenberg and Torricelli are two peas in a rotten pod, part of a Garden State culture of corner-cutting and corruption. Citizens must be called to defend themselves at the ballot box, not wait to be saved by a rival squad of judges.
There are 3 identifiable Democrat machines, and at least that many Republican machines.
Genuine political change comes about ( for the most part ) when there is a power struggle inside one or more of the machines.
Before you fortunate souls who live in other states start bragging about your natural superiority, take a good, long look at your own systems.
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