Posted on 05/12/2005 6:36:56 AM PDT by ZULU
Departing Ambassador weighs U.S. Senate bid
By STEVE KORNACKI PoliticsNJ.com
MAY 11 - Clifford M. Sobel, a businessman and major Republican fund-raiser who will step down as the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands this summer, has told Republicans in New Jersey that he is considering launching a bid for the party's 2006 U.S. Senate nomination when he returns to the Garden State.
In the last month, two top state Republicans, state GOP Chairman Tom Wilson and Lewis M. Eisenberg, the former finance chairman for the Republican national chairman, met with Sobel in separate visits to The Hague. Neither Eisenberg nor Wilson would comment on what was discussed.
"I'm the state party chairman and I don't make it my policy to talk about what anybody may or may not want to do," said Wilson, who characterized his overseas trip as "a social visit" to celebrate his wife's 40th birthday.
But Sobel, sources say, has also begun making phones calls to GOP county chairmen, including Kevin O'Toole of Essex, Dale Florio of Somerset and George Gilmore of Ocean, expressing an interest in an '06 bid and trying to gauge support. The millionaire businessman — he served as president of IDT-subsidiary Net2Phone, Inc. before becoming ambassador in December 2001— has indicated that he understands the expensive nature of running for office in New Jersey and would self-fund.
A Senate run would pit Sobel, who has maintained a residence in Short Hills while abroad, in a primary against State Sen. Thomas H. Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), who is already raising money for '06 and who has spent nearly two years traversing the state to court county and local GOP leaders.
It might also encourage other Republicans to enter the race, creating a crowded, unruly and potentially divisive primary. Friends describe Sobel as sharing the same moderate-to-liberal sensibilities of former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, for whom he was a top fund-raiser. Kean, who went public in March with his Senate plans in an effort to clear out other aspirants, occupies similar ideological turf.
"There would be room on the right and as we've learned this primary season, there seems to be no shortage of candidates on the right who are ready to step forward," noted David Rebovich, the director of Rider University's Institute for New Jersey Politics.
Those who have talked with him seem split over how seriously Sobel is looking at the race. One Republican said Sobel seems to think he can nudge Kean out, others say he's simply a (late) middle-aged man who is leaving a job and exploring all of his options.
National Republican leaders, sniffing a rare chance for a Garden State Senate win in '06, have encouraged Kean's efforts. But it's unclear if they'd want to actively dissuade Sobel from running; after all, Sobel was one of George W. Bush's first "pioneers" in 2000, raising over $100,000 for his presidential campaign.
Kean's Garden State backers are hopeful Sobel will conclude that a primary fight is a lost cause.
"I think Kean is really going to be the guy to beat," said Philip Morin, the Republican chairman in Union County, where Kean lives. "The ambassador is pretty well-regarded but Tom has really been crisscrossing the state sowing the seeds for 2006, even before he announced his candidacy."
Morin, who said he has not been contacted by Sobel, added: "I would hope that the chairs he's talking to are letting him know that there's a guy who's been out there working pretty hard in all the counties."
Kean has public commitments from Col. Michael Warner, the GOP chairman in Burlington County, and Kenneth LeVevre, the Atlantic County party chairman. Privately, other chairmen have indicated that expect Kean to be the '06 nominee and are comfortable with him heading their party's ticket.
"I think most people view the field as already being occupied by Tom Kean Jr.," said William J. Palatucci, the former finance chairman for the state GOP and a close Kean family friend.
For now, though, not every chairman is ready to sign up for Kean.
"This is still very early," said Bergen County's Guy F. Talarico.
That Sobel has started dialing up county chairmen is news, but GOP insiders say his name has been floating around for years as a potential candidate for statewide office. His money— before his Net2Phone stint, he founded a business that designed and sold mannequins— could make him attractive both to the cash-strapped state party and to county leaders who would prefer to devote their resources to their own tickets.
"Is this Jon Corzine redux?" asked Rebovich. "If he's willing to spend $10 or $15 million in a primary, Kean will have to raise considerable sums to get his message out."
But Sobel's biggest weakness also happens to be Kean's top asset. Kean has only served in the legislature for four years, but thanks to his father's two terms as governor and his recent return to the headlines as the chairman of the federal 9/11 commission, he enjoys the name recognition of a seasoned statewide leader. The role of ambassador to the Netherlands is, by contrast, decidedly low-profile.
"People have looked at Tom from very early in his career as someone who could be a very formidable statewide candidate," said Morin.
Sobel's primary constituency is the inside crowd. He burst onto the Garden State's political scene in the early '90s, becoming one of the state GOP's key fund-raisers during Whitman's governorship. His wife, Barbara, won an appointment to the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority's board from Whitman. Sobel took over Net2Phone, which integrates internet and long distance phone service, in September 1997. When Sobel was hired, the president of Net2Phone's parent company, IDT, was former Rep. James A. Courter, whom Sobel also raised money for. Sobel chaired Bush's 2000 fund-raising effort in New Jersey, parlaying that role into his posting in The Hague.
Sobel's friends say he has called being an ambassador the best job of his life but that he is also anxious to come home to New Jersey. He has a reputation as an affable conversationalist and the U.S. embassy in the Netherlands has served as a favorite vacation spot for numerous Garden State GOP luminaries since 2001.
Steve Kornacki can be reached at steve.kornacki@gmail.com
I didn't note this as a New Jersey issue as it impacts the composition of the U.S. Senate.
Eisenberg is a former business partner of current New Jersey State Senator, the very liberal Jon Corzine who is expected to step down from the Senate and run for governor in that state (New Jersey's loss is America's gain). The two were involved with the Goldman-Sachs brokerage house in New York City.
Eisenberg was Chrissie Whitman's bagman, providing her with funds. Eisnberg also set up a special PAC to fund and support "moderate" (read "liberal") Republicans for office. Eisenberg has worked for Democrats in the past. If you remember, Chrissie Whitman actively campaigned against Oliver North in another state - I believe it was Virginia, while governor of New Jersey.
What does this all mean to real America?
It means that the liberal Repub establishment in New Jersey is positioning either Tom Kean Jr, son of the notorious Tom Kean Senior who hosted the 9-1-1 commission and attempted to undermine Bush I and Bush II's campaigns in some not so very subtle manners, or this novus homo Sobel to run for U.S. Senate from New Jersey against some unknown Democrat. Should either Sobel or Tom Kean get elected, the Repubs nation-wide will have another Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chafee or Tom McCain - this time from New Jersey - in the Republican Isle.
Not good.
Sounds as if the NJ Republican party is in its usual state of disarray.
That being said, there is hope if Bob Menendez (Congessman from Hudson County) gets the nod on the Democratic side. He'd be a very weak candidate statewide.
The sad thing for you rank and file New Jersey Repubs and for the Nation as a whole is that Corzine's departure will only apparently present us with another left-wing liberal in the Senate.
Most New Jersey rank and file Republicans are solid conservatives. They have demonsrtated that time and again in primaries.
Unfortunately, New Jersey is loaded with a lot of wealthy limousine liberals who are liberal on social issues and only interested in protecting their own wealth. And they refuse to support any conservative Republicans whenever they are nominated. But when one of their liberal cronies like Kean gets nominated, they back him with their bucks.
Their wealth provides them with enormous influence in the State Party.
So New Jersey voters are really faced with a one party system there - the liberal establishment in Republican or Democrat flavors.
And I consider Eisenberg a particularly dangerous and malevolent influence from the perspective of conservative Republicans, or even real moderate Republicans. I'm sure Whitman got appointed to the DEP because of Eisenberg's financial support to Bush II. And then she stabbed Bush in the back and even now has written a book attacking conervative Republicans. People like her should register as Democrats, not Republicans. They haven't got a conservative bone in their bodies.
But their agenda is to assure that no matter who wins - Republican or Democrat - a liberal winds up in office.
They want Kean Jr to be a shoe in.
The guy won ONE election for the Assembly then oozed his slippery way into the Senate when a vacancy occured in his district via a political convention. Now he wants to run for Snate.
And why not???
He's a Kean - he comes from old money and his @##!%%! doesn't stink because he's better than anybody else.
Listen to his father speak. Who the heck in New Jersey or anywhere else for that matter enunciats words like him? Nobody does. It must be an affectation acquired from finishing school - sort of like FDR. FDR sounds like he graduated from Eton or Oxford and was raised in England.
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