My sense is that 9/11 has made NJ residents more grown-up. My neighbor 4 doors up the street died in the WTC on 9/11, as did 8 men in my church (St. Paul's Catholic Church, Princeton), and we were at the very center of the anthrax scare (the mailbox the anthrax was mailed from was 1 block away from the box I always use in Princeton).
The key element in both states is that lurch will have to spend time and money in NJ and Ca., that he neither has nor plans for. That will help W elsewhere.
No we won't win in either but sometimes a walk is as good as a hit.
Hey...we go to the same church !!!