New Jersey: A Garden State of Mind
It took years for New Jersey to wrestle the unofficial Most Corrupt State title from Louisiana and public officials there are determined not to relinquish the crown.
Just the other day, in yet another round of government corruption-related arrests yet another passel of mayors and other public officials from three counties were caught accepting payoffs from undercover agents in yet another sting operation.
Given that voters associate corruption more with Democrats, a reasonable person would think that Republicans could take advantage of that fact.
Wrong.
A new Quinnipiac University poll finds that even through 88 percent of voters consider corruption a serious problem and predominately a Democratic problem, 54 percent of them say they’re not likely to vote for Republicans in the November election when all 120 state legislative seats are being contested.
Democrats currently control the state Senate 22-18 and the General Assembly 50-30, as well as the statehouse. Both U.S. senators and 7 of 13 congressmen also are Democrats.
There are a number of explanations for the disconnect revealed by the poll, but I’m going with these:
* New Jersey is, in a word, weird, and suffers from an identity crisis that explains some of the weirdness.
Say “Iowa” and you think of cornfields. Say “Texas” and you think of the Alamo. Say “Florida” and you think of Disney World. But say “New Jersey” and you think of . . . Smelly oil refineries? Toll roads? The 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping? Tony Soprano?
* While everyone talks about corruption being a problem, no one does anything about it.
This may stem in part from the probability that just about everyone, especially in the northern part of the state, has a neighbor or knows someone who has been caught up in a corruption probe. It’s simply part of the social fabric and a consequence of New Jersey’s notorious “pay to play” political ethic.
* New Jersey is unusual in that most power resides at the top and bottom of the political infrastructure.
New Jersey’s governor is arguably the most powerful of any of the 50 and local commissions and boards wield a tremendous amount of power.
* New Jersey may be the most liberal state, a tide which tends to raise Republican boats.
Indeed, many Republican officeholders are well out of the national GOP mainstream. The party’s sole gubernatorial success in the last 17 years was the election of Christie Todd Whitman, a staunch moderate, in 1993. Only four of the 11 elected governors since World War II have been Republicans.
Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said the poll shows corruption probably won’t be decisive in this year’s legislative elections, but could pose problems for incumbents in close races.
Meanwhile, the poll found voters approve of U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, a Republican who has spearheaded many of the corruption investigations, by a 40 percent to 14 percent margin.
But Richards noted that:
“Christie gets good marks from voters for his corruption fighter role in New Jersey, but that does not seem to translate into political power.”
Only in New Jersey, folks. Only in New Jersey.
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10 Responses to “New Jersey: A Garden State of Mind”
New Jersey is one of those states that shows why the long term prospects for the Republican party are so bad. First, New Jersey managed to avoid some of the issues that have hurt the Democratic Party in other states like the south. My understanding is that the public schools are arranged in such a way that forced busing never occurred.
New Jersey also sends more high schoolers out of the state for college than any other. Thus, the leaders of tomorrow in NJ are being educated at Yale, Duke, Penn, and Syracuse instead of Rutgers.
Also, New Jersey does not have its own media markets but are just parts of NYC or Philadelphia’s. No strong media to expose anything going wrong.
The Democratic party in New Jersey has found a way to keep all of the minority votes while not alienating the middle class and upper middle class whites. The Democrats have found a way to pander to all groups while any potential Republican voters move to North Carolina or Georgia Thus, the Republicans have no chance of winning.
SD:
Good points all, to which I can only add that:
* While there are deep pockets of poverty (Newark, Camden, Paterson), New Jersey is extremely affluent in addition to being Democratic.
* Minorities have taken over and run or jointly run the Democratic machines in Essex, Hudson and Union counties, which beyond being hotbeds of corruption, provide a steady, reliable and growing bases of black and Hispanic Democratic voters.
* Republican gubernatorial candidates in recent years are more in the national GOP mainstream — pro-gun and pro-life. New Jersey is substantially anti-gun and pro-choice, although in some respects less heavily populated South Jersey might as well be another state.
N.J. also has Atlantic City, with its casinos and has been a hub of mob activity for decades. As in Las Vegas, there is too much easy access for politicians to easy money.
Oh please, NJ isn’t any more corrupt than any other state and I’m sick of the cliche that this is the most corrupt state.
I spent five years in NJ, living near the Princeton / Trenton area, so my images are different than the Newark cliche, but that’s irrelevant.
I just wanted to point out that 4 out of 11 governors isn’t all that uneven. A perfect 50/50 split would have 5.5 each. I haven’t done the math, but the difference might not be statistically significant. Now, of course, 11 governors only makes 44 years, which isn’t enough to get back to WWII. There very well may be a clear D trend in the number of years.
New Jersey? “Mad Max Parkway.” (Complete with stupid dinosaur toll booths that insult motorists after holding them up typically for several minutes.)
That doesn’t do justice to the Piedmont, to Princeton, or some of the peninsular scenes, but the antiquated roads and “gritty city” infrastructure, and award-winning corruption form the stereotype of this Cyanide Nation crown jewel.
Shaun’s additional points show he’s familiar with New Jersey. I suspect he may well be familiar, too, with a very-blue, Bush-loathing New England (home of GOP “moderates” [sic] like Chafee, Snowe, and Collins as well as Cambridge, MA, “Berkeley East,” and the fine folks that bring to us the People’s Republic of Vermont, and a major exporter of people and business).
Have fun looking here, here, and hereto see all those red, blue, and purple colors.
superdestroyer,
hope you aren’t inferring that Rutgers is an inferior institution, since that would be wholly untrue. Also, just because more people from New Jersey leave the state for education doesn’t mean they are going to better institutions or returning to the state. Quite the opposite actually, since students from New Jersey (and i think this is a trend for students from any state) who go out of state tend to settle down in the state where they went to a higher institution.
“Now, of course, 11 governors only makes 44 years, which isn’t enough to get back to WWII.”
I’m sure several of them held office for multiple terms. Would be more informative to have that information.
I really like the questions you’ve raised. I wish I could provide some answers. Instead, since you raised the comparison with Louisiana, I’d like to complicate matters a bit by pointing out what seems to be a stark contrast in the political systems of these two states. You correctly point out that the New Jersey governor is extremely powerful. It is the only elected statewide office; the attorney general, cabinet members, judges, etc., are all appointed. I don’t know of any other state at this extreme. Louisiana, however, is at the opposite extreme. Just about every state executive is elected, as well as all judges, everyone down to the proverbial dog catcher. And yet both extremes seem to arrive at the same result when it comes to corruption.