What is it that makes public officials think they are above the law?
The latest poster child for this affliction is New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, who is being put back together after a life-threatening crash on the Garden State Parkway that was much, much worse because he was not wearing a setbelt.
That is against the law in the state Corzine leads, but he is notorious for never buckling up.
Had Corzine been belted when his state police SUV swerved to avoid an apparently out of control driver on the Parkway and hit a guardrail, it is probable that he would have been shaken up but would have walked away in one piece.
As it was, it appears that the governor ping-ponged around the interior of the vehicle, breaking his left leg, sternum, collarbone, six ribs on each side and a lower vertebra. So serious were his injuries that instead of being flown to Robert Wood Johnson in New Brunwick, the state’s leading medical center, he was medevaced to the closest Level One trauma center — Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where he received seven units of blood and had a metal rod inserted in his leg during a two-hour operation, the first of several he will have to endure.
It is somehow fitting, if unfortunate, that the accident occured on one of the two most notorious highways in a state that is nearly paved over. And that he was going (and probably speeding) to a sitdown between disgraced shock jock Don Imus and the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
More here.
What is it about New Jersey governors? There have been seven of them in full and acting capacities since 1994, and one guy has served four times.
Christine Todd Whitman left the job in 2001 to go to Washington where she was eviscerated by the White House as head of Environmental Protection Agency.
Donald DiFrancesco took over and served for two years before John Farmer, John Bennett and Richard Codey briefly served as acting governors.
Jim McGreevey was elected in 2002, but resigned two years later when he revealed that he was gay. Codey again served as acting governor and then governor.
Corzine, a multi-millionaire U.S. senator who was bored in Washington, was elected in 2006. Codey was again sworn in as acting governor when the gravity of Corzine’s injuries became clear.