Don't look now, but a state that has swung decisively to the Democrats over the last decade seems to be souring on John Kerry and may be in play this year after all. Grim memories of September 11 haunt a state that lost hundreds of residents in the World Trade Center attacks, and this spector appear to be driving significant numbers of conservative Democrats and independents into George W. Bush's camp.
Should Bush win New Jersey, he would become the first Republican to carry the state since his father easily outdistanced another Massachusetts Democrat, Michael Dukakis, in 1988. To the amazement of both parties, a variety of polls taken since the Republican convention show Bush gaining on Kerry in New Jersey, trailing by numbers within the margin of error. A Quinnipiac University poll, conducted September 16-19 and released last week, had Bush pulling even with his Democratic challenger at 48 percent in a sample of likely voters and people who said they had not yet decided on whom they would vote for but were leaning toward one of the candidates. Independent Ralph Nader had 2 percent.
“This is not a state that you would even expect to be having a discussion about,” said Tom O'Neil, a former executive director of the Democratic Party in New Jersey. “That we're even talking about it is not a good sign for Kerry nationally.”
It was less than two months ago, as the Democratic convention in Boston was coming to a close, that New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine told his state delegation not to expect any money from the Kerry campaign. New Jersey was safe, he said. So confident were the Democrats of victory here that the millions of dollars they had already raised in New Jersey for the Kerry-Edwards ticket had been exported to battleground states.
If the Democrats were looking past New Jersey, who could blame them? They had carried the state in the last three presidential elections, winning the last two in blowouts. Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole in 1996 by 17 percent, and Al Gore cruised to a 16-point victory over Bush in 2000. The Republicans, for their part, had thrown in the towel again this year and had no plans to compete for the state's 15 electoral votes. In the nation's red-blue political divide, New Jersey was squarely in the blue camp. But something changed after the Republican convention, and the Democrats suddenly faced the prospect of defending their own turf.
Many Democratic officials and operatives dismissed the polls taken around Labor Day, insisting that they reflected an artificial bounce for Bush coming out of the Republican convention. But now, as Kerry's numbers remain flat, they are clearly worried and are scrambling to prevent what would be an embarrassing defeat.
For now, they are swinging Kerry's running mate into action. John Edwards had just one planned visit to the state, on Sept. 28, and that was strictly to raise money at an affair for the state party's elite. The campaign, though, added a rally to Edwards' itinerary, and Democrats worked frantically over the weekend to line up union workers and others to help pack the event in Newark. Edwards is also planning a second trip to the state, and discussions are under way to send Kerry in as well.
“There's no doubt we've dropped ... and if it takes John Kerry to come here and breathe new life into this thing, then we'll do it,” said U.S. Representative William Pascrell Jr., a co-chairman of the Kerry campaign in New Jersey. Pascrell said he still believed that Kerry would carry the state, but added, “We're not going to take anything for granted.”
The idea of Kerry and Edwards spending precious campaign time in a once-secure northeastern state suits the Bush camp just fine. New Jersey Republicans are trying to persuade the White House to mount an aggressive effort there, and the White House made a tentative nod in that direction by sending Laura Bush to a rally near the state capitol in Trenton this month.
Neither side is advertising on New York television, which reaches voters in populous north Jersey. Because of the exceedingly high cost of going on TV in New York, both parties avoid it unless an election is competitive in New York or New Jersey, the latter of which has no statewide commercial TV. Both campaigns are advertising heavily on Philadelphia TV and radio because Pennsylvania is a battleground state. That market reaches voters in south Jersey, which extends roughly from Trenton south. If the race stays close in New Jersey, Kerry will not be able to avoid diverting some money to run ads on New York stations.
The shift toward Bush is generally believed to have begun on the opening night of the GOP convention, when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani launched what became a weeklong assault on Kerry and a bid to make homeland security the driving issue of the campaign. From a hall less than five miles from where the Twin Towers collapsed, Giuliani led a procession of speakers in framing the campaign as a contest between a battle-tested Bush and a challenger who was a risky bet for dangerous times.
Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, that message had an especially powerful effect. New Jersey residents still vividly recall the horror of waiting at train stations and commuter parking lots on September 11 for relatives and friends who worked at the World Trade Center and nearby offices. They were there to learn who had and who had not survived the still-burning inferno on the other side of the river. Next to New York, New Jersey suffered the largest number of casualties from the attacks. Security is still a big issue in the state; bridges, tunnels, and ports are under heavy guard, and financial buildings in downtown Newark were listed as potential targets in a governmental security warning this summer.
The psychological effect also lingers. The hole in the Manhattan skyline where the towers once stood is clearly visible to thousands of New Jersey residents and poses a constant reminder of that day.
“The people of this state are particularly sensitive to the issues of terrorism and protecting the homeland,” said Lewis Eisenberg, co-chairman of the Bush campaign in New Jersey. “The president is making the case that ‘I can keep you safe in your homes and offices,' and his personality reinforces that message.”
Democrats contend that Bush is unfairly playing on voters' fears, but they grudgingly acknowledge that the strategy is working. Said Tom Giblin, a New Jersey labor leader and former Democratic state chairman, “We're still reeling from 9-11. We felt it hard in this area, and we seem to be a lot more conscious about it than people in other parts of the country. Homeland security and national security is very much on the minds of people.”
At the same time, even some Democrats fault Kerry for sending mixed messages on the Iraq War and homeland security, and for being too reactive. “George Bush has set the table and John Kerry is responding to what he lays out there,” said Giblin. Still, Giblin and others say, there is time for Kerry to turn things around. “The support for Bush is soft here,” Giblin added. “How Kerry performs in the first debate will be very critical.”
Given how thoroughly Democratic New Jersey has become in recent years, it's easy to forget that the Republicans were in the driver's seat not too long ago. Before Clinton won the state in 1992, the Republicans carried New Jersey in the six presidential contests between 1968 and 1988, and usually by double digits. The state's generally moderate voters began turning away from the GOP because of the party's increasingly conservative drift on issues such as abortion, gun control, and the environment. The Gingrich revolution drove even more independent voters into the Democratic camp.
Many Democrats are worried that “Reagan Democrats” -- the generally blue-collar, ethnic, Catholic voters that deserted the party in the 1970s and '80s because of what they viewed as its leftward drift -- may be defecting to Bush this year.
There are other forces at work in New Jersey that could be undermining Kerry's campaign here. The Democrats have been distracted since mid-August by the bombshell sex scandal involving the state's Democratic governor, James McGreevey. McGreevey is resigning in November, but the scandal and a bitter intraparty battle over the choice of his successor have left the Democrats in disarray and tarnished the party's image across the state. The damaging revelations about McGreevey, including a federal investigation into some of his close aides and Democratic fund-raisers, could trigger a voter backlash against Kerry, in the view of some senior Democrats. If nothing else, the governor's downfall has weakened the potent state Democratic machine.
Unlike the last several elections, the state party is rudderless this fall. McGreevey controls the Democratic apparatus and its several million dollars in campaign money. But the governor, who backed Howard Dean in the primaries, is focused on his own problems and has yet to lift a finger to aid Kerry's campaign.
Tom Turcol, a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, writes about New Jersey politics.
