newjerseynewsroom.com

BY CARL GOLDEN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

The nationally syndicated columnist George Will, asked to describe political campaign television advertising, responded:

"It's like football.  First, there's a secret meeting (huddle), followed by thirty seconds of extreme violence."

It's about as close to a perfect metaphor as possible.

And, if current trends continue, it's an apt description of the images New Jersey voters will see for the next two months as Gov. Jon Corzine fights to keep his job and Republican Chris Christie tries to wrest it away.

The Democrats will drive these points with mind-numbing repetition as proof that in his personal and professional life Christie lives by a set of ethical rules far more lax than those he expects others to abide by.

Corzine, Christie will say, should be denied a second term because he tolerates official corruption and, in fact, is an enabler of public misconduct, that he is the sole cause of the economic downturn that has touched nearly everyone in New Jersey, that he's hired campaign staff laden with conflicts of interest because they are lobbyists, and that his private sector financial wizardry was an illusion.

Because Corzine, by financing his campaign, is not bound by spending limits, his messages will outnumber Christie's since the Republican has accepted public funding and the expenditure ceiling that goes with it.

Independent candidate Chris Daggett will participate in the television ad war as well, but will be no match for Corzine or Christie and will be forced to rely on more traditional methods of message distribution which, unfortunately, fall well short of reaching the audiences that his opponents will.

It appears likely that Corzine and Christie will stick to their respective television ad strategies because both camps, drawing on history, are convinced they will work.

Both seem willing to ignore polling data, which reveals consistently that, by wide margins, voters want each of them to pay attention to the personal economic distress caused by local property taxes.

Christie has spoken in only the vaguest terms about the property tax burden, utilizing clichés about zero based budgeting, reducing the size of the state workforce to save money, and maintaining the homestead rebate program even though there probably isn't enough money to do so.

He's been urged publicly and, presumably, privately as well to put some separation between himself and Corzine on the property tax issue, to launch a breakout by proposing a tax relief program which will recognize the growing desperation felt by homeowners and respond to their belief that no one really cares about their plight.

His refusal to take that step is rooted in the conviction that it is extremely high risk and, rather than it becoming an issue of genuine and substantive debate, will be nothing more than a highly visible political target for Corzine and the Democratic party to fire at with impunity.

The safer course, particularly as the frontrunner, is to continue to cast doubt on Corzine's integrity and his intellectual shortcomings in the field of public finance.

For the Governor, consistently trailing in polls by as little as three points or as much as 11 points, a relentless battering of Christie remains the top option particularly since polls have shown a fairly dramatic increase in the percentage of people who view Christie in a negative light.

Ironically, it is Corzine who can point to a record of addressing the property tax issue by touting his Administration's imposition of a four percent cap on local tax rate increases and abolishing the decades-long method of school funding which sent 55 percent of state aid to public education to five per cent of the school districts – the so-called Abbott system.

His reluctance to raise the issue stems from concern that his record will be seen as woefully inadequate and that his actions have done little to stem significantly rising property taxes. It's not all that different from the Christie strategy: Why raise an issue that has the inherent and dangerous potential of placing him in a defensive position?

Just as Christie sees value in continuing to berate Corzine, the Governor sees similar advantage to be had by maintaining the drumbeat of distrust people should feel toward his opponent.

Both seem intent on proving George Will's theory.

By the time New Jersey voters make it through the next two months of campaign ads, watching a bunch of muscle bound warriors clad in thirty pounds worth of plastic and leather armor pound one another into insensibility for three hours on a Sunday afternoon may seem quite relaxing.

Carl Golden served as press secretary for Govs. Kean and Whitman.