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"When we get to Trenton in January, Chris and I, we are going to start with the bottom of the budget and work our way up," Guadagno said during the lieutenant governor debate on October 8. "We're going to send two former federal corruption prosecutors to Trenton. We're going to turn the lights on and turn over every rock until we find every dollar of wasteful spending."

I took a look back at some old news stories and I found some very similar sounding statements, among them:

"During these next months we will be setting forth individual cases of waste and mismanagement so that the citizens of the state of New Jersey will understand how government was or was not properly operated."

"The goal today is to provide a critical, exhaustive review of all government services to determine where we can cut waste and mismanagement."

These two statements were made by then-Governor James McGreevey a few days after he took office in 2002 and created the Budget Efficiency Savings Team, more commonly known by its acronym — the BEST Commission. The 21-member panel, comprised of fiscal and management experts, was charged with identifying examples of waste and mismanagement in state government. As I recall, the commission did identify a few egregious examples — a building the state was leasing, but not using, and about $15 million to $20 million in savings that could be realized by negotiating better contracts and reducing state workers' use of toll-free phone lines.

Should the Christie-Guadagno ticket win in November, they may very well find some similar items. But in all likelihood, they also will discover the same thing the BEST Commission did in 2002: Those items will generate headlines, but they will not amount to a significant percentage of savings in a budget as large as New Jersey's.

A Final Word on Weight

Finally, the issue of Chris Christie's weight already has received much more attention than is warranted, but I would like to note that I made a few observations on this subject after the June primary when I offered a series of suggestions for the two winning candidates. The last item on my list for Christie was this:

"Start a physical fitness routine and tell the world about it. A candidate's physique has nothing to do with his or her ability to govern, but we do live in a visual age and people do make comments on individuals' appearances — especially when those individuals are in the public spotlight. Why not have some fun with it and get some added attention from the public and the press as you work to shed a few pounds before Election Day? It will help to humanize you at a time when many voters feel disconnected from their elected officials."

Christie didn't follow my suggestion — and it wasn't the first time a candidate chose not to take my advice. If you'd like to see what else I suggested for him and Governor Corzine back in June — and how my suggestions jive with the paths the two candidates actually pursued — the post is still online: The Race for Governor: A Few Suggestions for the Candidates.

Feel free to get your scorecards out, but you may have more fun keeping score at a baseball game instead.

Richard A. Lee is Communications Director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy - New Jersey. A former journalist and Deputy Communications Director for the New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, he also teaches courses in media and government at Rutgers University, where he is completing work on a Ph.D. in media studies.