newjerseynewsroom.com

BY TOM HESTER SR.

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

It’s enough to make a Republican governor smile.

South Jersey’s two top Democratic political leaders are publicly criticizing the state’s Democratic senior U.S. senator in defense of a project the governor has proposed.

Round 2 was Thursday.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg has called for the U.S. Department of Education to look into Gov. Chris Christie’s proposal to merge Rutgers-Camden with Rowan University in a move the governor believes would help revitalize Camden. South Jersey Democratic boss George E. Norcross, who is also the chairman of Camden-based Cooper University Hospital, and state Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney (D-Gloucester) support the merger proposal.

Norcross and Sweeney are not happy with Lautenberg’s questioning of the proposal or his decision to bring it to the attention of the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul J. Fishman, an action which appears to imply he wants a criminal investigation.

“Suspicions have been raised that this decision has been crafted to benefit powerful political interests without regard for the impact on students, the academic institutions themselves and the community,” Lautenberg wrote.

Norcross and Sweeney initially went for Lautenberg’s throat on Wednesday. Sweeney’s public statement was co-signed by 23 South Jersey Democratic and Republican legislators and local officials.

In response, on Thursday Lautenberg spokesman Caley Gray told North Jersey Press, it’s sad “elected officials will simply fall in line on orders from their political benefactors.”

That led Norcross to reply “to yet another cheap shot remark from U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg."

“Sen. Lautenberg has been picking the pockets of no-bid, pay-to-play vendors at the DRPA and other public agencies throughout New Jersey for decades,” Norcross said. “Aside from the absurdity of his comments, it's interesting to note that he never expressed these sentiments when he literally begged for South Jersey's support in all of his campaigns for reelection. It's the height of hypocrisy.

"It's appalling that the only time Sen. Lautenberg shows any interest at all in South Jersey is when he needs campaign money and votes,” Norcross added. “He has been missing-in-action on the critical issues affecting the citizens of this region.”

Michael Drewniak, Christie’s press secretary, got into the exchange saying, “Senator Lautenberg has chosen not to be a positive participant in strengthening New Jersey’s higher education institutions. Instead he engaged in this peculiar, over-the-top correspondence full of unsupported innuendo and political vindictiveness. Very odd.”

Sweeney, a Norcross ally, is also considered a potential contender to the 88-year-old Lautenberg, should the senator seek re-election in 2014.

Christie’s plan for higher education calls for a reorganization of the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark, the combination of the Robert Wood Johnson medical school with Rutgers in New Brunswick, and Rowan University’s merger with the Rutgers-Camden campus.