Corzine likes Menendez for VP, but Rice says no

Gov. Jon Corzine said that he’s not involved with Hillary Clinton’s potential choices for Vice President. But he thinks Bob Menendez would be a good one.

“First of all, it would be a great choice, but I have no idea. I’m not involved in that,” said Corzine before boarding a train that whisked him down to Washington, DC for the Chamber of Commerce’s Walk on Washington. “Clearly Bob has played a meaningful role in the national campaign because of his leadership of Hispanics for Mrs. Clinton, and he’s an able spokesperson on any of the issues he speaks out about.”

Assemblyman John Wisniewski agreed that the junior U.S. Senator from New Jersey would be a good Vice President, even if he couldn’t speak for the chances of it actually happening.

“I would love to see a New Jersey Vice President. Bob Menendez is one of the most articulate orators in Washington, DC – he has done this state proud and would do our party proud as the VP candidate,” he said. “Obviously presidential politics is a very Byzantine process with calculations of where support and electoral votes come from. So I couldn’t opine on the feasibility of it, but I’d love to see it.”

State Sen. Ronald Rice, however, wasn’t too keen on the prospect.

“You’re not going to get a Vice President and a president from the same region of the country. It’s not going to work for a lot of reasons. It’s a delegate thing too.”

Menendez, he said, needs to work on building stronger his ties with the state’s African-American community.

“I think he’s very articulate, he’s a good person. But I don’t know. Why not a Hillary and Obama?,” he said.

Rice, however, preferred to speculate on who the next Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey will be.

“Bonnie Watson Coleman’s a good choice. So is Nia Gill. So is Shirley Turner. So are all the other Legislative Black Caucus Nubian queens.”