Hillary Clinton

MINNEAPOLIS - Stunned by Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) headline-snatching announcement last Friday that he selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, N.J. Democrats this week re-set after taking a three-day hard look at Palin.

So far, they’re having a difficult time squaring an obscure Alaskan with New Jersey’s hard-edged, ethnically diverse environs, despite Republicans’ best efforts - in the words of State GOP Chairman Tom Wilson - to make a case for why "New Jersey will love Sarah Palin."

"They have Eskimos in Alaska," former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield said to the suggestion that Palin may not have experience relating to the kinds of ethnic groups whose myriad cultures saturate New Jersey.

As for the fact that Palin’s a woman - a younger, slimmer verison of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with an attitude to tempt backlash voters over to the GOP after Clinton’s primary loss - Democrats remain unimpressed.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) with mother and daughter constituents visiting Denver: Aisha, left, and Valerie.: Politicker photo 

DENVER - The Democratic Party had been splintered all week, and the test of the convention would be whether on the last day Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) resolved the contradictions and moved everyone forward.

The factions were not imagined, or at least one piece of the delegation claiming the loyalties of 18 million voters was hesitant about the presumptive nominee. For New Jerseyans, that faction had particular force. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had beaten Obama by almost ten points in New Jersey and her fundraisers had hauled in millions form New Jersey supporters.

Some Monday night drama hinged on Michelle Obama’s shot to prove she loves her children and understands the Middle American concept of family.

"I cried until I couldn’t applaud anymore," Newark Councilwoman Mildred Crump said of Obama’s speech.

However, warm and fuzzy testimonials were already starting to rile the Rev. Reginald Jackson of Orange. Yes, he’d been a solid Clinton backer during the primary, "but we need to deal with the Bushes and we’ve got to define McCain."

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark): Politicker photo

DENVER - It was coming to an end in an Irish bar, only it wouldn’t actually end there. It would in another bar, a few blocks removed.

Two bars separated by one speech.

"It should be a walkover, of course," said U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark). "These guys - Obama and McCain - are neck and neck. I think it’s perhaps the trepidation about race that makes it that way, but we'll see."

In a few hours, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) would take the stage and accept his party’s nomination.

Payne, and his elder brother former Assemblyman Bill Payne, mingled among a respectably large crowd of guests in this, the last big, pre-Obama speech bash in downtown Denver at the Celtic Tavern, thrown by U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) and U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson).

The Celtic Tavern is located near the light rail line, and soon the delegates and superdelegates and other guests would pile aboard and head out to Invesco Field to see and hear Obama.

In the meantime, the hosts brought Speaker Joe Cryan up onto the stage with the folk band to take a bow. Just as they were stepping over the microphone cords and getting ready to launch into the Irish songs, the bar door swung open and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy walked in, prompting Pascrell to make a special introduction.

It almost looked staged, as if a staffer had sent Healy a text message. Healy's a good Irish tenor with a rich, well-modulated voice.

But the mayor’s stride-in would astoundingly prove a premature entrance to the main event, for on this afternoon, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Union City) went to the front of the room.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, right, with Sens. Bob Menendez, Frank Lautenberg and Barack Obama in 2006: Getty Images Photo
DENVER - The affable salesman from the Midwest landed on the outskirts of town here with a bright smile and anecdote-laden speaking style that even the most bleary-eyed early morning Democrats responded to through the haze.

If the junior senator from his home state is the glamorous superstar, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) can claim the mantle of progressive, happy warrior work horse, and he kicked off his breakfast address to the New Jersey delegation today by noting how much he liked the deli cuisine that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Ill.) introduced him to when Menendez hosted Durbin one day in Hoboken.

He would get a standing ovation here, this politician who looks like an actor who would insist on playing Willie Loman as the guy who plays out a happy ending, in what amounted to a nearly perfect set-up when Gov. Jon Corzine prepped the crowd for his onetime Senate colleague.

"If you want to know how we get through healthcare, it’s going to be through the leadership of Dick Durbin," Corzine said of Durbin. "If you want to know how we’re going to change our foreign policy, it’s going to be through the leadership of the majority whip."

Obama calls Durbin his mentor and the older legislator responds publicly in the role of witness to what he sells as American excellence. Tonight he will introduce his friend and the Democrats’ presidential nominee at Invesco Field.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Sayreville) and his wife, Debbie.: Politicker photo 

DENVER - The crowd crams into the Spotted Dog for Assemblyman John Wisniewski’s (D-Sayreville) convention watch party, which includes three other recognizable elected officials packed cheek by jowl into this low-ceilinged underground Inverness Hotel hangout: Assemblyman Gordon Johnson of Bergen and West New York Mayor Sal Vega and Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs.

Wisniewski’s been attending conventions going all the way back to 1976, when his father served as a member of the New Jersey delegation. Now he has his own daughters here and they’ve already been on the floor of the Pepsi Center.

"It’s a relaxing atmosphere down here, in a way even better than getting on and off the bus to go out there to the Pepsi Center," says Wisniewski, chair of the state Assembly Transportation Committee.

"At least I know New Jersey’s not the only place with gridlock," he says.

Edward M. Kennedy after defeating Jimmy Carter in the New York and Connecticut Democratic presidential primaries in March 1980: Getty Images Photo
DENVER -- Essex County Freeholder Pat Sebold supported Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination against Jimmy Carter in 1980 because she didn’t think Carter could beat Ronald Reagan.

She was right.

28 years later, Sebold supported Hillary Clinton. But she doesn’t have the same fears about Barack Obama as she did about Jimmy Carter.

“It’s a new era. One doesn’t have to do with the other. Times change,” she said. “Barack Obama is not going to lose.”

DENVER - The perceived indignity of standing in a crush of bodies behind the Island of Guam in that gaping blue glow of the Pepsi Center, coupled with the ongoing grind of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) loss, didn’t do much to boost the spirits of the delegation, as coming in here they hung their last hopes on a podium appearance by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Union City).

"No comment," state Party chairman Joseph Cryan said when poked about Menendez’s chances of speaking.

When it finally didn’t happen, the bulk of Garden State Democrats looked again for sustenance in Senator Clinton, who won by nearly ten points in New Jersey, whose presence on stage could keep the painful tensions of every silently suffering delegate alive for a few more hours - building to some end that was as yet unknown.

And yet when she spoke on Tuesday, Clinton put a larger political conflict in very stark terms, attempting to uplift to battle stations a mood that could easily go straight to a meltdown with the wrong tone.

DENVER -- If there's any controversy involved with today's roll call vote, New Jersey will not be a part of it.

Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan made a motion this morning to endorse Barack Obama by universal acclimation. It passed, without any voices raised in opposition.

Cryan said that after listening to Hillary Clinton’s speech last night “I really think it would be mistake if the New Jersey delegation had a roll call,” he said before putting it up for a vote. “If there was some way, I ask that we by acclamation nominate Barack Obama and dispense with the roll call.”

The delegation at breakfast.: Politicker photo

DENVER - With blue collar foreign policy expert Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) on-deck tonight, Democrats promise that the family values phase of the convention will at last come to an end.

"Absolutely," Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) said when asked if his party is now prepared to take the fight to the Republicans and their eight-year record in office.

Possessing a 90% Labor rating compared to 16% for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), according to union pump-up speakers at this morning's delegation breakfast at the Inverness, Biden is supposed to fulfill the lunch bucket running mate role of resident tough guy.

For some Democrats, the transition to more outward-directed energy will come as a welcome respite from the internal Obama-Clinton angst that to date has bedeviled the delegation.

Gov. Jon Corzine with Bill and Hillary Clinton at an Invesco Field party: Politicker PhotoDENVER - Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) speech was over, but the night wasn't done.

Invesco Field crowded the horizon like a set-piece out of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and State party Chairman Joe Cryan and West New York Mayor Sal Vega trudged under the crisscrossing Denver highways, leading a scattered contingent of the New Jersey delegation.

Inside they were greeted by the familiar strains of Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer," and when the rest of the haggard-looking delegation finally arrived, either by foot or bus from the nearby Pepsi Center, they found a stage overcrowded with Gov. Jon Corzine, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, and New York Gov. David Patterson.

Joining the governors on stage were none other than the Clintons.