Linda Greenstein

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- To hear Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce tell it, Legislative District 14 will be a major battleground in next year’s assembly races.

That’s where State Sen. Bill Baroni (R-Hamilton) heads a district with two Democrats lower down in the Assembly, eight year veteran Linda Greenstein (D-Plainsboro) and the newly elected Wayne DeAngelo (D-Hamilton).

DeAngelo, beause he’s been in office less than a year, is the obvious target. But DeCroce, who wasn’t specific about who he’d like to recruit to run, said he’s gunning for Greenstein as well.

“Linda’s a nice lady, but I think her voting record leaves something to be desired, frankly, and I think it’s time for a change,” he said. “Obviously Linda would be the tougher one, being a lady too and a nice person. It’s not easy, but you have to show there’s a difference between the candidates and the incumbent, and the issues are going to be on our side.”

Gov. Jon Corzine at the convention.: Politicker photo 

DENVER - The clash of speaking styles could not have been more dramatic.

There was U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), consigning Karl Rove to the most fiery furnaces of Dante’s Inferno, and putting extra incisors in the teeth of the party attack dog on the tail end of a Thursday breakfast in which half the crowd had appeared asleep before Pascrell arrived and roused them.

Then came Gov. Jon Corzine, and one could almost imagine the house lights again going way down as he began his morning remarks.

On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, the governor went to that oratorical touchstone to refer back to something even earlier, which King had also invoked in his 1963 speech: the words "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence.

"We now have an opportunity as a nation and as a human race to make that real," Corzine told the crowd. "We will be as hard as Joe Biden’s mother told him to be, but we shouldn’t lose track of the fact that there is a vision for a better world."

It was a quintessential Corzine statement, delivered in the most self-effacing Midwestern tones. Every time he slid a Jersey edge into his rhetoric, as when he roared moments later that Democrats are in the hardest fight of their lives and have one hell of a chance, he still carried the thought to a idealistic conclusion.

Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein and Gov. Jon Corzine during the 2007 campaign.: Politicker photo
DENVER -- Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein (D-Plainsboro) made the calculations and passed up a run for state Senate against Bill Baroni (R-Hamilton) in District 14 last year. But with all the buzz surrounding Baroni’s future if John McCain is elected president, there may be a short cut to the Senate for Greenstein.

Baroni, who’s leading the McCain campaign in New Jersey, would likely be a leading candidate for U.S. Attorney under the McCain Administration (providing current U.S. Attorney Chris Christie leaves the post). That would allow Greenstein, a popular incumbent, a legitimate shot at the higher chamber in a special election.

“I would like to move up to the Senate. Obviously if the people of my district would like me to,” she said.

New Jersey delegates cheer Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver Monday night: Scott Weingart Photo
DENVER - A good orator indulges in autobiography to the extent that he or she can connect to a common story, with the danger never far that the wrong points of emphasis can entrap the speaker in self congratulations.

Michelle Obama’s maternal confessional and intimate revelatory family detail treaded too close to the edges of egotism for only a handful of the New Jersey delegation, with most Democrats hailing the effort as a dead-on bull’s-eye.

They spilled into the spacious Celtic Tavern on Blake Street after the convention on Monday night, and the liquor flowed as U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) celebrated the presidential candidate’s wife as a people’s champion.

"Her speech reached out and spoke to the common story," said Lautenberg. "It reminded me very much of my own story, growing up in Paterson, working hard, having a father who died young. She told a story that many of us can relate to."

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander. 

The campaign was about to change.

On Oct, 9, 2007, an announcement came down from Chicago regarding New Jersey operations. 

Mark Alexander, a Seton Hall University law professor and Obama’s senior policy advisor, would be the campaign’s official state director.

"I am grateful that he is going to carry the fight forward to and through the Feb. 5 contests," Obama said of Alexander. "He is a valued and trusted advisor, and at the same time has deep ties in his home of New Jersey that will be invaluable to our efforts. 

"I am proud of the policy work we have done on this campaign and through Mark’s leadership we have built a team of key advisors from the ground up that will continue to offer new and innovative approaches to the challenges this country faces," added the presidential candidate.

A personal friend of Barack and Michelle Obama’s going back a dozen years, Alexander as a child worked on the 1974 Washington, D.C. mayoral campaign of his father, Clifford Alexander, former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission. Later, he ran Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign and served as counsel to Cory Booker.

As he stood with futility against a bill he believes would ravage his 39th GOP Assemblyman Vince PolistinaLegislative District, Assemblyman John Rooney took little joy in noting a personal milestone.

For while 2008 marks the Bergen County Republican’s 25th anniversary as an assemblyman, it is also the low point of his legislative career.

"My towns got destroyed last night," said Rooney, a day after the majority Democrats passed a $32.9 billion budget, which includes 25% cuts in aid to all of the 28 municipalities in Rooney’s district, and eliminations of property tax rebates for residents in the $150,000 to $250,000 income range.

Monday also brought the Democrats’ successful if ignominious - by Rooney’s reckoning - passage of a bill requiring the construction of affordable housing in affluent towns.

Nor far removed from a grueling campaign season last year in which U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg went to their aid, Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein (D-Mercer) and Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo (D-Mercer) this week endorsed Lautenberg for re-election.

"He’s always supported me, but in this past election his support was especially helpful," said Greenstein.

During her re-election bid, the chair of the judiciary committee faced an advertising campaign by a hard-right group that depicted Greenstein as an enemy of traditional marriage.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg addresses the crowd as Gov. Jon Corzine looks on.

TRENTON -- Burnishing his blue collar roots and seniority in Washington, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg today launched his re-election bid at the Trenton Marriott, promising to lead the fight for New Jersey's working families.

"I will build on my work of the last few years, to stand strong against those who attack our values that short change our state and to deliver the results that improve people's lives," said Lautenberg, who was first elected to the Senate in 1982.

Women state legislators supporting Barack Obama for President stood together at Democratic State Committee headquarters in Trenton on Monday to put a collective exclamation point on their endorsement of the Illinois senator.

Senators Shirley Turner and Loretta Weinberg; and Assemblywomen Linda Greenstein, Elease Evans, Cleopatra Tucker and L. Grace Spencer said Obama is the candidate best equipped to deliver change.

Pre-Iowa, they thought it was going to be a cakewalk, but supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton insist that initial jolt of dread between Iowa and New Hampshire has turned into excitement, while the supporters of Sen. Barack Obama say they are excited - and on guard for truth-twisting.

Obama’s victory in South Carolina last night - his second in the process so far - made the Clinton machine in New Jersey change gears again as they get ready to try to roll over Obama’s grassroots operations on Feb. 5.

"Obviously, we got a late start because people were taking some things for granted," said Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes, who in the lead-up to Obama’s win gathered about 25 people at the Ewing Township Library on Saturday to help prepare them for phone-banking duties on behalf of the Clinton campaign.