and interested enough to have seen many. Even Martha Coakley had nothing on Corzine in terms of dreadfulness of the campaign. Christie could not have won had Corzine opted not to run again with his extremely low approval - some his fault and some because it was a tough time for anyone in power after the crash.
I lived in Morris County then -- and the goal of the Democratic party there is to win a few positions in the few "urban" and to keep the Republican margin down for state wide positions. Early on at the first meeting in my town, the representative for the state told us that the strategy would be primarily to attack Christie - not to defend Corzine or define the differences. The idea - statewide the Democrats have a better GOTV and in a very negative ugly race, the percent voting would be low -- therefore advantage Corzine.
I have to admit that I did less canvassing and phonebanking than in any recent election. Why? We were speaking JUST to Democrats or, in a few cases, independents. I was stunned by the number of really good people who I talked to who said that voting for Corzine again was just too much to ask. I can tell you it was the worst experience I ever had - and it wasn't because he was losing - I canvassed in Morris County for George McGovern in 1972 and have lots of good memories of doing so. It is very hard to advocate for someone you really can not counter the negatives on and believe what you are saying.
There were others who bought the Republican talk that he a) increased the deficit and b) raised taxes. Both true - however what was not said was that revenue to the state fell drastically. (NJ was hurt more than most states by the WS collapse - think of where the WS people live and the taxes NJ gets on their salaries and bonuses - not to mention consider that people selling stocks generated capital losses, not the huge capital gains. These were the people who kept me volunteering because that charge was unfair.
The sad thing is that Corzine had done about as good a job as possible (from a liberal POV) He cut the budget about 18%, while insuring that each school got at least the amount that they got the year before and he that there were no cuts to SCHIP, which provides health insurance to kids. I heard him speak to a Democratic county wide audience where he was asked why he had eliminated the homestead rebate for people making over $75,000. His answer was very thoughtful - there was no way to keep education and health care whole without additional taxes. That loss of rebate and the imposition of the "millionaire's tax" was needed. I wondered then if Corzine, showing the same honesty and making it about what are our values, in the election might have pulled it out. My own experience was the Democrats who were disaffected because of the economic issues were sometimes persuadable if given the facts. However, if the candidate, the campaign and its ads, do not address that, it is not really possible for those of us canvassing to succeed in addressing that issue. Not to mention, I could only address it when it was brought up - and it is very likely that many who cared did not do so. (In fact, per the people leading the volunteer effort, I was off script! One advantage of being a then 59 year old volunteer is that the 20 something campaign staff - with few volunteers was happy just to be able to report higher numbers of contacts made)
Instead, the overall nastiness - and refusal of both sides to really speak on the issues pervaded. Not speaking on the issues hurts the Democrats in NJ and helps the Republicans because when it comes down to issues, we win. That nastiness pushed even the NYT to cover an ad that was on Christie's abuse of power and sense of entitlement as being about calling Christie fat. (Background - Christie had hit someone going the wrong way on a street in the Newark area - and used his credentials as federal prosecutor not to get a ticket - that was in the ad and had they NOT gone for the "Christie pushes his weight around" sophomoric joke, this could have been a powerful ad. Instead, all the commentary was on how high school this was and that it really was not needed that they used a camera that emphasized Christie's girth while getting out of a car. Unfortunately, everyone already knew Christie was fat -- and the abuse of power was somehow ignored.)
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