Economy, N.J. budget top issues in governor's race

New Jersey gubernatorial candidates can forget about gimmicks and sound bites when talking about the economy and state budget, the biggest issues in the 2009 race.

Even though both parties have well-known candidates - including Democratic Gov. Corzine and Republican Christopher Christie, the former U.S. attorney - political analysts say times are too tough for name recognition and television ads to win the day by themselves.

They say voters will be paying close attention to candidates' solutions for the state's economic problems.

"Things have gotten so bad, people don't want to hear the platitudes anymore," Rider University political scientist Ben Dworkin said. "They want specifics. Candidates can't just finagle their way around this with rhetoric."

Christie, who faces a crowded primary field, will have to establish that he can handle economic issues; for now, he is best-known as a corruption-fighting prosecutor.

"A lot of what he'll have to do is introduce himself to voters and demonstrate he's up to the task," said Joseph Marbach, a Seton Hall University political scientist.

Corzine is a former Wall Street executive, but his task is to build a case that he has done a good job guiding the state through a grim economy.

While he and Christie have slightly different challenges, both face the same cranky electorate.

"No one's in a good mood," said State Sen. Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester). "You think about all the people losing their jobs. Friends are gone from work, and anyone left is hanging by a thread."

"There's no knight riding in on a white horse here," said Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University's Polling Institute. "The economy is just too bad. There's no one who has the kind of message that is going to spark interest in this election, so the candidates really need to rely on their bases to get that vote."

All this points to a contest that could be far more complex for candidates than any other New Jersey governor's race in recent years.

Corzine's opponents will dissect every one of his moves on the budget and economy.

Democrats, meanwhile, won't let Republicans get away with lobbing the familiar lines about spending and tax cuts, analysts say.

Both Democrats and Republicans say they are looking forward to the debate - for different reasons, of course.

"Attention to the budget is welcome at any time, but certainly welcome in the campaign because this governor has changed the entire culture of how the budget is adopted," said Democratic Party chairman Joseph Cryan, a Union County assemblyman.

Cryan cited the elimination of political grants known as "Christmas-tree items" and one-shot spending reductions and revenue boosts.

Republicans begged to differ.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas H. Kean Jr., (R., Union) said that during the Corzine years, spending and taxes had increased with borrowing, a burden to be shouldered by future generations.

"People in New Jersey aren't feeling New Jersey is any more affordable," Kean said. "In fact, it is less affordable."

Republicans will try to focus that angst on Corzine, who "will be doing more budget cutting than ribbon cutting this spring," Marbach said. "That will give the Republicans a chance to hammer him and his administration."

But Corzine will have the opportunity to showcase his budget trims and stimulus packages, which provided help to people struggling with mortgages, fuel costs and hunger, Democrats said.

Already there are comparisons to the final months of the 2008 presidential election, when Republican Sen. John McCain suffered with the economy against Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

"The national race was more focused on how we as a nation lead ourselves out of a recession," said Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande (R., Monmouth). The question in the governor's race and races for all 80 Assembly seats, she said, will be: "How does the State of New Jersey get out of the pockets of our taxpayers?"

This month, Corzine started spreading the pain, calling for more than $800 million in state budget cuts, with more to come. Republicans said he hadn't gone far enough.

The cuts range from a call for a wage freeze to a halt in renovations at an insect laboratory. The administration has even circled cuts at small agencies such as the Holocaust Commission and Italian-American Heritage Commission. Trims in programs such as needle exchanges for drug addicts and layoffs of doctors at psychiatric hospitals are in the works.

Among other things, Republicans are calling for a 10 percent wage cut for legislators, cutbacks in court-ordered school funding, and a ban on buying gas guzzlers for the state fleet.

These exchanges are expected to continue until voters figure out whom they trust to fix the state's economy.