Corzine can blame himself

By Gabriel Gardner

There seems to be a consensus developing in the media that this week's election results suggest a national GOP resurgence. This fails to recognize that the result in New Jersey was actually due to Gov. Corzine's shortcomings in office.

Although the New Jersey election may have coincided with a national shift away from the Democrats, it should be considered distinct from it.

New Jersey has seen its total debt triple in the past decade of Democratic rule. Corzine was elected governor in 2005 on the promise that he would resolve the state's financial crisis, including state debt in excess of $29.5 billion.

But despite his rhetoric, Corzine did nothing of the kind. He actually accomplished the opposite: The state Treasury's 2008 audit reported that the state debt had grown to nearly $45 billion, a 50 percent increase during Corzine's tenure.

Meanwhile, recent projections suggest a state budget deficit next year of $7 billion to $8 billion. To the voters of New Jersey, it seems simple enough that government spending should not continue to exceed revenues while the state debt is so massive.

Corzine has clearly struggled to understand this simple concept during his term. The governor supported a 2007 ballot question that would have allowed the state to borrow $450 million for stem-cell research over the next 10 years. Despite clear support for stem-cell research among the electorate, the proposal was voted down by 6 percentage points, illustrating an unwillingness to continue burying the state in debt.

It should be as clear to the media as it was to New Jersey voters on Tuesday that Republican Christopher J. Christie's victory is a result of Corzine's fiscal irresponsibility. The government's liberal spending and borrowing has simply become unacceptable to the voters, who are already burdened with a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate and annual property taxes in excess of $7,000 per household.

Rather than worrying about funding future stem-cell research and creating new social programs, the governor should have focused on what he was elected to do: lower property taxes, unemployment, and state debt.

While the governor was failing to focus on these issues, the state's problems have gotten far worse. As a result of his inaction, New Jersey continues to have the highest property taxes in the nation, rising state debt, and mounting unemployment.

All of this has little to do with President Obama or a national Republican resurgence. The president's approval rating in New Jersey was 68 percent last summer, when he first began campaigning for the governor. Meanwhile, Corzine's was 36 percent.

Furthermore, from the beginning of Obama's involvement to the days before the election, Corzine was able to diminish Christie's 10-percentage-point lead in the polls to a statistical tie. This repudiates the argument that the election outcome may have been a result of a national GOP resurgence. On the contrary, it suggests that Obama was actually a positive influence for Corzine.

There's a clear lesson here for the state's next leader: Do not spend or attempt to spend money that you do not have. By neglecting the concerns New Jersey voters elected him to address, Gov. Corzine determined his own fate.