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 In
the final days before New Jersey voters pick a new governor, the
polls put Democrat Jim McGreevey significantly ahead in the race.
All of the pollsters who released results this past weekend widened
McGreevey's lead over former Jersey City mayor Bret Schundler to
more than 10 points.
That's unfortunate.
New Jersey can't afford Jim McGreevey. Under the reign of McGreevey,
taxes inevitably will rise, the public schools will continue to
wallow in mediocrity, and the liberal special interests will rule
the state. But McGreevey has been able to convince the electorate
that he is the less-controversial candidate — something New
Jersey has always preferred.
The alternative
is a daring conservative in Schundler, the maverick Republican candidate.
His proposals are so far out of the political-insider box that even
the Republicans in the state are a bit wary of him. The three independent
polls released on the final weekend before the election gave McGreevey
a lead of anywhere from 12 points to 22 points. And part of Schundler's
trouble, according to the pollsters, is his lack of support from
Republicans.
The real problem,
though, is Schundler's inability to capture the middle ground —
the swelling population of moderate voters who have historically
cozied up to bland candidates. Which means the same shake-'em-up
qualities that make Schundler the better candidate are also the
qualities that are spooking the electorate.
A former bond
trader on Wall Street, Schundler has the financial know-how to operate
the state without any tax hikes. He's said so, but New Jersey doesn't
believe him. Voters here can't fathom that anyone would actually
live up to such a pledge. But Schundler did it — as mayor of
Jersey City, a place that was ransacked by decades of patronage-laden
Democratic rule. Schundler turned the blighted city into a downtown
Manhattan alternative, with a number of big companies relocating
to the West Bank of the Hudson River.
Taxes aside,
there is also a stark difference between the candidates on the issue
of public education. The state is about to bury itself under billions
of dollars in debt to build new schools. This is blindly being sold
to the public as a salve to the overcrowding problem. McGreevey
supports a plan to saddle the future of New Jersey with this debt,
and would like to throw even more money at the crumbling public-school
system.
Schundler's
plan would save the state billions by offering parents incentives
to send their kids to private schools. For some reason, the teachers
union is railing against Schundler's brilliant idea, even though
the union is also inevitably first to complain about overcrowding.
But anything that goes against the government's failing educational
monopoly goes against the doctrinaire thinking of the teachers union.
And since McGreevey is a functionary of the union, he has been told
to not like Schundler's idea either.
Schundler's
"threat" to the traditional public-education system has
been played up by the teachers union in costly ads on the television
networks. The ads talk of "strengthening" the public schools,
and about how McGreevey is the man for that. The polls, which show
voters are more in line with McGreevey's educational platform, would
seem to indicate that voters are buying into this shady rhetoric.
A poll released
this past weekend by the Star-Ledger newspaper and the Eagleton
school at Rutgers University showed McGreevey expanding his lead
from 12 points to 16 points. The Gannett New Jersey newspapers gave
him a 22-point lead. Even for Bret "the comeback kid"
Schundler, this is a huge deficit to conquer. But if anyone can
do it, it's Schundler.
Turnout will
be the key for Schundler. If McGreevey's people feel confident,
they may not go out of their way in the last leg of the race. Any
chance of success rests with Schundler's ability to get out the
vote.
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