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October 4, 2002 9:00 a.m. The Fix Is In And Doug Forrester just has to deal with it.

he last time Democrats got a state supreme court to overturn an election-law deadline they did not wish to obey, the U.S. Supreme Court swatted the state court down. But the Supreme Court may not get involved in New Jersey as it did in Florida. Top Republicans in Washington are worried that while Republican Senate candidate Doug Forrester waits for a decision, he may suffer some political damage.

Forrester's campaign has been designed, wisely, to make the case that Torricelli had to go and that he was an acceptable alternative to him. The Democratic counterattack has been that Forrester had nothing more to offer New Jersey than that he is "not Bob Torricelli." Demanding a right to run against Torricelli, rather than some other Democrat, would tend to validate that critique. The Democrats, from Tom Daschle down, are already saying that Forrester and his party are afraid of a fair fight and want to deprive the voters of a choice. It's a deeply unfair charge, since it's the Democrats who were afraid of a fight under the state law that existed prior to this week. Fair or not, however, Forrester may end up looking whiny and fearful if he presses on in court.

It's not impossible for him to beat Lautenberg. Forrester should challenge him to two debates a week for the rest of the campaign; judging from his initial campaign statements, Lautenberg's not up to it. How many people really believe that Lautenberg is going to serve out a six-year term? The alternatives before New Jersey voters aren't really Forrester and Lautenberg. It's Forrester and Senator X.

While Forrester can't run against Torricelli, he can run against Torricelli-ism. His tack should be that he is running for Senate and is happy to run against whomever the Democrats throw at him. But he can, at the same time, make the case that the Democratic machine is pulling a fast one and that voters should reject its manipulations. He should work too see that the Lautenberg shuffle inspires a political backlash, that is, rather than a legal reversal.

BUBBLE BURST
Sealed Air Corp., the maker of bubble-wrap packaging, is in trouble because of asbestos litigation. No, it didn't ever make products with asbestos. Its alleged sin was to have bought a subsidiary of W. R. Grace & Co. in 1998. Three years later, asbestos litigation drove Grace into bankruptcy. Now a federal judge has ruled, essentially, that Sealed Air should have foreseen this eventuality in 1998 and that it was therefore involved in a "fraudulent conveyance" — e.g., that Grace and Sealed Air were just trying to keep the subsidiary away from the asbestos claimants. Sealed Air's stock is down substantially as a result of the litigation, and it could go bankrupt, too. In short: The lawyers caused the accident, and now they're collecting the damages.

NOT FAR FROM THE TREE
On PBS the other day, Aaron Sorkin talked about some of the D.C. friends who give him story ideas for The West Wing. We caught some quotes in the Hotline: "For three and a half years, you collect. . . a dozen or so people that help you out with an anecdote or story, set you out in the right direction on China or Africa and they're all terrific people and what they have in common is that they're very funny. So you enjoy sending e-mails back and forth. The problem is you find that it's two in the afternoon and I find that all I've done is e-mail Johnny Apple." Yup, and it shows.