New Jersey braces for heated election season in Senate, House campaigns

With six weeks until Election Day on Nov. 5, the races for U.S. senator from New Jersey and for representative of the 12th Congressional District have entered full swing. Both contests feature incumbent Democrats trying to hold onto their seats in Congress.

Millionaire businessman Doug Forrester is challenging Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli in what has become one of the most hotly contested Senate races in the country, one that Democrats are worried may cost them control of the Senate.

In a less competitive race, two-term Democratic Congressman Rush Holt, who has close ties to the University community, is trying to defeat Rev. Buster Soaries, who served as the secretary of state under former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

If both races are competitive on Election Day, University student voters could make a significant difference, particularly in the House race in a district that has a history of razor-thin margins of victory. In the last election, Holt won by a 651-vote margin after several recounts.

Some students have changed their registration to their school addresses to participate in past elections. New Jersey is a moderate state and so is Mercer County, home to the Princeton. The largest block of registered voters is not affiliated with a party.

"Basically there is a general consensus that state-wide Democrats are favored," said Ingrid Reed, a pollster at Rutgers University.

University College Democrats, College Republicans and Whig-Clio are organizing a town hall style debate between Holt and Soaries that is tentatively planned for Oct. 5 in Richardson Audit-orium.

University College Democrats and College Republicans also plan to hold get-out-the-vote drives on Election Day and said they hope to have many students cast ballots. USG also plans to help register voters. Between 300 and 400 students are registered in the Princeton area, said Darious Nowrouzi '04, the president of University College Democrats.

N.J. Senate Race

With the race garnering national media attention and polls showing a statistical tie, both parties sent two of their highest profile figures to the state Monday.

President Bush stumped for Forrester at the Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton and helped to raise funds for the Republican challenger. The president's stop in New Jersey is part of a nationwide attempt to boost GOP efforts to control Congress.

Bush said Forrester was "a man who has got his priorities straight, a man who will be a breath of fresh air for New Jersey in the United States Senate."

But New Jerseyans have not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate in many years.

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In the last election voters replaced several Republican incumbents in the state legislature with Democratic challengers. They also returned the governorship to the Democrats on the heels of Jim McGreevey.

In East Brunswick, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle raised funds for Torricelli — a member of Congress since 1982 — and warned that any waning support for the senator could cost Democrats their one-seat advantage in Congress.

Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said earlier this week that the party viewed the race as one of the most competitive in the country.

The Eagleton Institute-Star-Ledger poll shows that among potential and likely New Jersey voters the race is a dead heat. However, the same poll showed that Forrester — who graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and was later mayor of nearby West Windsor, where he has lived for 26 years — did not have the same amount of name recognition as the incumbent Democrat.

Many have said Torricelli's difficulty in the race against a relatively unknown newcomer to statewide politics is his own doing. In July, the Senate Ethics Committee reprimanded Torricelli for his actions involving former campaign donor David Chang.

Accusations surfaced that Torricelli received thousands of dollars in support and unreported gifts in his 1996 successful campaign. After the Justice Dept. dropped its inquiry and referred the case to the Senate, many expected the accusations to dissipate and Torricelli to have a trouble-free Senate run.

But the allegations of misconduct continue to trail him, and the election remains focused on ethics.

Ken Snyder, Torricelli's campaign manager, said that his candidate has already apologized and that his actions do not "disqualify him from being a great U.S. Senator.

"[Forrester] has nothing else to say," Snyder said. "He hangs on to the ethics issue like a life raft because that's all he has from drowning in a sea of issues."

In response to questions that the Forrester campaign was focusing solely on Torricelli's misconduct, Tom Rubino, the press spokesman for Forrester's campaign, said that his conduct was critical to the race.

"We're talking about issues as well," Rubino said. "Many of the issues are wrapped up into Torricelli's ethics. The campaign has been saying that his public conduct is an issue and a valid issue."

Torricelli is making a "valiant effort" to make the race about Forrester's conservatism and that "Forrester will become a dupe of the national party," said David Rebovich, a frequent commentator on N.J. politics and director of the Rider Institute for New Jersey Politics.

To turn the contest into a race on the issues, Torricelli has leveled claims that Forrester has extreme conservative positions on social issues like gun control and abortion. These are all issues where the N.J. electorate has traditionally been in the center.

Torricelli's campaign has not centered on homeland security or terrorism because it would be a mistake to "buck" the president, Rebovich said.

However, Rubino said homeland security and terrorism was important to N.J. voters.

"The number one issue is national security, and Bob Torricelli has one of the worst records in the Senate on security," he said.

For example, Rubino pointed to Torricelli's attempt to remove the People's Mujahadeen of Iran, a terrorist group with ties to Saddam Hussein, from a U.S. watchlist of terrorist groups.

"Until he was called on it in the last debate he was supporting it and then the next day he flip flopped," he said.

Torricelli's campaign is optimistic it will be able to fend off Forrester's challenge and return Torricelli to Washington for a second term.

"N.J. senate races are always close," Snyder said. "We will prevail in this campaign for a simple reason [Torricelli] is a tough and relentless fighter for New Jersey, and he is in step with voters. Forrester has made $50 million, and he is out of touch with the voters."

If victorious, Forrester would make both N.J. senators wealthy businessmen who largely self-financed their campaigns. N.J. Democratic Senator Jon Corzine spent about $60 million of his own money to defeat former Congressman Bob Franks in the 2000 election.

The contest is the second most expensive Senate race in the country and the candidates have raised about $17 million combined. Torricelli has a three-to-two funding advantage, but Forrester, who is the founder of BeneCard Services Inc, a prescription drug company, has raised all but about $100 thousand of his $6 million war chest.

The Forrester fundraiser Bush hosted Monday drew more than 3,000 people and raised $1.5 million, Rubino said. He added that Forrester will continue to hold fundraisers and has not decided how much of his own money he will spend.

Money may be crucial in the final weeks as the two candidates flood the expensive and difficult to maneuver television market. New Jersey politics is unique in that candidates have to pay for airtime in two of the most expensive markets in the nation: Philadelphia and New York City.

Snyder said that though the race had already turned negative with some of the recent Forrester commercials, he did not anticipate his campaign running similar advertisements in coming weeks.

"I don't think it will or should get to whether Doug Forrester is filthy rich per se," Snyder said.

"The question is he got filthy rich by making others pay more for prescription drugs and pocketing the profits. The fact that he is self-funded is that he can't be part of the solution to prescription drug crisis," he said.

Rebovich suggested, however, that it might be to Torricelli's benefit to turn negative in the final weeks because negative advertising can sometimes suppress unaffiliated voters, a block that is currently breaking for Forrester by about 15 percent.

"My own sense is that Torricelli is very willing to make it as muddy and dirty as he can," he said.

However, Rebovich cautioned that the television advertisements should not get too dirty.

"Torricelli can't afford to really morph into a Machiavellian vicious character," Rebovich said. "They'd really be fed up with him with negative campaigns."

12th District House Race

In the 12th Congressional District, Holt, a two-term Representative, is trying to defend his seat in the House in a newly redrawn district.

His opponent, Soaries, is an African-American pastor who leads a 6,000-person congregation in the district.

About a quarter of voters will not have seen Holt's name on a ballot because they belonged to a different district in the last election. Despite the new constituency, Reed, the Rutgers pollster, said Holt appears to be leading Soaries.

"More than six weeks out it is highly likely that Holt is ahead because Soaries hasn't had enough time because he has been doing mailings and door-to-door retail campaigning," she said. "He's not well known enough to say that the race is close."

For Holt — who was assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab — the campaign has a slightly different feel than his last race against former Congressman Dick Zimmer.

"For the first time I can actually run as an incumbent," Holt said in an interview. "Last time, Dick Zimmer claimed to be more of an incumbent."

Holt said that during his four years in Congress, he was able to make personal connections with his constituents.

"The race has a different feel," he said. "Others may challenge me, but the burden is on them."

The 12th district has a history of voting largely on the issues, Rebovich said.

"Holt has been very shrewd. Kind of a centrist, non-partisan Democrat in a district that leans Republican and doesn't like its politicians to be ideological," he added.

Though the Soaries campaign has not had the same amount of fundraising success as the Holt campaign — Holt has a four to one advantage — it still believes it will defeat Holt, said Brett Hall, the Soaries campaign manager.

"This is basically do you want to go with an incumbent who has a record of supporting a liberal-left agenda or do you want to go with someone who is not a partisan voter," he said.

Holt cautioned that he did not view this campaign as less difficult than past campaigns.

"I'm not sure I'd say less competitive. This will always be a competitive district because the people in the district are very independent," he said. "You don't find many people who vote the party line in either party."

Hall said that the Soaries campaign would benefit from a shift within the New Jersey Republican Party and from the war on terrorism.

"Right now we're going through a period that we haven't seen in New Jersey since the early 1990s," he said.

"That is a Republican base that is invigorated with independents shifting over to the Republicans due to a number of factors," he added. "The number one factor is the popularity of the president to make this shift of the national focus to the war on terror and to particularly to problems with Iraq and Saddam Hussein."

With less name-recognition than Holt, the Soaries campaign has been focused on solidifying a base of support.

"Our strategy is we have made no secret of it to play of our candidate's strength in Trenton in the African-American community," Hall said.

Rebovich, however, said that Soaries may have problems carrying Republican voters.

"Soaries may have some problems that the perception among Republicans that he is moderate," he said. "Soaries hasn't really defined himself as a Republican."

However, Hall said it was beneficial to Soaries that he was not a stereotypical Republican.

"He has been a community organizer and has a fascinating background — a man of accomplishment and person of action," he said.

Though his race may help Soaries, Rebovich said he was uncertain it would carry him to victory.

"I worry that Soaries may pay a price because he is an African-American in Republican circles," he said.

Holt said that though the district is geographically different, it was always diverse.

"In character, the district is still very much the same . . . where the kitchen issues are" education, health care and the environment, he said.

Holt said many voters are nearing retirement and are worried about their social security savings in a bad economy.

"[It's] not something that Princeton students think about a lot, though they probably should," he said.

Holt's number one base of financial support is Princeton University employees. As a group, they have provided Holt with nearly $35,000.

"From the time I first ran and lost, in 1996 and then in 1998, 2000, I have had a lot of support from the Princeton community, I'd like to think in large part that is because people trust me and know me and want me as a representative," Holt said. "One should be pleased if the people who know him best support him."