June 7, 2005 It's time for GOP voters to pick one man
By Deborah Howlett
STAR LEDGER
Schundler, Forrester and rest of field try to corral every would-be supporter into the booth
After all the rhetoric and all the TV ads, the neck-and-neck race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination is likely to hinge on voter turnout in today's primary election.
Bret Schundler is working to mobilize his "army" of loyalists. Doug Forrester hopes to motivate as many rank-and-file Republicans as possible. Whichever has the most success in bringing out those voters is almost certain to win the GOP nomination and square off in November against U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine.
Even though Corzine faces only token opposition on the Democratic side, he began airing a series of biographical and informational TV ads over the weekend in an effort to inoculate his campaign from the final flurry of advertising and media by the Republicans.
Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. statewide. Aside from the partisan contests for governor, voters will choose their parties' nominees for the General Assembly and various county and municipal offices.
But the biggest question is at the top of the ticket, where Forrester and Schundler have been in a statistical dead heat in opinion polls since January.
Both sounded confident about their chances during a final day of dawn-to-dusk rallies and speeches.
Schundler traversed the state -- starting in Atlantic City and ending in his hometown Jersey City -- in a rented recreational vehicle.
A small group of eight or nine campaign volunteers remained behind at headquarters to call hard- core supporters and urge them to vote. The campaign, which had an infusion of $324,000 in public finance cash last week, also had volunteers hanging literature on the doors of likely voters.
"Our base is about to go ballistic," Schundler communications director Bill Pascoe said. "Doug peaked several days ago, and our army is about to go on the march."
Forrester bookended his day with "meet and greets" of commuters at the Waterway Ferry Terminal in the morning and the Metropark transit station in the evening.
The campaign set up seven call centers around the state, and scores of volunteers have placed more than 100,000 calls since this weekend. Some 500 volunteers also knocked on 80,000 doors over the weekend, the campaign said.
"It's sunny and we're excited," campaign spokeswoman Sherry Sylvester said. "The polls have tightened up a bit, but that's good for us. We don't want complacency. We want energized voters who realize what is on the line."
All that would be left for the candidates today after casting their own ballots in the morning would be to sit and wait for the counting to begin.
About a third of the state's 854,000 registered Republicans were expected to cast ballots. In recent history, a contested Republican gubernatorial primary has never drawn more than 400,000 voters. The 2001 primary election, which Schundler won, drew the fewest Republican voters -- 337,000 -- of any since 1971, according to the state Division of Elections.
Aside from Forrester and Schundler, the five back-of-the-Republican-pack campaigns were also trying to increase the turnout, each believing it will help him look respectable, if not win.
"Voters don't decide until the last few days," said Todd Caliguire, who would like to push the turnout past 400,000 in order to tap disenchanted Republicans. "The only thing that's for sure is that it's pretty fluid out there."
One sign of the fluidity was the Quinnipiac University poll.
A new survey yesterday showed the race as a virtual dead heat between the two front-runners, with 35 percent of Republican voters saying they were leaning toward Forrester, a businessman, while 33 percent said they were leaning toward Schundler, a former Jersey City mayor. None of the other five candidates broke 10 percent in the survey, which has a margin of error of 5.4 percent.
Last week, the Quinnipiac poll showed Forrester over Schundler, 40 percent to 29 percent.
Because the shifts in numbers for each candidate fell within the margin of error, Clay Richards, assistant director of the poll, said the outcome of the election remained entirely unpredictable.
"The bottom line is, who knows what happens?" he said.
