Candidates worked festivals and GOP picnics around the state Sunday, gripping and grinning with likely Republican voters as they tried to squeeze every last ounce of campaigning out of the last weekend before the party's primary.
"It's hand-to-hand combat," said Dale Florio, chairman of the Somerset County Republican Party. "Primaries are won hand to hand. [The candidates] have got to meet likely Republican voters."
So the candidates traveled wide and far to reach those elusive voters. At the Wayne Day festival, ex-West Windsor Mayor Doug Forrester marched through the crowd, glad-handing voters and passing out campaign literature. He said Sunday's debate, which was at times raucous, clearly showed him as the winner.
"If people take a look, they'll come to the same conclusion," he said.
In Hillsborough, former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler attended the Somerset County Republican Party's annual picnic and said that he hoped voters weren't too turned off by the tenor of the televised debate.
"I didn't like that format," he said. "It almost invites the candidates to speak over each other." But he said Forrester's attacks on him have energized his base.
Another in the GOP field, Todd Caliguire of Ridgewood, a former Bergen County freeholder, said the candidates need to duke it out from time to time in a debate.
"Clearly there were times when everyone was talking," said Caliguire, also visiting Hillsborough. "I think it's important to mix it up."
Everyone had an opinion about whether the campaign had gotten too negative, with Forrester saying his ads merely pointed out the obvious - he has a better plan to reduce property taxes - and Schundler claiming that Forrester's attacks are turning off voters who are shifting their support away from Forrester.
"I think his negative attacks are going to help me," Schundler said.
But Forrester said that his plans were the best and his ads only back up his contention. Forrester said his plan will reduce property taxes by 30 percent.
"The property tax relief program is so darned good," Forrester said. "All the other plans are so doggone complicated."
But Schundler compared Forrester's plan to one developed by former Gov. Jim Florio and said it would require a massive increase in state spending. He said his plan, which would also control local spending, gets the job done better than Forrester's.
"Without controlling local spending, you don't get any property tax relief," he said.
Dale Florio said that candidates have to walk a fine line between presenting their views and offending voters. Florio's committee endorsed Schundler, saying it liked his property tax plan the best.
Caliguire said voters have a low tolerance for negative campaigning. He said if airlines ran ads the same way politicians did, no one would fly.
"I don't think people like candidates hitting each other over the head," he said.
Robert Saypol said the negative campaigning has soured him on the two front-runners, Forrester and Schundler.
Saypol stopped to shake Forrester's hand at the Wayne Day festival Sunday afternoon and joked about the telephone calls he's gotten from all the candidates. He even took a sticker for Forrester, whom he supported when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2002. He backed Schundler's 2001 bid for governor against Democrat James E. McGreevey. But this time, Saypol is backing Morris County Freeholder John Murphy.
"I'm upset Forrester went negative," he said. And he believes Schundler and Forrester both had their chances and blew it.
"They're both arguing about their records as mayor 10 years ago," he said. Saypol believes that it's time for a new face, even if it means losing to the "human ATM," as he calls the presumptive Democratic nominee, U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine.
"Nobody's ever been elected governor in New Jersey without losing first," he said, repeating a truism preached as gospel by political junkies throughout the state.
