June 5, 2005 GOP places its bets with two underdogs
By Tom Turcol
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Of seven candidates for a spot on the gubernatorial ticket in Tuesday's primary, Schundler and Forrester are far ahead.
Battered by a succession of lopsided defeats, New Jersey Republicans will try to get it right this year, starting with their selection Tuesday of a candidate for governor.
The comeback attempt will not be easy, with the GOP likely to nominate one of two recently failed statewide candidates to go up against the Democratic powerhouse, U.S. Sen. Jon S. Corzine, in November.
Entering the closing weekend of the primary, Bret Schundler and Doug Forrester are the front-runners in a contest that has grown more acrimonious. None of the other five contenders has emerged as a serious threat, though they could draw enough votes to damage Forrester or Schundler in a close race.
Recent surveys show Forrester, a multimillionaire business executive from Mercer County, with a growing lead over Schundler, the former two-term mayor of Jersey City.
Forrester, who is bankrolling his own campaign, is trying to build on his momentum with a late TV-advertising blitz mixing commercials touting his own proposals with others blasting Schundler's plans.
But many Republicans consider Forrester's support soft, and say that Schundler boasts a bigger army of core backers who can be counted on to show up to vote. They cited the unpredictability of past primary polls, and said the candidate with the superior voter-turnout operation was likely to prevail.
Schundler and Forrester are both seeking political redemption in vying to lead their party back to power in Trenton.
Schundler, 46, was trounced by Democrat Jim McGreevey in the 2001 governor's race, while Forrester, 51, was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Frank Lautenberg in the 2002 U.S. Senate election.
The GOP has been thoroughly dominated by the Democrats in recent years. After controlling the governor's office for 16 of 20 years through 2002, the Republicans surrendered it four years ago. They also lost control of both houses of the legislature.
Schundler and Forrester, who was briefly mayor of West Windsor, have been dueling for weeks over their competing property-tax plans and records as municipal officials.
Schundler is pushing amendments to the New Jersey Constitution that would cap state spending and channel the savings to municipalities and school districts for property-tax relief. Forrester countered with a plan that would have the state absorb 30 percent of a homeowner's property taxes.
Each candidate has dismissed the other's plan as unrealistic. And each has pointed to his opponent's record as a municipal official to call into question his commitment to reducing taxes.
The tax debate has virtually obscured all other issues, including the controversial cultural issues that have divided the party in recent contests, and helped cost Schundler the 2001 gubernatorial election. Schundler won the primary that year by galvanizing the party's conservative base, but his stands were rejected in November by the state's larger pool of socially moderate voters.
To the relief of GOP officials, the candidates have studiously avoided subjects such as abortion, gun control, school vouchers, and same-sex marriage. That, in the view of party insiders, will give their nominee a much better chance of appealing to moderate Republicans and independents in the fall campaign.
And, for all the sparring between Schundler and Forrester, Republicans have been spared the vitriol that marked the 2001 primary in which Schundler took on the GOP establishment and defeated its handpicked candidate. The bad feelings lingered through the fall campaign.
"Some of the party regulars just took a walk four years ago, but I don't think either side's supporters are going to do that this time," said David Norcross, the Republican National Committeeman from New Jersey. "Our only chance to win is if we stay together."
The primary, Norcross said, "has energized parts of the party and given them a better feeling about our chances in the fall... I was concerned that we'd get through this primary and sort of plod on to our [general election] fate, but I don't feel that way at all now."
The seven-candidate GOP field also includes John Murphy, a Morris County freeholder; Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan; Assemblyman Paul DeGaetano of Bergen County; Todd Caliguire, a former Bergen County freeholder; and Robert Schroeder, a Bergen County businessman.
Corzine is running with only token opposition in the Democratic primary.
In the GOP race, Forrester has enjoyed an enormous financial advantage, spending an estimated $8 million of his own money in the primary - more than his six rivals combined.
For months Forrester has been running TV ads in the Philadelphia and New York markets, finishing the campaign with a crush of prime-time commercials in the last two weeks. He also has spent large sums on glitzy mailers and radio spots.
Schundler, by contrast, is running on a shoestring budget that has prevented him from utilizing television until the last few days of the race, and then only in a limited way. He has been running a late flurry of radio ads.
Schundler is relying on phone calls, e-mails and appearances at churches and before long-supportive groups - in what some Republicans refer to as the "invisible campaign" - to court his network of allies.
From the campaign's outset, Forrester has appealed to his party's pragmatic side, urging Republicans to support him because only he would have enough money to compete with Corzine in the fall campaign.
Corzine spent an estimated $70 million of his personal fortune in winning his U.S. Senate seat in 2000, and has unlimited resources again this year.
Forrester has said he will fund his general-election effort if nominated, though he has not indicated how much he is prepared to spend.
Schundler dismisses the money issue as a red herring, saying that no Republican, including Forrester, can hope to remain financially competitive with Corzine. The only way to defeat the Democrat, Schundler says, is with a nominee whose style and message draws the sharpest contrast to those of Corzine.
The Schundler camp, along with a number of other Republicans, believe that if the self-funded Forrester is chosen, it would reduce, if not eliminate, Corzine's vulnerability to the charge that he was again buying an election. That argument caught fire late in the 2000 campaign, and nearly cost Corzine the Senate seat.
Forrester backers contend that the party would be setting itself up for defeat by nominating Schundler, since, they say, he has already been identified in the voters' minds as too conservative on social issues.
A wild card in Tuesday's voting could be Lonegan, an arch-conservative who has accused Schundler of soft-pedaling his positions on social issues that helped carry him to the nomination in 2001.
Schundler has denied the charge, but his chances could be seriously compromised by Lonegan's ability to siphon off conservative votes.
"Any vote [Lonegan] gets is more than likely a vote that Bret can't get," said Norcross, the GOP official. "It could be a deciding factor, but I don't think it will be."
GOP Debate
The seven Republican candidates for the Republican nomination for governor will participate in a live, one-hour debate today. The event, from 11 a.m. to noon, will be televised locally on KYW-TV (Channel 3). It will be replayed at 1 a.m. tomorrow on UPN 57 (WPSG-TV). The seven candidates are Doug Forrester, Bret Schundler, Paul DiGaetano, John Murphy, Steven Lonegan, Robert Schroeder and Todd Caliguire.
