June 4, 2005 Forrester's 2-front war tough, costly
by Mitchell Maddux
BERGEN RECORD
It would be another 30 minutes before Jon Corzine took the microphone to announce his property-tax plan Wednesday afternoon.
Things were moving fast, though. An operative for Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester stood among supporters and read placards detailing the Democrat's plan.
He tapped on a Blackberry. An hour later in a lakeside cottage in northern Michigan, one of the nation's top political narrators began recording a radio commercial.
Early Thursday morning, Forrester's radio ad attacking Corzine's property tax plan was being broadcast throughout New Jersey.
"Rapid response," one Forrester official said of the tactic.
In reality, it's more like a blitzkrieg in Forrester's intensifying two-front war.
For months, the Republican candidate has essentially been focusing on two candidates simultaneously. They are his chief GOP opponent, Bret Schundler, and Corzine, the Democratic U.S. senator and likely opponent for whoever wins the Republican primary Tuesday.
"I concluded early on that I had to run two campaigns - one for the primary and one for the general [election] in the fall," Forrester said.
It is a strategy that has proved very expensive. And with the primary only days away, Forrester is escalating his offensive against both opponents.
While the radio spot criticizing Corzine's property tax proposal was airing, Forrester was also running television commercials targeting Schundler's record when he was the Jersey City mayor.
Schundler, who has far less money in his campaign chest, has chosen to focus only on Forrester in his television ads.
Corzine, who is even better financed than Forrester, hardly mentions his opponents, at least at this stage in a race where he faces only token opposition in the Democratic primary.
Corzine's 2000 Senate campaign was the most expensive in New Jersey's history, costing about $63 million, most of it the candidate's own money. The former Goldman Sachs chairman plans to use his vast personal fortune in this race as well.
Forrester, the owner of a prescription benefits firm, has spent about $8.5 million on the primary campaign. Most of his campaign money comes from his personal wealth.
By contrast, Schundler, the other Republican front-runner, has spent $1.5 million, according to state Election Law Enforcement Commission reports released this week.
Forrester said it is because of his two-front war media strategy that he has needed to spend so much money already.
Rates for running campaign television commercials on New York broadcast channels that reach North Jersey households are astronomical - the highest in the nation. Philadelphia television, which beams programs into South Jersey, has the fourth-highest rates in the country.
Beyond that, running real-time response ads such as the radio spot targeting Corzine's tax plan does not come cheaply.
The details of Corzine's plan, which was unveiled at a suburban front-lawn campaign rally in Mercer County, were relayed via Blackberry to Forrester's campaign headquarters in nearby West Windsor.
There, campaign strategists examined the key points of the Democrat's proposals. Greg Stevens, Forrester's media consultant, was at the headquarters and participated in the review.
Within minutes, Forrester strategists and members of Stevens' media team began preparing the radio script. It was approved by Forrester, who was at a State House press conference in Trenton denouncing Corzine's plan to a group of reporters.
The radio script was faxed to the Michigan summer cottage of Sheldon Smith, one of the nation's most prominent narrators specializing in Republican political ads.
Speaking into a microphone inside his cottage's studio, Smith recorded the Forrester spot and sent it to Virginina via an ISDN line. It took only a few minutes, he said.
"The turnaround time is extremely compressed," Smith said. "That's the way the production is done today - everything's electronic. It's all very, very quick."
Smith's voice-over was mixed with background music, and the spot was edited in Alexandria, Va., in the studios of Stevens Reed Curcio& Potholm, which is Stevens' firm. Later on Wednesday, the radio commercial was sent via satellite to New Jersey radio stations.
Early Thursday morning, Corzine was on his way back from a campaign event, driving on the Garden State Parkway. That's when he heard the Forrester spot, while he was listening to the Don Imus morning program on WFAN-AM radio.
"We knew it was coming," one Corzine campaign official said of the ad. "We know he's hired some pretty good, sophisticated people."
