Handshakes, speeches and phone calls kept New Jersey's leading gubernatorial candidates busy Thursday as they entered the final days before next week's primary.
Sen. Jon Corzine focused on a traditional Democratic constituency and gave a speech to a union group that endorsed him.
Doug Forrester, one of two Republican front-runners, held a press conference outside the Newark Housing Authority and called on federal authorities to take over the embattled agency.
Bret Schundler, his chief GOP competitor, spent the day phoning volunteers with pep talks and appealing to donors for last-minute infusions of campaign cash.
By midafternoon, the Schundler camp also launched an e-mail blitz that sent four of the candidate's new television commercials to his most loyal Republican supporters. The campaign simultaneously posted the TV spots on PoliticsNJ.com, the state's most popular Web site for political junkies.
Clicking on the "thumbnail" commercials embedded in the e-mails or on the Web ads sent Web surfers to the former Jersey City mayor's official campaign site.
"In the last two hours, we've had 68,000 hits," Bill Pascoe, Schundler's communications director, said at about 5:30 p.m.
Whistle-stops at public transportation facilities also were popular with the candidates Thursday.
Corzine began the day greeting commuters at the Montclair train station. At noontime, he stepped onto a podium inside New Jersey Transit's Secaucus Junction rail station before a crowd of nearly 100 enthusiastic union members.
"I'm an old, washed-up laborer," Corzine said and the crowd cheered.
Corzine explained that he was referring to a college job.
"They used to call us hod carriers in those days," he said.
The Democratic candidate said that if elected governor, he would support big public works construction projects that would be built by union laborers. Building the Xanadu entertainment and retail development in the Meadowlands, erecting schools and finishing New Jersey Transit's Hudson-Bergen Light Rail would help fuel the economy and underwrite his plan to increase property tax rebates, Corzine said.
After he finished, William T. Mullen, president of the New Jersey State Building and Construction Trades Council - which represents more than 150,000 workers - took the microphone to exhort his members to campaign for the senator. He also implored them to dismiss attacks on the Democrat's political record.
"Now we have to go out and get to work - so don't listen to this propaganda ... that's out there," Mullen said.
Forrester began his day shaking the hands of commuters boarding ferries in Belford, Monmouth County, for the trip to Manhattan.
He then moved on to Newark, where he made his call for a federal takeover of the Housing Authority, saying it is rife with mismanagement. He said the use of agency money to finance an arena for the New Jersey Devils is a bad use of public funds.
Forrester tried, however, not to offend hockey fans.
"Now, I like hockey," he insisted.
He also announced he had set up a second campaign Web site devoted to pointing out "waste, fraud and abuse" in New Jersey government.
Forrester, a former West Windsor mayor and owner of a prescription benefits management firm, said corrupt officials and government mismanagement were responsible for the state's high property taxes.
"The kind of waste, fraud and abuse I'm talking about is costing us billions of dollars," Forrester said.
A poll earlier this week showed Forrester pulling ahead of Schundler among GOP primary voters. Both men hold large leads over five other challengers.
They are Todd Caliguire, a former Bergen County freeholder; Assemblyman Paul DiGaetano of Nutley; Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan; John Murphy, a Morris County freeholder; and Robert Schroeder, a Washington Township councilman.
