The good news for the restaurants is that Andrea is covering the the gubernatorial race and not (yet?) writing restaurant reviews. Clurfeld wrote about the Monmouth/Gannett poll that shows NJ voters give Corzine a C minus and a disapproval rate of 51%.
In her review of the poll, Clurfeld quotes Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray who says Corzine's problem is communication:
"The Corzine camp says that this budget is a product of the poor economy, and it would have been worse if the governor hadn't put New Jersey's finances on the right footing in the first years of his term," Murray said. "That message isn't resonating with the public."
Of course that message isn't resonating. It isn't true. Corzine's answer to putting the state's finances on the right footing was to raise $33 billion by "monetizing" our toll roads for 75 years and raising tolls by 800%. He said he would stake his job on getting that done. He didn't get it done, for good reason, and now he has to go.
From Clurfeld's review:
Murray said polls have shown that the governor has a hard time getting his message out. For example, a couple years ago, after Corzine held a number of town meetings, "his approval rating dropped," Murray said. "That's a result of poor communication."
With all due respect for Murray, that's not a result of poor communication, it is the result of an unacceptable message. The town meetings were about monetizing the toll roads so that Corzine could keep expanding government. New Jersey voters don't want more government.
Corzine may be a poor communicator, but he really would rather not communicate at all. He would rather just ram his plans through without discussion. He spent $800,000 of taxpayers money to come up with the toll road scheme, but he would not let the public or members of the legislature read the report. At least voter sentiment keep the legislature from going along with him on that one.
Corzine's school funding formula is an example of how he prefers to ram important legislation through with little discussion. He drafted the plan is secret and then rammed it through the legislature in the last days of the 2007 lame duck legislative session. He FedEx'd the legislation to legislators homes on Christmas eve so that they could review it over egg nog and candy canes. He then bribed retiring and defeated legislators into voting for it with pension padding jobs.
That's the real Jon Corzine. No transparency. Secret plans rammed through with legal bribes and no discussion. That type of "leadership" got him fired at Goldman Sachs and it should get him fired as Governor of New Jersey.
What concerns me about Corzine is not so much what he didn't accomplish during his first term. I'm concerned about what he will try to sneak/ram through during a second term.
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