Vitriol increases as all 120 Senate and Assembly seats are up for grabs
TRENTON — A sharp-toothed pig in a suit represents state Sen. Jim Whelan (D-Atlantic) on an opponent’s flyer.
In Bergen County, the challenger John Driscoll dubbed state Sen. Bob Gordon (D-Essex) "Senator Liar."
And state Sen. Linda Greenstein (D-Mercer) called some of the campaign tactics of her challenger, Richard Kanka, "the lowest form of politics."
With the polls opening Tuesday, state Senate and Assembly candidates have made their cases.
All 120 seats are at stake, and though only a few districts are in play, competitors are throwing everything at their opponents and hoping something sticks.
Tom Wilson, a lobbyist and former Republican state chairman, said that if Republicans can pick up a couple seats in each house, that could set the stage for winning majorities two years from now.
"There wasn’t a huge expectation going into this ... that Republicans were going to recapture control of both houses this time around," Wilson said. "But that really reoriented everyone’s thinking. Let’s make some progress in 2011 and close the deal in 2013, when the governor’s back on top of the ticket."
As of Oct. 25, candidates spent almost $25 million, with $12 million left over. The bulk of the spending took place in a few crucial districts, with a fifth of it in the races run by Whelan and Gordon.
One of the nastier races has unfolded in Atlantic County’s District 2, where Whelan faces a stiff challenge from Assemblyman Vince Polistina (R-Atlantic). A Stockton University poll released this month found the two in a statistical dead heat, 41.1 to 38.3 percent.
Polistina’s campaign flyers call Whelan a "typical greedy politician," accusing him of collecting a pension while working a bogus taxpayer-financed job. One shows a cartoon image of Whelan grinning and sitting on a pile of bills.
Whelan’s attacks are equally vicious, and show Polistina hosting a game show called "Let’s make a backroom deal starring Vince Polistina," and accusing him of accepting no-bid contracts. Another calls him the "Original Boardwalk Hustler."
Whelan has also attacked Polistina for abstaining on a vote to restore $7.4 million for family planning that Christie cut from the state budget.
Whelan said he held his fire at first, but was forced to respond after Polistina’s attacks eroded his support in the polls.
"You ask me how it got dirty?" Whelan said. "You see a double-digit lead evaporate because people are castigating your character, accusing you of being a crook, being greedy. At some point you have to fire back."
Polistina disputed Whelan’s claim that he was to blame for the nasty tone. "They said because I voted against the budget that I’m against blind kids and kids with disabilities and sexually abused kids," he said. "The facts remain he is getting $150,000 without a full-time job, he has gotten a pension based on being a politician and this job he created for himself."
District 38 — the state’s other competitive district — has seen fewer personal attacks, though it has still been heated.
Gordon, the incumbent Democratic senator, came under fire from supporters in the Building Trades union after he ran a TV ad accusing Driscoll, the Bergen County freeholder chairman, of backing a $400 million bond issue to jumpstart the financially and aesthetically troubled Meadowlands project once known as Xanadu.
After all, union officials pointed out, the project would mean thousands of construction jobs.
Indeed, the ad caused such a fuss, Driscoll said, that Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) came to Paramus to cool off union officials — a meeting confirmed by Richard Dressel of IBEW Local 64.
Driscoll was not happy with the ad either, but for a different reason.
Although local news reports said Bergen County officials discussed the bond issue with the latest developer to rescue the project, Driscoll said he had neither discussed nor supported it.
"That’s a bold-faced lie from Senator Liar," Driscoll said.
Gordon called Driscoll’s campaign "bizarre," and dismissed the refused to drop the issue over the ad as a "speed bump."
In District 14, which includes parts of Mercer and Middlesex counties, the Senate race heated up considerably last week. A Greenstein television ad criticized Kanka for not voting several times, and Kanka promptly responded by accusing Greenstein of "spreading lies about me."
His wife, Maureen, put out a radio ad, saying: "Greenstein even attacked Rich for missing an election during preparation for the trial of the murderer of our daughter Megan. That is despicable."
But Greenstein insisted her ad focused on school board elections and that Kanka, a board member, didn’t vote in them until he was on the ballot.
"We thought it was a rather important thing for people to know," she said. "It flies in the face of his professed interest in education."
Patrick Murray, the polling director at Monmouth University, said negative ads typically indicate close races. "What you’re trying to do is keep the others guys base at home," he said.
But it was Dan Jacobson, an independent Assembly candidate in District 11, who may have come up wit the most creative campaign mailer.
In big block letters on a solid background, his ad reads, "Kiss your own damn baby."
By Megan DeMarco and Matt Friedman/Statehouse Bureau Staff