In a fairly surprising turn of events, Senator Jon Corzine has doubled his lead over GOP Candidate Doug Forrester, to 20 points, according to the most recent
Star-Ledger/Rutgers-Eagleton poll, largely due to Katrina fallout.
After months of his numbers holding steady at a lead of anywhere from 7-10 points, Jon Corzine jumped out to a 20-point lead over Forrester in the last week, as Katrina coverage overshadowed the Forrester campaign's attempts to paint Corzine as unethical and engaging in an improper relationship with a State union leader.
Corzine was favored by 48 percent to 28 percent for Forrester among registered voters surveyed last week. Among those voters who said they were likely to go to the polls Nov. 8, Corzine leads by 18 points, 49 percent to 31 percent.
A similar poll just after Forrester won the GOP nomination in the June 7 primary gave Corzine a 10-point edge. The Democratic U.S. senator's evident surge comes at a time when the Republican administration in Washington is under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina.
The Bush administration's ineptitude in handling the Katrina crisis has highlighted one of the chief weaknesses of the Forrester campaign: unwillingness to distance himself from the failures of BushCo, or even so much as voice criticism of Bush, Cheney, Rove, and the gang. After having Cheney and Rove in the Garden State on multiple occasions to fundraise and speak on his behalf, Forrester has remained silent about Iraq, PlameGate, Rove's insensitive remarks about liberals' reaction to 9/11 (even as NJ, a solid blue state, was hit tragically hard by 9/11), and finally, the incompetence of FEMA, even as other Republicans, including conservatives, have taken the opportunity to jump on these issues.
Considering the fact that Forrester doesn't need the national GOP's money, and NJ is blue and getting bluer by the minute, what is he THINKING?
This comes on the heels of another Star-Ledger poll over the weekend that says that nearly 75% of New Jerseyans expect another 9/11 attack, 38% expressed NO confidence in the federal government to respond to it, and only 35% approve of the job Bush is doing.
In this most recent poll, Corzine took a comfortable lead among independents, among whom Forrester previously enjoyed an advantage. Unfortunately, the poll graphic published in the paper today is not available online, but it also showed that voters had more confidence in Corzine to respond to a disaster, natural or otherwise, in the state.
Famously, former Governor Christie Whitman trailed former Governor Jim Florio by 21 points in September 1993, before she went on to beat him, but somehow I don't think this is the same situation. My question is, why isn't Forrester doing more, in this solid blue state, to distance himself from Bush???