Clinton backers work to finance "a winner"

by MAX PIZARRO
PoliticsNJ.com

WEST ORANGE -- John Graham, co-chair of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s finance committee in New Jersey, recalls the moment he received that phone call from John Kerry on Election Day in 2004.

It was early evening, and the Massachusetts senator thanked Graham for delivering the state’s 15 electoral votes.

John F. X. Graham and former Rep. Herbert Klein, at a Clinton finance committee meeting at Pal's Cabin in West Orange Tuesday nightGraham put the phone down thinking he had just been speaking with the next president of the United States.

Then he turned on the television in bed, and watched Kerry lose the election.

The last time Graham spoke to Kerry, he told him he wouldn’t be raising money for him this year -- or next. Kerry was mortified, said Graham, but the candidate’s inability to secure the win sent the Democratic Party fund-raiser in search of someone else. He swears he gave all of the prospects a thorough review: Barack Obama, John Edwards, others who have already dropped out of the presidential race, including Mark Warner and Evan Bayh.

And Hillary Clinton.

"I had no feelings for Hillary Clinton," Graham confessed to a crowd of about 35 Democratic Party operators and financial supporters in a West Orange watering hole Tuesday night. "I wasn’t personally crazy about her."

But on a trip to Washington, D.C., Graham said Hillary impressed him. He liked her candor and he liked the way she defended her vote authorizing President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq. She basically told him the executive branch needs that power - but needs to use it responsibly.

Graham expects Election Day 2008 euphoria to translate into a sustained sense of victory, and to that end he said he wants those people in that room Tuesday night to help him raise $1 million for Hillary at a single event on June 18th in East Brunswick.

"We’re not going to lose because this time we’ve picked a winner, Graham said of Clinton, who in New Jersey now leads Obama by a 41%-22% margin, with 13% for John Edwards. "She’s a centrist, and centrist candidates win. ...I don’t even look at her as being a woman. She’s presidential. This person will be the leader you want to run the country."

Standing behind Graham’s every word were the other two Hillary heavyweights in Jersey, the other finance committee co-chairs for her campaign here: Democratic National Committeeman Alfred DeCotiis, and the Rev. Reginald Jackson of Newark, the executive director of the New Jersey Council of Black Ministers. Like DeCotiis-Graham-Jackson, many of the people in the room Tuesday raised money for Kerry last time. A lot of them, like the triumvirate, are holdovers from the New Jersey campaigns of Hillary Clinton’s husband.

If politics is three fourths pure money, the remaining part is an alloy of money and loyalty, and these people don’t forget.

"What you have to understand is Bill Clinton turned New Jersey into a blue state," said Tom Barrett, who was the spokesman for the Kerry campaign in New Jersey with Graham, and who now backs Hillary.

The figures back him up.

New Jersey went for Richard Nixon over George McGovern in 1972, Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter in 1976, Ronald Reagan over Carter and Walter Mondale in 1980 and 1984 respectively, and George Herbert Walker Bush over Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Then came the Clintons, who campaigned vigorously in New Jersey, with Bill often relying on his wife to pump up the troops.

Clinton narrowly beat Bush in 1992, by almost 2.4 percent. In the next election, Clinton was firmly in control here, and beat Bob Dole by 18 percentage points.

Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project for the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, acknowledges that Democrats have gained power in the state since the 1990s when Bill Clinton won here. She also notes the particular power that centrists in both parties have traditionally been able to wield in New Jersey. But over the long stretch of this primary season, Hillary Clinton must prove she has personal qualities that demonstrate she is above and beyond merely the ramparts of the party machinery she and her husband built as a team in the 1990s.

"It was the appeal of Bill Clinton who helped strengthen the party in New Jersey," Reed says.

Hillary's backers concede she may not possess the back-slapping charm of her husband. But they say she may have more.

"The times demand we elect our best candidates," said Jackson. "I like Barack Obama, but I don’t think he’s our best candidate. Joe Biden is probably the smartest person in the country when it comes to foreign policy, but Joe Biden is not our best candidate. As good as (Bill) Clinton was, he was as good as he was because he had the counsel and insight of Hillary."

And payback begets payback.

When Clinton wins, Graham said, "There will be billions coming back to New Jersey" to improve infrastructure at a time when the state is considering selling the Turnpike and Parkway to compensate for budget woes.

The catch is Clinton needs money now.

"Our job is real simple," said DeCotiis. "It’s money."