Bill Pascrell

Lautenberg rallies with Bikers for Obama: Politicker photoWEST ORANGE - The leather-clad bikers roared into the parking lot, revving overtime - and they kept coming, motley in motion, mufflers drowning out the after effects of rhetoric, the noise near to deafening - as a senatorial figure with a shock of white hair practically broke from his handlers and strode down among them.

He looked so senatorial, in fact, that - was it actually...

Yes, it was definitely 84-year old U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) emerging from the opening of the Obama campaign’s West Orange headquarters and personally welcoming a newly formed Essex County club, Bikers for Obama, which this morning numbered about 200 strong.

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark) joined the senator, jumping aboard a Harley as one of the bikers outfitted Lautenberg with a leather vest.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) was one of 20 congresspeople who switched their votes from "nay" to "yea" on the revamped Wall Street bailout bill that passed moments ago by a margin of 263-171.

With the House likely to vote on the revised bailout package tomorrow, six of the seven New Jersey congressmen who voted against it on Monday have either not decided or not indicated how they will vote tomorrow. 

Only Scott Garrett (R-Wantage) has given any inkling as to how he’ll vote.  On Fox News this morning, he said that the bill has barely changed.

“Basically we’re getting the exact same bill with some pork added to it to sweeten things up.  And that doesn’t make matters better. It really makes matters worse,” he said. 

The New Jersey delegation's vote on the bailout bill was close, and did not occur along party lines.

But while there were some odd vote combinations, with liberal Congressmen like U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-Fair Lawn) voting the same way as his conservative neighbor, Scott Garrett (R-Wantage), they tended to cite different reasons.

Ultimately, New Jersey Congressmen voted against the bill by a 7-6 margin. None, however, enthusiastically supported it. Nor did any of its detractors express glee at its downfall, and some expressed more openness to voting for a new compromise package than others.

By far the most vociferous opponent of the bailout was Garrett, who yesterday took to the floor and excoriated his colleagues who supported it.

In ten years, Roland Straten went from being Bill Pascrell's contributor to his opponent
When news broke that Republican Roland Straten would run for the 8th  Congressional District seat, Straten got a call from his old acquaintance and new opponent, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson).

According to Straten’s recollection, the exchange went something like this:

Pascrell: “Rollie, are you mad at me?”

Straten: “Bill, no.”

Pascrell: “Why are you running against me?”

Straten: “I don’t agree with your votes and your policies.’

Pascrell: “Then I’m going to beat your tail.” 

If Straten’s campaign turns out like those of Pascrell’s five previous challengers, then Pascrell probably will beat his tail. Since Pascrell narrowly unseated Republican Bill Martini in 1996, no Republican has gotten more than 35 percent of the vote against him.  Last year, Republican Jose Sandoval only got 28 percent to Pascrell’s 71 percent.

On the day of the filing deadline for the office of mayor of Passaic, five candidates have already submitted their petitions to the Clerk’s Office.

The candidates are physician Alex Blanco, city supervisor Vincent Capuana, Councilwoman Maritza Colon-Montanez, Councilman Joe Garcia and realtor Jose Sandoval.

Two other potential candidates - Ritzy Morales, who works for U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), and bail bondsman Carl Ellen - have not yet submitted petitions.

The candidates vying for mayor in the Nov. 4th special election hope to succeed former Mayor Sammy Rivera, who earlier this year was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison on corruption charges.

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone doesn’t buy state Sen. Jen Beck’s explanation that she didn’t discuss the upcoming gubernatorial race with U.S. Attorney Chris Christie when the two met over the summer.

But even taking her at her word, Pallone said that it makes him wonder why Christie can meet with Beck, a Republican state legislator, and not him, a Democratic Congressman. Or, for that matter, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), who also pushed for a meeting.

“To me it’s abusurd. Because I’m sure they are talking about politics and his gubernatorial ambitions. But even if I take them at their word, I say that if you can talk amongst yourselves about what’s going on in your office with regard to Monmouth county and Marlboro, he can talk to us,” said Pallone.

Senate President Dick Codey is New Jersey's most popular politician, according to an FDU poll released today
New Jersey voters’ feelings about Gov. Jon Corzine remain tepid, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University Public Mind poll released today. 

Survey respondents are split on whether they approve of Governor Corzine’s performance, with 41% approving and 43% disapproving.  16% had mixed feelings or didn’t know. 

31% of New Jersey voters think Gov. Corzine is doing an “excellent” or “good job,” while 41% rate his performance as “only fair.”  25% think that he’s done a “poor” job in office.  Those numbers are basically the same as they were in an FDU poll conducted in June.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), who butted heads with U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews when he decided to challenge Frank Lautenberg in the Senate primary, kept his statement on Andrews’s return to the ballot short and not-so-sweet.

“Mr. Pascrell has no comment at this point but was not surprised by the news,” said Pascrell spokesman Caley Gray. 

Gov. Jon Corzine at the convention.: Politicker photo 

DENVER - The clash of speaking styles could not have been more dramatic.

There was U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), consigning Karl Rove to the most fiery furnaces of Dante’s Inferno, and putting extra incisors in the teeth of the party attack dog on the tail end of a Thursday breakfast in which half the crowd had appeared asleep before Pascrell arrived and roused them.

Then came Gov. Jon Corzine, and one could almost imagine the house lights again going way down as he began his morning remarks.

On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, the governor went to that oratorical touchstone to refer back to something even earlier, which King had also invoked in his 1963 speech: the words "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence.

"We now have an opportunity as a nation and as a human race to make that real," Corzine told the crowd. "We will be as hard as Joe Biden’s mother told him to be, but we shouldn’t lose track of the fact that there is a vision for a better world."

It was a quintessential Corzine statement, delivered in the most self-effacing Midwestern tones. Every time he slid a Jersey edge into his rhetoric, as when he roared moments later that Democrats are in the hardest fight of their lives and have one hell of a chance, he still carried the thought to a idealistic conclusion.