Ralph Siegel

February 25, 2008 - 11:30am

The Revolving Door?

In the old days, political reporters were often recruited to work for the elected officials they covered. Joseph Katz covered campaigns for the Newark News before taking a job with Governor Richard Hughes; he later went on to open a lobbying firm that became a model for modern contract lobbyists. 1977 gubernatorial candidate Raymond Bateman started out as a journalist with Forbes magazine before becoming Executive Director of the Republican State Committee and launching a twenty-year career in the Legislature. Walter Edge served as Governor and as a U.S. Senator after a career as a newspaperman in Atlantic City.

The announcement last week that Deborah Howlett, a highly-regarded Star-Ledger statehouse reporter, would become Governor Jon Corzine’s new Communications Director has renewed interest in the revolving door between politicians hiring the reporters that cover them. Howlett joins a team of ex-reporters that covered Corzine before they worked for him: Mark Perkiss (Trenton Times), Ralph Siegel (Associated Press), and David Wald, who began the 2000 cycle as the Star-Ledger’s chief political correspondent and columnist and ended it on Corzine’s U.S. Senate campaign staff. Wald spent five years on Corzine’s Senate staff and is now the spokesman for the state Attorney General.
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