Andrews talks healthcare and corruption

by: Jason Springer

Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM EDT

Without being too much of a political scientist, here's why NJ is different. First of all there are too many tiny little governments that have alot of power.  You might have a town like Hoboken that is a square mile, but there are billions of dollars of investment, zoning permits and things like that.  So you have alot of power at these tiny levels of government.  Second thing is that there's not alot of political competition in alot of these places.  If you win the Democratic nomination, or the Republican nomination, you win.  We have a state that is divided county by county, town by town on partisanship.  And then the 3rd reason is because we're sandwiched in between the Philadelphia and New York media markets, there's not the same journalistic watch dog presence that exists in other states. In NJ, politics can operate under the radar screen and unfortunately too often it does.  And you get embarrassments like this, you get disgraces like this.