| Is it for voting the right way on important issues while in the Senate, but not contributing anything of any legislative significance otherwise?
Is it for losing Senate seats while serving as DSCC Chairman?
Is it for allowing his own Presidential ambitions to justify pushing aside Acting Governor Dick Codey in 2005, whose term as McGreevey's replacement restored some degree of credibility to the office after McGreevey's embarrassing performance?
Is it for buying "the most powerful Governor's office in the country" and reducing its power to that of a superlegislator?
Is it for refusing to spend some of the millions that he was willing to spend to buy himself elected office to either help elect a slate of Democratic State Assemblypersons and State Senators that shared his vision (did he ever really have a vision?) or sufficiently scare the existing Democrats in Trenton into towing his line (did he ever really have a line to tow?)?
Is it for refusing to increase state income taxes on the wealthy sufficiently to balance the budget and provide real property tax relief and reform?
Is it for refusing to put the weight of his office behind passing marriage equality legislation instead of civil unions?
Is it for utilizing the fullest extent of his economic brilliance to come up with a scheme as ridiculously lame as asset monetization?
Is it for putting the lives of New Jersey drivers at risk by having his drivers drive him at unsafe speeds on the state's highly congested roads (Do we really think that the driving style that led to the accident was an isolated incident?)?
Is it for the special legislative session on property tax reform and relief that never provided real property tax reform and relief?
Is it for the constitutional convention on property tax reform and relief that never happened?
Can anybody cite me an example of Jon Corzine using the power of his office to force through a major legislative initiative that the powers that be in the legislature did not want passed?
To the best of my knowledge, the only times that Jon Corzine bucked the powers that be in this state at all to do the right thing, was when he backed Loretta Weinberg in her State Senate battle and selected her to be his running mate, and for both of these acts, I feel quite comfortable in speaking for all of us here and thanking him from the bottom of our hearts.
BUT THAT'S IT!
Five years as Senator and four years as Governor and all that Jon Corzine has to show for it is a good voting record and doing right by Loretta Weinberg and the people who love and support her.
It remains to be seen if he uses what little juice he still has to get marriage equality legislation passed during lame duck this year, but I am not counting on it.
If marriage equality legislation passes during lame duck, it will most likely be because Steven Goldstein, Garden State Equality, and the progressive individuals and organizations who support them went so far above and beyond their natural capacity for action that the Democrats in Trenton knew that they had no choice but to do this now or suffer the consequences in 2011.
Jon Corzine will have little to nothing to do with this except when he signs the legislation as it is put before him.
If Jon Corzine wants my thanks (not that I think that he really cares one way or another), he will do one of two things, the easiest and simplest of them being to take his millions, leave the state, and never come back again.
The harder and more meaningful of them being to do what he should have done after being elected Governor in 2005, which was to use all of the resources at his disposal, including but not limited to his vast amounts of wealth, to bring together all of the progressive organizations in the entire state, establish a progressive agenda to address all of the issues of concern for the people of our state, and run a slate of State Assembly, State Senate, County Freeholder, and Municipal Councilperson/Mayoral candidates in the Democratic primaries in 2011 that would empower the progressive majority within the Democratic Party against the party bosses and elected cowards who sustain them for generations to come.
I don't think that this was a lot to expect from Jon Corzine after he was elected Governor and I don't think that it is a lot to ask from him now that he is going to be leaving office after disappointing so many who at the very least hoped for, if not expected, more from him. As angry as I was when he bought his Senate seat in 2000 and the Governor's office in 2005, I always hoped that he would prove me wrong. To date, he hasn't, but I am not giving up hope.
After Governor Howard Dean ended his Presidential campaign in 2004 and before becoming the DNC Chairman that made it possible for Democrats to regain control of the House and Senate and for Barack Obama to be elected President of the United States, he created a national organization, Democracy for America, that would enable his supporters to continue working towards a progressive agenda.
As we all know, DFA has been one of, if not, the most important driving forces behind keeping the healthcare reform effort on track towards some kind of a public option, despite the White House's numerous strategic blunders throughout the process, first and foremost being to start the process with the compromise position of a public option rather than a strong position of a single payer system. Howard Dean's leadership on this issue has kept the public option alive even as many in the House, Senate, and White House would have preferred to leave it for dead.
If Jon Corzine is willing to invest at least as much of himself on behalf of progressive issues here in New Jersey as Howard Dean has at the national level, he can be a factor going forward and play a major role in repairing so much of the damage to the Democratic label in this state that the Democratic administrations and legislatures of the last eight years have done. It is not too late.
The Democrats in Trenton can hold the line against Christie's conservative agenda if we give them a line to hold. And if they don't, many, if not most of them will be running for re-election in 2011 in brand new legislative districts that we can play a role in shaping as well as recruiting truly progressive candidates to run in them. And in 2013, we can support a Democratic gubernatorial candidate who shares our values and Jon Corzine can be a major part of this effort and for doing so, would be truly deserving of our thanks.
Or he won't. Assuming for a moment that Jon Corzine keeps his promise to stick around, he will most likely continue to support the status quo within the Democratic Party as so many of us have as we have fallen in line as we do so well behind whomever the powers that be in the party have chosen to represent us and whatever they choose to stand for.
Jon Corzine cannot be blamed for this. For as long as he has been involved in NJ politics, he has been no better or worse than any of us. The only difference between him and us is that he has had the resources at his disposal to make a difference on a large scale and we don't, or at the very least, we haven't tried. He was brought into this game by some of the worst players in its history, starting with the dirtiest of them all, Bob Torricelli, so maybe it is too much to ask that he turns his back on them and sides with us.
Maybe this means that he doesn't deserve the condemnation and scorn that I have heaped upon him here, but if nothing else, it definitely means that he is not deserving of our thanks. Not yet anyway. Not by a longshot. But maybe there is reason for hope. Only time will tell. |
