Joe Roberts Needs a Woman

by: Thurman Hart

Thu Jul 06, 2006 at 02:37:53 PM EDT

What the budget battle needs, female lawmakers said, is a woman's touch.

Ok, it wasn't the Ledg, it was actually the women in the statehouse.

Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) said yesterday female lawmakers have talked among themselves about trying to find a compromise that allows Gov. Jon Corzine and Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts to "save face," but that any such compromise would be difficult at this point.

"It's a testosterone problem," Weinberg said. "Some people are making decisions based upon egos rather than what is best for the state of New Jersey."

Could they be onto something (or just on something)?

There are 23 women among the 120 state lawmakers, a percentage that ranks New Jersey in the bottom third of all states, along with Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota. Until last year, there were 17 women in the Statehouse.

A woman hasn't represented New Jersey in Congress since Republican Marge Roukema retired in 2003, and she was only the fifth in history. The state has never had a female U.S. Senator and just one woman served as governor.

Well - there's something to be proud of!  We manage to provide competition for Mississippi (state motto: "Thank God for Alabama, or we'd be dead last in everything."), Alabama, and uber-regressive South Dakota.

Others aren't buying the feminine mystique:

"This is more about the old way versus the new way," said Katz, whose state workers' union strongly backs Corzine. "It's about changing the way we run government and not putting political careers at the top of the list of what's most important."

Hey, they even found a guy to ask his opinion:

"He's trying to do things differently, no doubt," said Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole (R-Essex), a member of the budget committee. "I disagree with his priorities, but he has been very fair and open about the process. ... The fault is obvious, to us. It's a failure of (Assembly) leadership, not testosterone."

Thanks to Deborah Howlett for the original reporting on this story.