To make matters worse, Sen. Robert Torricelli’s sudden electus interruptus Monday caused state Dems to run the third man on their list of preferred replacement candidates. (The top two choices, Reps. Robert Menendez and Frank Pallone Jr., both passed on the opportunity.)
“This is not an organized withdrawal,” says a Democratic political strategist in New Jersey. “This is the enemy breaking through our lines and rushing in. It’s a collapse, and now we’ve got to rush into court and fight a battle on which the law hadn’t even been researched.”
Having settled on former senator Frank Lautenberg, the Democrats are petitioning to replace Torricelli on the ballot while Republicans are arguing–all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if need be–that changing candidates after the Sept. 16 deadline is clearly illegal under state election law. “You don’t get to go to Atlantic City and sit down to play poker and say you don’t like the hand you drew,” says Tom Wilson, a state Republican strategist. The matter will turn on the issue of voter disenfranchisement: many servicemen and women overseas have already cast their absentee ballots. The petitioning attorneys laid out their strategy this morning in the office of David Norcross, the N.J. GOP committeeman. “The argument is going to be the right to vote balanced against the interests or rights of the Democratic Party to put a valid candidate on their ballot,” says Norcross. “It would seem the interest of people who did nothing wrong and who are sitting out there protecting their country [should] mean more.”
There’s more than a little deja vu for players in the country’s last major ballot drama two years ago. “We return to the question that happened in Bush v. Gore: to what extent is a court willing to disregard the legislative will as reflected in a clearly written statute, and when is it justified?” says Barry Richard, the Greenberg Traurig attorney who masterminded President Bush’s legal strategy during the Florida recount. “If you allow that to happen, the question arises: Will that not allow a party to manipulate an election by watching the polls as you get down to election day. That was clearly not intended by the New Jersey legislature.”
The Democrats have some heavy lifting before them. Besides proving they’re on the right side of the law (perhaps not so difficult in front of New Jersey’s Democrat-controlled Supreme Court), they’ll have to invent and find a way to pay for means to create new ballots and re-enfranchise the overseas New Jersey voters.
The road to this messy intersection was remarkably short. National party leaders start breathing down the necks of U.S. Senate candidates about a month before Election Day. Last weekend, Torricelli, heard from and met with leaders like Sen. Tom Daschle to talk about jump-starting a campaign on the ropes over endless headlines about the Torch’s ethical lapses. While research by the Democratic National Committee indicated the race was “in the bag” for Torricelli as recently as late last week, according to a senior party leader, by Sunday the campaign’s daily tracking polls showed him 20 points down. His political life was in freefall, thanks to a recent court decision that gave credibility to claims that he took improper gifts from a campaign donor. “Torch convinced the national folks that the situation was worsening,” says a state Democratic operative. Finally, they agreed with the senator’s math–and allowed the Torch to snuff himself out.
Meanwhile, Torricelli’s decision to bow out of the race has left state Democrats bitter and confused. How could a man so politically shrewd misjudge something this badly? Friend and foe alike were stumped. “It’s not typical Torch,” says one of his state Republican foes. “He’s the best pol that we’ve had in New Jersey. Average pols play checkers; good pols play chess; Bob Torricelli plays that ‘Star Trek’ version that’s 3-D and has three different boards.”
What’s more, Torricelli’s stubbornness could yet play more havoc for the Dems. He didn’t want Lautenberg, his bitter, longtime adversary, to replace him and has thus far refused to hand over the keys to his campaign war chest. “The relationship is very poor, to be polite,” says an aide to N.J. Sen. John Corzine, who is the peace broker between the Torricelli and Lautenberg camps. If the Dems lose today’s legal battle, it’s hardly likely to get better.
