NJ: No more Corzine the reformer

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

No more Corzine the reformer
by Charles Stile
Columnist

Governor Corzine's crusade to clean up New Jersey's corroded campaign finance system fizzled to an unspectacular end at Bob Torricelli's barn door.

Torricelli, the disgraced former U.S. senator, staged a $1,000-a-person fundraiser Sunday for Corzine at his Hunterdon County farm, drawing an estimated 80 people for the cut-a-check-and-chat session. The group included several lobbyists, like Paul Bontempo, a partner in the third largest Trenton lobbying firm who made a visit to his old college friend's farm.

"It was lovely," he said. "An Italian boy made good."

. . .

Now Corzine, who kept lobbyists at arms length in (his 2005 gubernatorial) campaign, has wedded himself to the establishment, and the man brokering the marriage was Torricelli, the New Jersey senator "severely admonished" in 2002 for taking improper and lavish gifts from a donor, Cresskill businessman David Chang.

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[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

How openly corrupt

How so?

$80,000 from 80 people? Goldman Sachs stock went up $13.25 in the past 2 days. That's most likely the equivalent of a few million dollars of his. That money is piss change. I'm sure he was bought by it.

If he's rolling in the money, then why did he just sell his soul and hold a fundraiser with Bob Torricelli?

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

With a farm and all, it seems that The Torch is nicely fixed financially these days? How did that happen? Is it due to his brilliance as a lawyer, and a thriving law practice?

Torricelli makes an excellent living as a lobbyist—hundreds of thousands a year.  The farm is just an exploitation of a property tax loophole.

Frankly, that doesnt even matter. Are you actually suggesting that he needed the money?

What matters is that after trying to insist that he was too good to roll around in bed with lobbyists, he just spend a good couple hours around them, listening to their concerns as they showered him with money.

I don't doubt that he otherwise doesn't need their money, which  makes it all the more inexplicable why he spent so much time catering to them.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

With a farm and all, it seems that The Torch is nicely fixed financially these days? How did that happen? Is it due to his brilliance as a lawyer, and a thriving law practice?

Torricelli makes an excellent living as a lobbyist—hundreds of thousands a year.  The farm is just an exploitation of a property tax loophole.

Frankly, that doesnt even matter. Are you actually suggesting that he needed the money?

What matters is that after trying to insist that he was too good to roll around in bed with lobbyists, he just spend a good couple hours around them, listening to their concerns as they showered him with money.

I don't doubt that he otherwise doesn't need their money, which  makes it all the more inexplicable why he spent so much time catering to them.

Yet you say he was showered with money....$80,000 isn't a showering of money to him and frankly you don't know if he catered to them.

I don't ever recall him saying he was to good to roll around with lobbyists. Maybe you can refresh my memory by finding some quotes.

Simply entertaining lobbyists in a private setting is "catering" to them.