Jon Corzine in The Jersey Sting, by Sherman & Margolin
On Principles & Values:
2004: Suspicious payments of $10,000 a month
In December 2004, Christie and his team went so far as to interrogate NJ's senior US Senator at the time, Jon Corzine, who had just announced he was running for governor.
Unaware of the irony still to come, Corzine, without any public voice, had drawn the attention of the FBI and federal prosecutors after he was found to have been making unexplained payments of $10,000 a month to the wife of former senate president and
Democratic political boss John Lynch, who went to federal prison early in Corzine's term as governor.
The payments were suspicious but proved to be little more than an inconvenience for Corzine that was never made public.
Source: The Jersey Sting, by Sherman & Margolin, p. 87
Apr 10, 2012
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: "tone-deaf" when trying to connect with voters
It soon became clear that as adept as Corzine had been at trading bonds and running Goldman Sachs, he was as awful as a politician. He looked down on backroom operators such as Jim McGreevey and brawlers such as Bob Menendez for not having his pedigree,
but those were the guys who knew how to connect with voters, how to stay on message, how to explain their positions, and how to fight when necessary. In NJ, it's necessary a lot. Corzine could do none of that. He was personable and eager to try to talk
people into his viewpoint, but the hallmark of his politics--more than liberal or Democratic--was simply ineptitude.He could not deliver a speech or a sound bite & was apt to blurt out whatever it was he had just been told in private. As the insiders
say, he was "tone-deaf" to both the politics on the ground and what the political class was thinking.
Once the 2008 presidential election kicked off, the governor had already decided it was time to move on from the claustrophobic State House in Trenton
Source: The Jersey Sting, by Sherman & Margolin, p.271
Apr 10, 2012
Page last updated: Jul 12, 2015