Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The pundits seem to have it in for New Jersey senatorial candidate Jon Corzine. Maybe it's because he doesn't need them.
Jun 6, 2000 | Former Goldman, Sachs & Company CEO Jon Corzine, 53, is tired. Tired of the dismissive and arrogant print press, tired of the attacks from his ridiculously harsh opponent in his race for the New Jersey Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, and tired because -- well, tired because he needs some sleep.
Corzine's Sunday ended at 1 a.m. Monday, and his Monday started three hours after that. This campaigning thing is new to him, but he's as dedicated as when he was pulling similarly grueling hours as a trainee at Goldman Sachs back in the mid-1970s, grabbing coffees for his superiors, soaking it all up.
By 5:30 a.m., Corzine's at the Long Branch, N.J., train station, greeting commuters on their way into NYC; by 7:23 a.m., he's already commuted to the Red Bank and Matawan stations where he continues shaking hands and smiling affably; by 8:30 a.m. he's sipping coffee with Rep. Frank Pallone and a couple other local officials at the Manalapan Diner.
Which is where I finally met the big bad millionaire I've heard so many media-types tut-tutting about, the "oligarch" who's sunk an unprecedented $35 million of his own money into this race.
"Each time Mr. Corzine spits out cash, he reinforces the impression that votes are purchased, not earned; and that politics is beyond the reach of all but the best financed," wrote the Washington Post in its op-ed titled "ATM for Senate."
Corzine "has taken to hosting complimentary dinners with free wine and beer for people likely to vote in the Democratic primary," wrote the Bergen County Record in its endorsement of Corzine's opponent for Tuesday's primary, the stupendously unpopular, tax-raising former Gov. Jim Florio. "Thousands of invitations have been sent out for the affairs, which seem like a thinly veiled way to buy votes ... If this is the new direction in which politics is heading, we don't like it." TV talking heads, the editorial board of the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and most of the rest of the media have jumped on the tackle pile. They fault Corzine not only for the dough he's dropped, not only for paying for dinners and TV and radio ads, but for making generous contributions to local Democratic organizations -- thus securing their support.
Bearded and professorial, affable and earnest -- exactly as advertised -- the precursor of the coming apocalypse says hi, makes some small talk and offers to buy me a coffee. He seems more like some old college friend of my father's than the antichrist.
In fact, the most disturbing campaigniana I witness comes from Corzine's opponents. From inside his suit jacket pocket, Corzine pulls a flier put out by allies of Florio that accuses Corzine of supporting slavery in Sudan. Even Gov. George W. Bush's South Carolina primary buddies would have blushed. (Though it's unclear which way a pro-slavery stance would cut in a contested South Carolina Republican primary.)
As Corzine is called over to the kitchen to meet a diner VIP -- "Your name I hear all the time on the radio!" the Greek-born co-owner gushes -- I check out the evidence Florio's friends at the Camden County Democratic Committee have chosen to provide to who-knows-how-many African-American voters throughout the state.
"You can help stop slavery in Africa!" the front page of the color glossy promises underneath a disturbing color photograph of two emaciated Africans. Inside the leaflet, Florio's buddies have detailed the ways in which Corzine -- who was endorsed later Monday evening by the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- as the "boss" at Goldman Sachs, who led the firm to finance $375 million of an oil pipeline that "benefitted the government of the country of Sudan."
And of course the clincher -- making this an "issue ad" expenditure since it doesn't directly advocate for the defeat of Corzine -- is its instructions: "Call Jon Corzine ... and tell him no more funding slavery and famine ... ever!" Corzine's media maven, Bob Shrum, has provided local airwaves with loads of negative anti-Florio ads, and Florio has been doing everything he can to rail against Corzine's quite modest Social Security investment plan -- but Corzine as pro-slavery? This was quite beyond the pale.
Later that morning, Corzine welcomes me into the backyard of his lush -- though relatively modest -- Summit home. "Where are the slaves?" I ask. He grimaces.
The Sudan flier is just the latest in a series of attempts to connect Corzine with businesses Goldman had connections to, including guns and asbestos. The foundation of the charges: In 1987, Goldman Sachs underwrote a parent company of Smith & Wesson; in 1991, it provided capital to a wallboard corporation that had already gone through bankruptcy because of asbestos lawsuits, though it had stopped manufacturing it.
And the Sudan -- well, jeez, the Sudan. Corzine shakes his head. Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., a Corzine supporter and one of the Congressional Black Caucus' Africa experts, is "furious" with this line of attack, Corzine says. "He calls it 'an act of desperation.'"
"Goldman Sachs did subsidize a joint venture with Malaysia and China Petroleum," Corzine explains. "And they later got together with the Sudanese to build a pipeline from the north to the south." But no one at Goldman Sachs had any idea, he says. "After I left Goldman Sachs, it underwrote [the company] China Petroleum, but I worked with the U.S. Treasury to put up a firewall to keep the money from the Sudanese government."
Now comes the explanation of what exactly Goldman Sachs & Company is and does -- a subject that I never will truly understand. "Goldman Sachs is, at the end of the day, an advisor," he says, "it facilitates transactions. [Florio has] tried to use that to define me as something, first of all something that Goldman Sachs is not with regard to slavery and starvation issues. And also, to hold Goldman Sachs' responsible for all secondary and tertiary accomplishments. I mean, Goldman Sachs is one of the foremost intermediaries in the world! It stretches beyond belief for anyone fair-minded."
It's all pretty confusing, I say. "That's the whole point of this," he argues, calmly. "He's used his ability to use the free press to keep [the public] confused."
But Florio's not the only one trying to hang Corzine with his money, he says. Corzine thinks that he's gotten a bum deal from the print media because of the vast money he's spent. Media reports of his candidacy, he says, were "fine until the May FEC reports," which is when it became clear that Corzine had spent more than $20 million, or 5 percent of his personal fortune. A month ago he was more than well on his way toward breaking the previous record of a millionaire's personal expenditures for a Senate campaign, the $30 million Michael Huffington spent in California for his primary and general election campaign in his 1994 loss to Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Then the press started getting really nasty, Corzine says. They didn't get that he was an unknown running against "an entrenched, 30-year politician whose spent more than $30 million" if you added up all his past campaign expenditures.
Corzine has a theory why this is. "They resent that I'm going around them," he says. But for him it was a simple matter of necessity. The slash-and-burn Florio or at least his surrogates -- was putting out garbage like the Sudan slavery nonsense, the media was eating it up and reporting on it uncritically, and Corzine wants to win.
"We haven't felt that we've always been able to get our story out," Corzine says later, as we walk through the town of Freehold and he polishes off a Diet Pepsi and a slice. "We haven't been able to get our message out. And we don't think that that was good or healthy -- if you have the ability to correct it."
Corzine, like many in the other major party, sees the "focus on campaign finance reform that is embedded in the print media as respectful of their own ability to try to have an influence in the process."
Says a less politic campaign source close to Corzine, "This has just been the revolt of the print media. They resent being cut out of the process as Jon communicates directly with the voters."
What does he communicate? A message of unabashed liberalism -- anti-death penalty, pro-affirmative action, pro-domestic partnership rights -- combined with fiscal prudence and a Social Security investment plan that Florio is likening to that of the GOP's secret plans to privatize it all. Corzine's is an unabashed old-school message: universal health care, universal long-term care, universal quality education.
Shouldn't the so-called left-wing establishment media be eating it all up?
Get Salon in your mailbox!