New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s Community Affairs Commissioner, Joe Doria, had to step down Friday after his house was raided as part of a massive FBI sweep of the state. Zack Roth aptly sums up the details here, but suffice to say that any tie to the corruption and money-laundering investigation is terrible news for the already beleaguered Corzine.
It is, however, further support for my argument that President Obama should ask Bruce Springsteen to run for governor of New Jersey.
More broadly, I don’t understand why parties stand by deeply unpopular incumbents like Corzine and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) when it becomes fairly clear that those incumbents are going to lose. Obviously losing the Connecticut Senate seat to the Republicans would be a disaster for Obama and the Democrats on the level of Ted Steven’s loss of an otherwise-safe Alaska Senate seat for the Republicans last cycle. But the Democrats have an easy out in Connecticut: if Dodd will get out of the way, the extremely popular state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, could run in his place. Blumenthal would win going away.
UPDATE: Maybe it’s just the Democrats who have this problem: Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), perhaps the Republicans’ most vulnerable incumbent, has been forced to retire because GOP officials did everything in their power to cut off his access to funds. Meanwhile, the AP reports that despite his denials, Chris Dodd knew he was getting a special deal back in 2003 when he got two home loans under Countrywide’s “Friends of Angelo” program. (This according to secret testimony before the Senate Ethics Committee.) Is that really the horse you want to back, CT Dems?
