A thumbnail New Jersey guide to Obamaland, Part III

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, backing up Senate President Richard Codey's endorsement of Obama.

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander knew it would be hard to pry Sen. Hillary Clinton’s supporters loose in New Jersey after her victory in New Hampshire.

This was a fight now, and Clinton’s people were solid.

"We have an opportunity here in Hudson - Hudson, Hispanics, Hillary and history," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) cried to a North Bergen audience of mostly Latinos with Clinton on stage.

The response was near to deafening with Clinton standing on stage with Menendez, U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (D-13) and state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex).

But that didn’t mean there weren’t other opportunities for Obama; in fact, one big opportunity, in the form of Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex), who was at the moment glumly serving as state director for the foundering campaign of John Edwards.

Alexander knew Codey. He also knew Codey was close to former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ), who had come onto the Obama campaign as an advisor.

Alexander started working the phones.

A basketball coach used to pulling a player off the floor when he can’t score or rebound, Codey was watching Edwards closely.

"He’s going to have to do something here in Nevada," said the former governor after his candidate’s back-to-back losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Edwards finished in third place out west, and all signs were that the candidate’s "change-agent" message was lost in Obama fever.

Codey felt bad. He had forged a connection with Edwards when the latter ran for vice president on a ticket with John Kerry in 2004. While Codey saw in Kerry’s lordly forbearance a troubling lack of street smarts, he liked the blue collar appeal of Edwards and thought the former senator from North Carolina could win a general election.

Going into Nevada, Codey had hinted that he might withdraw his support for Edwards if the candidate failed to impress there or in his native state of South Carolina.

Codey hung in post Nevada, but Edwards tanked in South Carolina and four days later announced he would end his run for the presidency.

Like Alexander, State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) was already working Codey hard about coming over to the Obama Campaign.

A foe of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, Weinberg tried to appeal to the Senate President’s longtime resistance to bossism, including his feuds with South Jersey Democratic leader George Norcross, and North Ward Democratic czar Steve Adubato.

Weinberg found a natural comfort level with Obama because of the independence she identified in his supporters.

"I would have gone with Hillary," Weinberg said. "But it’s like I told the governor when he asked me why I couldn’t back her. I told him, ‘She’s acting like one of the boys.’ By that I mean, I didn’t see any evidence of a grassroots campaign. She had the old guard, the old boys’ network, and that appeared to be about it in terms of a campaign in New Jersey."

There was no immediate word from Codey.

Then Ray Durkin, former state director of the Democratic Party, called Alexander and Bradley and told them if they wanted Codey to join them they should have Obama call the former governor directly and ask him for his support.

The day after Edwards dropped out, Codey convened a press conference at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in his home town of South Orange. This was six days before the Feb. 5th New Jersey primary.

Surrounded by Obama supporters, including U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9), Alexander, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, state Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer), and Weinberg, Codey endorsed Obama.

"As governor and as senate president, I have built coalitions of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike to do what is right for New Jersey," Codey said. "This is the only way to govern effectively, and I have long been appalled by the slash and burn, winner-take-all kind of partisan politics practiced too often by both parties in Washington.

"Barack Obama has the unique ability to rise above the politics of fear and division to bring the change we desperately need," he added. "Like myself, building coalitions to get results has been the cause of Barack Obama's life, not just the rhetoric of a campaign."

Codey saved for last the anecdote about his phone conversation with Obama.

"I asked him what’s the skinny about the fact that he’s part Irish. He said to me, ‘Governor, I swear to you, I am.’"

Knowing Obama’s late father was a full-blooded Kenyan, Codey said he then jokingly asked the presidential candidate, "‘Now the Irish part, is that on your father’s side?’"

Codey was so thrilled by the story that when Weinberg at the press conference couldn’t resist jumping into Codey’s narrative and saying, "That’s right, O’bama," the former governor said amid laughter, "Don’t take away my lines."

"I said you’re Irish, right? And he said, right. And I told him that means we’re brothers," Codey said. "It was a good conversation."

Codey had campaigned for Bradley in New Hampshire in 2000 when the ex-NBA star ran unsuccessfully for president. With Codey’s remarks concluded, Bradley now towered over the podium.

Alert to special interests dominating elections and deciding the fate of the country to the detriment of most Americans, Bradley noted that the United States’ ranks 114 worldwide in voter turnout in national elections. In Bradley’s view, Obama’s anti-establishment campaign had the long-term potential to re-engage Americans in politics.

"I think every couple of generations, somebody comes along who reminds us that we're Americans, and what it means to be an American, by appealing to the ideals that animated the founding of the country," Bradley said. "I think that is what he (Obama) has done in a remarkable way, and he personifies the very best of our country." 

Clinton still had an edge in New Jersey. Polls showed her up by five to ten points here.

"The media has really given Obama a pass," complained Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer, a Clinton supporter. "They haven't scrutinized his performance or his record. Just as an example, his initial statement that he was opposed to the war: that was a prescient and wise exercise of judgement on his part. But then as Hillary's pointed out, once he got into office, he voted to continue to fund the war."

In the weeks leading up to Feb. 5th, Alexander oversaw multiple statewide days of action, in which Obama volunteers went door-to-door, made phone calls and waved Obama for America signs on train platforms.

"I want everybody to leave here with something to do today," the state director had told a crowd of 5,000 people in Jersey City on Jan. 9.

On the weekend before Election Day, 1,000 Obama volunteers worked the City of Newark.

"I’m all Obama all the time," said Booker, stopping by the campaign’s Broad Street headquarters to rally campaign soldiers. Chicago infused the New Jersey campaign with $100,000-worth of glossy fliers that highlighted the recent endorsements of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy and his niece, Caroline.

It was a last minute happening on a work day in bad weather, but Obama allies still had hoped to pack the IZOD Center for a Feb. 4 rally, featuring the presidential candidate, the Kennedys and movie actor Robert DeNiro. A veteran guard scanned the mostly empty arena and guessed 6,000 people, a figure that most media sources later put closer to 3,000.

New Jersey activists said up close Obama looked exhausted.

"He got embarrassed today at the Meadowlands," a Clinton supporter said Monday night, right before Election Day. "He’s going to get buried in New Jersey tomorrow."

In the Essex County Clerk’s Office with night falling on Election Day, clerk Chris Durkin watched the numbers come in from the outlying towns and from Newark. Voter turnout was huge in the county seat, and that was likely very good news for Obama.

In the Wilshire Grand, Obama’s supporters started celebrating, but their glee proved decidedly premature, as the larger view showed Clinton taking 16 of New Jersey’s 21 counties.

In Essex, Obama bested Clinton in 13 of the 22 towns. He didn’t blow her out in Newark - earning 57% to 43% of the votes in New Jersey’s biggest city - but it was good enough for him to win Essex: 56% to 42%.

Obama also won the progressive-leaning Mercer, 54% to 44%. He squeaked out a 50% to 48% victory in Union, and beat Clinton by one and two points respectively in the very low Democratic Party turnout Republican strongholds of Hunterdon and Somerset.

But he lost badly in Bergen, 59% to 39%. In Hudson, where Menendez had manned an aggressive machine operation, Clinton crushed Obama, 61% to 36%, and in Middlesex, Clinton won, 57% to 40%.

It added up to a nine point, 54% to 45% Clinton victory in New Jersey.

On stage in the Wilshire, weariness and heartbreak could be heard in the voices of some of Obama’s supporters. They had worked on the street level at this, many of them, especially the local elected officials. They could not at that moment grasp the effects of a larger political war beyond New Jersey.

Defeat sank in painfully.

But Booker picked up the fight themes laid down by Codey and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, and digested the still larger view - which showed Obama winning more of the 22 Super Tuesday states at stake, although Clinton claimed the more delegate-plenty states.

The up close and personal disappointment in New Jersey notwithstanding, Feb. 5th proved to be yet another Clinton-Obama stalemate on the nationwide primary map.

The fight would continue.

That meant advantage Obama, in Booker’s view, because the Illinois senator had always been the underdog. The fact that he had shaken New Jersey in losing was a tribute to the campaign’s momentum, according to the Newark mayor.

"The people saw within their hearts and within their nation their dreams, they began to hear echoes of old, from people of old," said Booker. "They told their children and their families 'I believe.' They believed in Georgia and Connecticut and Illinois... They believed that our nation could come together."

Over the cheers that filled the ballroom, which moments earlier had been silent with a sense of loss, Booker cried, "America will rise again and be the giant of love."

Two weeks later, powerful South Jersey Democratic Party boss Norcross threw his support to Obama.