Barack Obama

In picking a state director to run operations in New Jersey, the Obama Campaign in Chicago will choose between a congressman's chief of staff, and a labor chief friendly with the governor's administration, according to Democratic Party sources.

For several days, internal talks have gone on between Gov. Jon Corzine, members of the State Committee, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and members of the Congressional delegation about a same-page choice for State Director of the Obama Campaign.

It's come down to two names.

In the running are Bob Decheine, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9); and Patricia A. Mueller, chief of staff, New Jersey Regional Council of Carpenters.

A Northeast Regional co-chair for the Obama campaign who was the only member of New Jersey's congressional delegation to endorse Obama during the Democratic Primary, Rothman has pressed vigorously in the last few weeks for his chief to get the job.

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.

The Rev. Reginald Jackson in Orange today: 

ORANGE - Rev. Reginald Jackson, pastor of St. Matthew AME Church in Orange and executive director of the Black Ministers’ Council of New Jersey, predicted that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) would turn several states blue that were red in the last presidential election cycle.

"I think what Barack Obama does is he broadens the map for Democrats," said Jackson, who was one of the key members of The Group, the powerful fund-raising arm of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in New Jersey.

Now a self-professed big backer of Obama, Jackson said he believes the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee would be competitive in the South and the West.

Obama Campaign State Director Mark Alexander. 

The campaign was about to change.

On Oct, 9, 2007, an announcement came down from Chicago regarding New Jersey operations. 

Mark Alexander, a Seton Hall University law professor and Obama’s senior policy advisor, would be the campaign’s official state director.

"I am grateful that he is going to carry the fight forward to and through the Feb. 5 contests," Obama said of Alexander. "He is a valued and trusted advisor, and at the same time has deep ties in his home of New Jersey that will be invaluable to our efforts. 

"I am proud of the policy work we have done on this campaign and through Mark’s leadership we have built a team of key advisors from the ground up that will continue to offer new and innovative approaches to the challenges this country faces," added the presidential candidate.

A personal friend of Barack and Michelle Obama’s going back a dozen years, Alexander as a child worked on the 1974 Washington, D.C. mayoral campaign of his father, Clifford Alexander, former chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission. Later, he ran Sen. Bill Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign and served as counsel to Cory Booker.

NJ for Obama organizers Julie Diaz and Keith Hovey.

The Obama campaign started small here, with handfuls of coffee house organizers lining up behind a grassroots operation called NJ for Obama in the face of a big party machine backing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and an unpopular war in Iraq.

Founded in an Edison coffee shop in December of 2006, the group’s leader was Damian Bednarz, 25, a Master’s student in international relations with Seton Hall University’s Whitehead School of Diplomacy.

"Obama has something that Hillary Clinton can’t buy or reproduce, and that’s a sense of inspiration," Bednarz said at the time. "If anything, I’m encouraged by Clinton’s frontrunner status because I know our work is so special."

In the months following, some elected offiicials endorsed the Illinois senator, among them Assemblyman Neil Cohen (D-Union), who came out in favor of Obama in April of 2007, followed by state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) a couple of weeks later.

"At this time we need someone special... someone who is going to build a bridge brick by brick to peace through negotiation," said Cohen, a graduate of Howard University who arrived at politics through the Civil Rights era.

It’s difficult to find a Clinton supporter who was as stout during theJohn F.X. Graham primary as New Jersey fund-raiser John F.X. Graham, who took his presidential candidate’s loss especially hard.

One of the key members of "the Group" - a conglomerate of Hillary Clinton champions with deep pockets and access to donors with even deeper ones - Graham found it particularly tough to stand at attention within the ranks of Obama backers when the Clinton campaign finally raised the white flag.

In an interview with PolitickerNJ.com two weeks ago, the fund-raiser in fact cringed at the idea of making an easy transition to the team of Clinton’s conqueror.

The McCain campaign played down a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released today that shows their candidate with a double digit deficit against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Democrats, meanwhile, stayed on message about how a belly up Bush administration has left the GOP in tatters.

Looking at today’s poll, Peter Feldman, spokesman for the McCain campaign in New Jersey, noted that Obama recently beat Sen. Hillary Clinton to become the presumptive Democratic Party nominee.

"That obviously gave him a bump in the poll," Feldman said.

A New Jersey presidential poll released on Friday by Fairleigh Dickinson University shows Democratic Sen. Barack Obama leading Republican Sen. John McCain, 49%-33%, with the Bush administration and Iraq War causing significant damage to the presumptive GOP nominee.

"The more McCain is associated with Bush administration policies the more it hurts his support among independent voters," said Dan Cassino, professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and survey analyst for the university’s PublicMind poll.

According to Cassino’s polling, 18% of voters say that they approve of the job President George W. Bush is doing while 75% disapprove. Just 15% say that the country is moving in the right direction and nearly three in four say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

A day after John McCain Republicans pulled the curtain off their campaign headquarters in working class Woodbridge, the national AFL-CIO endorsed Barack Obama for president and the state organization’s chief reaffirmed support for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

"At our convention we unanimously adopted a recommendation to endorse Obama," said newly re-elected AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech. "Our program is up and running. We’re doing voter registration projects and getting information out to job sites.".

McCain’s New Jersey supporters are targeting what they describe as "Reagan Democrats," or working and middle class voters, including primary election supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) would love Barack Obama to pick Codey’s old pal, former Sen. Bill Bradley, as his running mate.

He recognizes, however, that a Northeastern, blue state vice presidential candidate on the Democrats’ ticket probably wouldn’t be in Obama's best political interest.