Who the heck is Governor Corine?

You have got to be kidding me, he has been in the center of this states mess and helped cause most of the problems.........

In this poll, which asks which of our last nine governors was best, I voted for William "Bill" Cahill, and I must admit I was surprised to learn that Cahill has garnered only 3% of the vote -- tied for last with the disgraced McGreevey. This, I suppose, is the result of the fact that Cahill was the earliest of the nine governors listed, and perhaps his service, from 1970-1974, has been forgotten by followers of New Jersey politics. Still, his lone term deserves recognition as one of the best governorships in recent New Jersey history.

Running for governor in 1969, Cahill defeated former Governor Robert Meyner, who was seeking a third term in office (then permitted if the terms were non-consecutive). Meyner was governor during the 1950s; Cahill campaigned against him vigorously, charging that the Meyner administration was a do-nothing administration. As governor, Cahill was quite the opposite; instead of just talking, Cahill really tried to get things done. With a strong Republican majority in the legislature for the first two years of his term, he was largely successful in getting his program through, much like Lyndon B. Johnson was able to get the Great Society through the Democratic U.S. Congress a few years before.

His program tackled a variety of areas. In education, Cahill and the Republicans increased state funding for poorer school districts and those with large numbers of disadvantaged students and merged the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry with Rutgers Medical School. In law enforcement, he took a strong stand against corruption and statewide crime by creating a Division of Criminal Justice and expanding the State Commission of Investigation. In environmental areas, he signed into law a solid-waste management act, a bill giving the state control over land use and pollution in wetlands, the Coastal Area Facilities Review Act, and a consumer protection law. He also oversaw the so-called “Green Acres” program under which New Jersey acquired lands for conservation. Beyond these areas, Cahill implemented the New Jersey Lottery for the first time, signed the Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Act, and began giving service grants to private colleges and universities.

Cahill did not always succeed in his attempts to better New Jersey and its government, however, largely because of a state legislature wary of voting for controversial legislation. Cahill was also a crusader for administrative reform. He wanted to consolidate the executive branch’s fifteen departments into four “superdepartments.” Unfortunately, the legislature rejected the plan, as usual resisting controversial legislation during an election year – the plan would abolish the Civil Service Commission and eliminate numerous positions for political favorites, while also cutting down government bureaucracy. Cahill was only able to bring about a small bit of his reform (via executive order and administrative directive). In addition, Cahill was a crusader for tax reform. In the second half of his term, he supported legislation under which the state would be responsibility for most of the financial support of public schools, to be funded by a graduate income tax, a statewide property tax, and the elimination of some sales tax exemptions.

What ultimately did Cahill’s political career, ironically, was corruption in his administration. Though he himself was truly an honest man, his Secretary of State and former State Treasurer, along with Republican fundraisers, were indicted, and that cast an unfortunate shadow on his governorship. The Republicans did not re-nominate him in 1973.

Looking back, Cahill stands out as one of the few good governors we’ve had since 1970. Byrne deserves credit for his environmental policies and for the legalization of casino gambling (which may or may not be considered a good thing). Kean was a good governor, bringing about education reform, important environmental policies, and a popular welfare program. He did this all while cutting taxes, which was both a good and a bad thing – it led to the creation of many new jobs, but it resulted in a large deficit when Kean left office. A lot of people disagree with me, but I also think that Florio was a good governor; he had the political courage to make an unpopular move (a huge tax hike) in order to try and balance the budget; he also signed the strict assault weapons ban, which I support. Whitman may have been fairly popular, but she ran up a huge deficit without much to show for it. DiFrancesco did not get much of anything done in his brief time in office. McGreevey was a disgrace to New Jersey and to the office. Codey, like DiFrancesco, was fundamentally a placeholder. And Corzine, as we all know, has done a host of alarming things, from the suspicious payoffs of Carla Katz (and her brother-in-law) to the near-autocratic shutdown of the state government in 2006 to try and get his way with the budget, from repulsive toll hike proposal to his repulsive proposal to eliminate the Department of Agriculture, from his raising of taxes to his failure to provide towns with enough time to plan wastewater disposal under COAH, from his deepening of New Jersey’s debt to his capital punishment ban. The way I see it, of the last nine governors, only three or four have done a good job.
We need more governors who will get things done, like Cahill.
(Sorry for the lengthiness of this comment.)

Mountaintop,
You were right and I was wrong about Kean; he did not cut taxes, as I wrote.

However, I disagree with you about Cahill. He did not lose renomination because of his tax reform ideas; he lost because of the corruption that was being investigated within his adminstration, which tarnished his image as being strongly anti-corruption (for which his policies spoke loudly). The indictments of fund-raisers involved in his 1969 election, his former Treasurer, and his Secretary of State are what caused him to lose all his momentum and made him vulnerable to upset in the primary.

You are right that Byrne probably would have won anyway in the 1973 gubernatorial election, but please keep in mind that that had a lot to do with the unpopularity of the Republican Party in general, what with the unfolding of the Watergate scandal on the national level.

What in the world did Dick Codey do (besides follow one of the worst pieces of garbage every to occupy Drumthwacket) to deserve so many votes?

"I figure people drift toward liberalism at a young age, and I always hope that they change when they see how the world really is.”
- Johnny Ramone

i sat john farmer jr was the best governor

screwed the curve by listing Bob Meyner.

Talk about a host of bad choices: Cahill might rate the best, simply because, at that time, we had no income tax and, whatever his position on it, we didn't get it until Byrne got elected. Kean -- disaster: doubled size of government during his term. Corzine -- disaster. Byrne -- disaster. McGreevey -- pathetic disaster. Florio -- disaster. Codey/DiFrancesco (who can tell the difference?) -- disasters. Whitman ...

By comparison to this crowd, she actually looks almost decent. Taxes somewhat reduced; spending held (comparatively) in check. To say she lacked 'the vision thing' restates the obvious, but when compared with the succession of astonishingly bad governors in the last 40 years, she looks almost good. Daming by faint praise indeed, but... mitigated disaster.