N.J. Governor's Race Gets Personal

GOP Candidate Uses Disparaging Quote From Ex-Wife of Democratic Rival

MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- The multimillionaire throwdown in the race for governor of the Garden State has gotten a wee bit nasty.

Republican Douglas Forrester, who trails in recent polls, has aired a commercial this week featuring a quote from the divorced wife of the Democratic candidate, Sen. Jon S. Corzine. Suffice to say, she did not bestow an endorsement on her ex.

"When I saw the campaign ad where Andrea Forrester said, 'Doug never let his family down and he won't let New Jersey down,' all I could think was that Jon did let his family down and he'll probably let New Jersey down, too," said Joanne Corzine, whose quote first appeared in the New York Times.

A 15-second spot displays the quote against a black background with a touch of drum and violin music.

Joanne Corzine had more to say about Jon, a former childhood sweetheart and a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, to whom she had been married for 33 years. The senator left his wife and house behind after his 2000 election, and took up with Carla Katz, a powerful state union chief. Their relationship has since cooled, amid some controversy of its own.

Joanne Corzine said her former husband fell into the arms of New Jersey's Democratic Party bosses. "It changed him. I think once you go down that road of making deals, compromising your ideals to get somewhere, it's easier to do it the next time," she told the Star-Ledger of Newark before decamping for France.

On Wednesday, Forrester vowed that he would not turn Corzine family recriminations into a campaign issue. Less than 24 hours later, he changed his mind. "We felt that she, who had seen this abandonment firsthand as a witness, it was fair to say, 'Hey, take an eyewitness account seriously because the stakes are so high,' " Forrester told The Washington Post.

As for Corzine, he acknowledged his former wife's right to speak her mind, and left it to his campaign to rail about "Bush-Rove smear tactics."

This has been the season for plutocratic politics in the New York metroplex.

Corzine is worth hundreds of millions of dollars from his days at the investment house Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Forrester is worth dozens of millions of dollars from his days as a king of prescription drug plans.

Across the Hudson River, billionaire Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) has run the most expensive non-presidential race in U.S. history, having so far spent $80 million of his media fortune in his re-election bid. It has been money well spent: He leads nontycoon Fernando Ferrer, the Democratic candidate, by about 30 points in recent polls.

One advantage of gilded candidates is that they supposedly would not have to engage in money-grubbing. That would be a respite from politics as usual in New Jersey, where most years another prominent politician retires to a penitentiary. (State politics, lately, has also taken some unusual turns, as when then-Gov. James E. McGreevey (D) resigned and left his wife over an affair with a man whose lack of credentials did not prevent his appointment as the state's homeland security chief.)