Corzine attacks Chrisitie on Rove contacts

  AP Photo/Mel Evans

The Corzine campaign is launching a new attack on Republican Christopher Christie's ethics, heralding news that Christie spoke with former White House political strategist Karl Rove about a possible governor's race while he was the U.S. Attorney for Newark. Rove revealed the conversations last month in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on an unrelated matter.

Rove told the committee that he had "talked to [Christie] two times in the last couple of years," and said that he offered his help in making a future decision to run for elective office. "My recollection is he was very tentative about it," Rove said in a recent interview. "He was a long way from the practical politics of it."

The Christie campaign dismissed any suggestion that the conversations were in any way improper, calling it "not surprising" that Christie's future in politics would be a subject of consideration given his successful stint as a federal prosecutor. But Democrats pounced, sending out Corzine running mate Sen. Loretta Weinberg to question Christie's honesty on the issue and to raise the specter of the Corzine campaign's favorite bogeyman, George W. Bush. "This to me puts to bed the claim that he did not think of running for governor until after he left the U.S. Attorney's office," Weinberg said. "He obviously was not only thinking of running for governor, he was seeking input from...George Bush's chief strategist."

The Corzine campaign has lately been trying to tie Christie to Bush in an attempt to stop the governor's precipitous slide in the polls. Christie maintains a double-digit lead over Corzine in aggregate results, despite the most recent poll showing the race as a nine-point advantage for the challenger. Thus far, all attempts by Corzine to improve his standing by diminishing Christie's have only served to increase Christie's lead. A visit to New Jersey last month by President Barack Obama was likewise unsuccessful at boosting Corzine's fortunes and may have even hurt them

This latest charge, that Christie, a former Morris County Freeholder, thought about parlaying his success as a U.S. Attorney into higher political office, seems destined to suffer the same fate. There is no evidence that Christie gave a governor's campaign any serious thought before leaving office, and he announced his resignation last December specifically for the purpose of exploring a run for Trenton. In pushing Rove's comments, the Corzine campaign is hoping that voters will make the leap into questioning whether Christie's actions as a prosecutor were influenced by his future political aspirations. But if the campaign has any direct evidence to support that very serious charge, it has yet to offer any.