Democratic Bergen County Executive Dennis C. McNerney is girding for a tough race against Republican County Clerk Kathleen Donovan, who so far appears to have a clear path to the GOP nomination to run against him for the county’s top post. 

But McNerney says he’s no stranger to a challenge. 

“In 1998 I ran for freeholder and it was a 7-0 Republican freeholder board.  In 2001, I ran again and won but my running mates lost.  And then the next day, I got up and ran for county executive.  So I’ve had nothing but tough elections and winning,” said McNerney.  “My wife Cathy supports this race, too, so that’s important.”

McNerney won his first term in 2002 against then-state Sen. Henry McNamara (R-Wyckoff) in a relatively close race.  In 2006, he easily won reelection over Republican Todd Caliguire. 

But Donovan, the top county-level vote getter in in 2008, an otherwise favorable year for Democrats, and a 20-year incumbent, is expected to be a formidable opponent. 

And McNerney has lost his staunch political ally: former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero, who was convicted on three corruption counts in October.  Ferriero, a prolific fundraiser, helped raise the millions of dollars McNerney spent on his two campaigns. 

Still, McNerney does not think his campaign will be tainted by Ferriero’s conviction.

“Look at the former Republican chairman, Berek Don.  A convicted felon and he was the Bergen County Republican chairman under Kathe.  I guess you have to ask her that question,” said McNerney, referring to Don’s 1999 guilty plea to, among other things, illegally funneling cash into former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli’s (D-Englewood) campaign account.

Pledging not to alter the traditional focuses of the U.S. Attorney's Office, Paul Fishman, already in office for two months, was formally sworn in this afternoon as the state's top federal prosecutor in a star studded ceremony that included both of the state's U.S. senators, its incoming and outgoing governors, the U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

"Even with terrorism and national security as our number one priority, and even with new critical areas like health care fraud and mortgage fraud, I can assure you that my commitment and the commitment of the office on other traditional things on which we focus will not flag, and we will not relent," said Fishman in his address, after he was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., a Hamilton native who served as the state's U.S. Attorney from 1987 to 1990.   

Fishman, a 52-year-old Montclair resident, will oversee a staff of about 140 in the office where he built his career and which he was almost tapped to lead 10 years ago. 

"Today the truth is, that I have achieved something that has been a huge ambition and longing of mine to be the United States Attorney for this district," he said.

Fishman started at the U.S. Attorney's Office in 1983 --  a year after graduating from Harvard Law, where he edited the Harvard Law Review- and worked his way up to become First Assistant U.S. Attorney under then-U.S. Attorney Michael Chertoff.  In 1994, he move to Washington to work as an advisor to then-Attorney General Janet Reno, before starting a private practice as a white collar defense attorney in 1997. 

Two years later, Fishman was U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-Cliffside Park) choice to lead the office after then-U.S. Attorney Faith Hochberg was tapped to become a U.S. District Court judge.  But then-U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli's choice, Robert Cleary, won out. 

Fishman's decade long wait to get to the position was the subject of a couple jokes at the jocular ceremony, in which Fishman's closest colleagues joked about everything from Fishman's slow confirmation process, to Fishman's fondness for Yogi Berra (he's a trustee at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center), to his diminutive stature. 

"You can also say he's not afraid to be around people who are taller than he is," said former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. 

Fishman himself called his almost-nomination to the job ten years ago "the elephant in the room" and joked that Lautenberg came back from retirement in 2002 to make sure that he ultimately got the job.

Everybody needs to start a new job with a list of priorities and Chris Christie is no exception. There might be a thousand things that need to get done but a limited number that can be achieved. He needs to get up every morning, read the list, and raise hell until the list is complete. When it's done, write a new list.

Here's a start:

The amount of vitriol in the 1996 U.S. senate race between Democrat Robert Torricelli and Republican Dick Zimmer became the stuff of legend, even by Garden State standards.

Tonight, Zimmer showed up to Chris Christie’s party marking the conclusion to another particularly nasty race.  But how did it stack up to his own?

“I am resigned to the 1996 race being the permanent gold standard,” said Zimmer, who ran a much lower profile U.S. Senate race against incumbent Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) last year.  

Zimmer did see some parallels between the Torricelli race and Christie’s battle with Gov. Corzine.

“Robert Torricelli even said that I was opposed to mammography,” he said, noting that Corzine top campaign advisor Jamie Fox was also Torricelli’s chief of staff at the time.    “It worked.”

The contest for Governor of New Jersey might be the most visible but in the long term it might not be the most important. Long after our youngest children have forgotten the winner of this year's gubernatorial election they'll be aware of the pernicious loss of our quality of life in New Jersey.

The things that we value most in our quality of life are at issue. A quiet drive on a Sunday afternoon. A walk with family through falling autumn leaves. Having fresh produce for a summer picnic. They're all part of the struggle to preserve open space in New Jersey.

On November 3 voters will be asked to approve a $400 million bond issue to continue preserving our diminishing open space. It's the latest in a bipartisan effort over the last two decades to reverse the destruction of farms, fields, and forests that make New Jersey a wonderful place to live.

Our instincts in difficult economic times are probably to oppose the referendum. The last thing that our state government needs is more debt; and schools, tax relief, and health care are higher callings. A closer look might lead to a different conclusion.

There have been few clues as to Paul Fishman's plans for key posts in the U.S. Attorney's office after he takes the oath tomorrow morning.  For the time being, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra will return to his old post as First Assistant (Marra took over when Christopher Christie resigned on December 1), and Marc Larkins, who became Acting First Assistant following Michelle Brown's departure, will be the Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney.  Larkins has held both posts since Brown left last month.

Fishman is not expected to make any immediate announcements regarding key personnel, but new U.S. Attorneys typically assemble their own team.  That may or may not affect Marra, a career federal prosecutor.

Eight years ago, the appointment of a First Assistant U.S. Attorney was part of the deal to convince then-U.S. Senators Robert Torricelli and Jon Corzine, to sign off on Christie's nomination.  Torricelli and Corzine reportedly insisted that they have input on the selection of Christie's second in command.

The newest recipient of the Neil Romano Award for scamming a Bergen County political organization goes to Carmen Pio Costa, who convinced Republicans to nominate him for State Assembly in the potentially competitive 36th district by promising to raise money from his wealthy family.  For the second consecutive cycle, Pio Costa, the son of a millionaire developer/philanthropist from Morris County, has not come through; his individual and joint accounts show about $7,500 raised.

The last winner of the Neil Romano Award was Democrat Paul Stuart Aronsohn in his 2006 campaign for Congress.

One of the legendary scams in Bergen County politics came in 1984, when Republicans were considering candidates to take on newly-elected Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli. Torricelli had won the seat two years earlier, when he ousted three-term GOP incumbent Harold Hollenbeck by a 53%-46% margin. The political climate in 1982 (and congressional redistricting in the 9th) favored Democrats and Torricelli leveraged the national contacts he made working for Vice President Walter Mondale and running Jimmy Carter's 1980 re-election campaign in Illinois to help him raise $266,000 -- about $70,000 more than Hollenbeck had.

Ronald Reagan's popularity heading into the 1984 election, and a new congressional map (the '82 redistricting plan was tossed by federal judges), gave Republicans reason to believe Torricelli could be beaten. The 9th district went strongly for Reagan, giving him a 59%-41% win over Mondale -- a plurality of almost 47,000 votes.

Paul Fishman will become New Jersey's next U.S. Attorney after a ten-year quest for the post.  His nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate tonight.

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) pushed hard for Fishman to get the post in 1999, when Faith Hochberg was nominated to a federal judgeship.  But Fishman got in the middle of a rather extraordinary public feud between Lautenberg and then-U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli.  The Clinton administration sided with Torricelli, and when Hochberg resigned to take her seat on the bench (after a lengthy delay in the confirmation process), Attorney General Janet Reno elevated Torricelli's preferred choice, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary, as New Jersey's interim federal prosecutor.  Cleary remained in office until George W. Bush nominated Christopher Christie in 2001.

President Barack Obama must now formally sign his commission; that could happen as early as tomorrow.  Then Fishman must arrange for a federal judge to swear him in; that also could happen immediately.

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez's new book, Growing American Roots : Why Our Nation Will Thrive as Our Largest Minority Flourishes, has been published by Penguin Group (USA).  Menendez did his first book signing on Sunday in his old home town of Union City, where he broke into politics as a young school board member, Mayor, Assemblyman and State Senator before winning a seat in Congress in 1992. He is now the lone Latino in the United States Senate.

Menendez's book is now at 145,057 on the Barnes & Noble sales rank.  As a matter of comparison, as of this morning: former Gov. James E. McGreevey's book is ranked 119,152, ex-U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli's book on great political speeches is at 190,079, and former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley's most recent book is at 101,309.  Menendez leads another Cuban American Senator, Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), whose book is at 404,504.  He is also in a tight contest with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose boom is at 116,354.

Another tight race: sales of Menendez's book are trailing pre-sales of John Wefing's biography of another prominent New Jersey Democrat. The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes : The Politics of Civility, a biography of the former two-term Governor and Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.  The Hughes book is at 114,697 and is due to be released on November 15.

As the campaign for governor intensifies, both Governor Corzine and Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie have begun throwing some not-so-subtle personal jabs.

The latest example is a television ad Governor Corzine released yesterday.  More than a few observers and bloggers noticed the double entendre – whether intentional or not --when the voiceover says that Christie “threw his weight around” as U.S. Attorney to avoid traffic tickets and points on his license.  

Corzine spokesman Sean Darcy indicated today that the campaign did not intend for the comment to be taken literally.   But state Sen. Bill Baroni, who grew up overweight and lost 130 pounds 15 years ago, said that he “immediately” recognized a reference to Christie’s girth in the Corzine ad.

“Tens of thousands of New Jerseyans like me battle weight,” he said.   “To make reference to that in such a blatant way to distract from a discussion about the issues? We’re better than that.”

Corzine also got personal by launching a web ad accusing Christie of doing a favor for a fellow former U.S. Attorney who declined to prosecute his brother.  

But it has cut both ways.  Throughout the campaign, Christie has focused on portraying Corzine – who grew up in rural Illinois and moved to New Jersey in 1975 -- as not just out-of-touch, but out-of-town.  His campaign released a Web ad replaying a Corzine statement about the “Garden State Expressway”, which does not exist.