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Lautenberg narrowly leads Forrester
By MICHAEL SYMONS GANNETT STATE BUREAU TRENTON -- New Jersey voters appear to be poised to return Democratic former Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg to the U.S. Senate for a fourth term, but only narrowly, according to results of a new Gannett New Jersey Poll. Lautenberg, who served in the Senate from 1983 to 2001, leads Republican businessman Douglas Forrester, 42 percent to 37 percent. The margin grows to about 8 percentage points if voters who prefer a candidate, but haven't committed, are added. The Gannett New Jersey Poll questioned 611 likely voters between Wednesday and 6 p.m. yesterday. The poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points, meaning the 5-point difference falls within the error margin. Lautenberg appears to have recovered the core Democratic voters -- inner-city residents targeted yesterday at a rally in Newark with former President Clinton, teachers and union members -- who were straying from the party a month ago. "I'll be voting Democratic. I'm a union member, a member of Communications Workers of America, and they're strongly endorsing the Democrat," said Richard Brown, 35, of Roxbury, a Verizon field technician. "I'm a strong Democratic supporter." Republicans may have been in a fantastic position to win their first U.S. Senate race in New Jersey since 1972 if Sen. Robert G. Torricelli hadn't quit the race Sept. 30. A majority of Lautenberg's supporters said they wouldn't have voted for Torricelli. Only 32 percent of the respondents who said they will vote for Lautenberg would have committed to supporting Torricelli. Seven percent backed Forrester, and 21 percent backed a third-party candidate. A whopping 25 percent said they'd have skipped the race. "I was self-disenfranchised. The NJEA called, as they always do, and asked me to be supportive of Torricelli, and I just couldn't do it," said Joe Hartmann, a former Gibbsboro mayor and retired teacher and athletic director. "I felt I would be prostituting myself." Hartmann, 71, said he would have written in Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J. The stay-at-home statistic underscores why the state Democratic Party, which had backed Torricelli until the final days of his candidacy, finally pushed him aside: His unpopularity was threatening to hurt their House, county and local candidates down the ballot. Gannett poll director Gary Deckelnick said the actual number of people who defected from the Democratic Party is probably not as high as polls show, but now that Torricelli is off the ballot, it is easy for those polled to say they would not have voted for him. "There would have been some people who shut their eyes to Torricelli's name and simply voted Democratic to try to preserve the seat in the Senate," Deckelnick said. "But if only half of the people who say they would not have voted or would have voted for someone else meant it, the difference is significant." Lautenberg was supported by 42 percent of those polled, and Forrester by 37 percent. Thirteen percent were undecided, 6 percent refused to answer, and 2 percent said they would vote for someone else. Two Shore-area voters said they had made up their minds and did not plan to change them. "Forrester," said Sandra Weston, 32, of Howell, who votes for Republicans more often than she votes for Democrats. "First of all, I was going to vote for him before Torricelli dropped out. Second of all, I don't agree as to why Torricelli dropped out of the race. He knew the rules ahead of time." Likewise, Jo Costa, 73, a retiree living in Tuckerton, said she would vote Republican. "I'm for Forrester," she said. "I believe in what he says. Mr. Torricelli was running, and I think he should have quit. Basically, I'm a conservative, and I would have voted for Forrester either way." Forrester effectively drove Torricelli from the U.S. Senate with a relentless campaign focused on the incumbent's ethics. Torricelli insisted he didn't knowingly break Senate rules by taking gifts from a campaign donor, but a harsh reprimand ended his career. Torricelli didn't quit the race until two weeks after the apparent deadline to change candidates on the November ballot. But the state Supreme Court ruled that Democrats could replace Torricelli to ensure voters could choose between the two major parties. The decision put New Jersey Democrats in the eye of a national firestorm, even though the court ruling was based on 50 years of legal history in the state and nearly all the Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican former Gov. Christie Whitman. Nelson Hina, 37, a quality-assurance engineer who lives in Piscataway, said he will vote for Forrester only because Torricelli dropped out. Hina questioned why Democrats have turned to Lau-tenberg and former Vice Presi-dent Walter Mondale when late vacancies occurred. "I may not have voted. The only reason I am voting is to make a statement against the Democratic Party's attempt to do what they're doing," said Hina, who usually votes GOP in state and federal races. "It was tragic what happened out there in Minnesota, but I'm just wondering how come Democrats need to keep filling in with old names like Mondale and Lauten-berg," said Hina, referring to the plane crash last month that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone and led to Mondale's candidacy. "These guys have already retired, right? Don't they have any younger, fresher names? Why does the party have to rely on the old people?" The Gannett poll found voters remain split over the Supreme Court decision. Forty-seven per-cent said the court should have permitted Democrats to name a new candidate, while 38 percent said Torricelli's name should have been kept on the ballot. "I didn't like what the Democrats did with Torricelli and putting in the new candidate at the last min-ute," said Vincent DeMaria, 61, of Peapack-Gladstone, a Forrester backer who owns an accounting business. "I don't believe the Su-preme Court had the right to do what they did. The law says more than 51 days, and it wasn't. It's as simple as that." A computer with a database that includes all of the state's residen-tial phone numbers randomly gen-erated the numbers called. If the poll were done 20 times, the an-swers in 19 of those polls would be within 4 percentage points of the answers that would result if every adult in New Jersey had been called. The Gannett New Jersey daily newspapers are the Asbury Park Press, Courier News of Bridge-water, Courier-Post of Cherry Hill, The Daily Journal of Vine-land, Daily Record of Parsippany, Home News Tribune of East Brunswick and Ocean County Ob-server of Toms River.
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