It was in 1993, along with Virginia – and in both Virginia and New Jersey, the GOP is the early favorite:
Gov. Jon S. Corzine could face a tough re-election bid, according to the results of a new poll showing his approval ratings slipping and the Democrat trailing his likely Republican challenger.
Only 40 percent of registered voters polled in the Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind survey released Wednesday approved of Corzine’s job performance, with 46 percent disapproving upside down from results released in January.
At the same time, Corzine is behind former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie by 9 percentage points in a theoretical matchup, 32 percent to 41 percent.
The survey comes in the midst of a state budget crisis and follows Corzine’s proposal to cut more than $1 billion from the budget and to furlough state workers for two days to help close a $3.6 billion gap in the current state spending plan, brought on by plummeting revenues.
It also comes days before the governor is set to unveil the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, with sharp cuts and other actions expected to offset a projected $6 billion to $7 billion shortfall, potentially including additional furloughs, and even layoffs, if public workers continue to resist a wage freeze.
“When budgets are cut, public employees laid off, and taxes are in danger of being raised, lots of people think twice about their support for the incumbent,” said PublicMind poll director Peter Woolley.
Naturally, this is still waaaay the heck early and Corzine has vast resources to apply to his re-election bid, but no Democrat can be pleased that the GOP is holding the advantage in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests. Especially when one considers that we’re still pretty heavily into the Glo-Bama phase of the Obama Administration and he’s still riding high at around 60% approval. If Obama’s popularity tanks – highly likely given the economic disaster we’re heading into – then the headwind against Democrats will just become stronger and stronger.
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