No Hudson support for recall, though only 'bare majority' like McGreevey
Saturday, October 25, 2003
By Craig Garretson
Newhouse News ServiceJournal night city editor Hudson County residents are split over Gov. James E. McGreevey's job performance, but that doesn't mean they want to recall him.
A recent poll conducted by New Jersey City University for The Jersey Journal found that more than 60 percent of county residents believe McGreevey shouldn't be recalled, although just a razor-thin majority - 51 percent - think he's doing a good job as governor.
McGreevey's 51 percent approval rating is better than his usual numbers in statewide polls. In a Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers Poll taken in September, just 38 percent of New Jerseyans said he was doing a good job as governor, down from 43 percent in May.
"In overly Democratic Hudson, a bare majority is questionable support," the poll's supervisors, Bruce Chadwick of the English Department and Fran Moran of the Political Science Department, wrote in their analysis of the results.
In fact, McGreevey is polling slightly better with Republicans than he is overall, with 56 percent of Hudson Republicans saying he's doing a good job. Independents are split, with 51 percent approving of his performance; 47 percent of Hudson Democrats say they are unhappy with their governor.
The governor polled better with women (55 percent approval) than with men (45 percent), and also had more support from people under 50, with 55 percent approving of his work, compared with just 40 percent of those 50 and older, and among Hispanics (60 percent) and Asians (60 percent).
As usual, most residents - 53 percent - said they would vote Democratic in the state Assembly and Senate races Nov. 4, while just 12.5 percent said they would vote Republican. The Green Party drew 6.5 percent, while just over a quarter of residents said they remained undecided.
The survey also found that most residents - 60 percent - said the economy is the key issue in November's state elections. Education was a distant second, at 16.5 percent, followed by car insurance (11.7 percent), crime (6.8 percent) and urban sprawl (4.9 percent).
"The economy worries everyone," said Chadwick and Moran, who pointed out that the economy also was identified as the chief concern in a poll taken in the spring.
"It is far and away the key issue for men, the primary wage earners in many families, with two-thirds of the males in our survey selecting it number one. It is the chief concern for most minority groups," with 70 percent of Asian-Americans and 68 percent of Hispanics calling it their top concern.
But just 51 percent of African-Americans said the economy was their top concern, with 22 percent naming education, 12 percent car insurance, and another 12 percent saying the biggest problem is urban sprawl.
No recall for McGreevey
The survey also asked Hudson residents if they believe "recalls are a good idea." The results were fairly close, with 43.2 percent saying yes, 39.3 percent no and 17.5 percent saying they weren't sure.
However, less than 24 percent of residents said they'd be in favor of actually having a recall election, with 60 percent opposed and 16 percent undecided.
"The electorate was so split on the recall question that even Republicans, who succeeded with one in California, did not give it overwhelming support," Chadwick and Moran said.
The recall drew support from about 45 percent of Republicans and also about 45 percent of Democrats, but only about a third of independents polled favored one, the survey found. The rest were undecided.
In fact, of those who said they supported a recall election, more than half - 60 percent - said they would vote to keep McGreevey in office anyway.
"The surprising opposition to booting McGreevey from office, despite his bare majority in job approval and the popularity of the recall, indicates several things," Chadwick and Moran said.
"First, Hudson residents agree with the recall in general but do not believe the governor has merited dismissal. Second, people here are more sophisticated than those in California and understand that in this turbulent economy it is difficult for any governor to be overly successful.
"And third, the electoral circus that accompanied the California recall election may have turned off Hudson residents."
New Jersey does have a recall law, but the process is nothing like the one in California that resulted in Arnold Schwarzenegger emerging from a field of 135 candidates to replace the ousted Gray Davis.
In a New Jersey recall election, the only name on the ballot would be the governor's, and the only question would be whether he or she should be recalled.
If a majority of voters said yes, the president of the state Senate would assume the duties of governor - just as if the governor had died or resigned.
A 1993 amendment to the state Constitution gave voters the right to recall any elected official, but it also set stringent requirements. For one, no official can be recalled during the first year of his term, unlike in California, where Davis was recalled just 11 months into his second four-year term in office.
A recall election in this state requires a petition signed by 25 percent of registered voters - more than 1.1 million out of the state's 4.5 million would have to sign on. California requires signatures equal to 12 percent of the voter turnout in the last election - which translated to about 6 percent of registered voters, or 897,158 of California's 15.3 million registered voters.
