Clay Richards Quotations

There are people who no longer feel he'd be different.

Sen. Menendez has a 6-point lead in his race for re-election mainly because New Jersey is a Democratic state more fed up with the Bush administration and the war in Iraq than it is with high taxes and the budget crisis at home.

Most people decided that the government, including the Legislature ... should just stay out of the matter.

Nelson's numbers are getting stronger, but about a third of the voters still say they don't know enough about him to form an opinion.

Newly appointed Sen. Robert Menendez leads Tom Kean by the narrowest of margins only because there are more Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey.

His polls have definitely weakened because, one, he had signed the legislative pay-raise bill last year, which was highly unpopular; and, two, he failed to deliver on his promise to lower property taxes.

I wouldn't be surprised if as many as 25 percent of New Jersey voters said they are supporting Kean because of his father's record, or because they like his father.

I think these numbers should give Congressman Mark Foley reason to consider making a run.

We're all out there in August beating the bushes, and the voters are still at the beach.

While a majority of the voters view both candidates as being honest and trustworthy, the number who did not jumped eight points for Mr. Forrester and four for the senator.

The controversy from 2000 is going to hurt her as a candidate.

While voters think the legislative pay raise is excessive and want it repealed, it does not appear that lawmakers will suffer greatly at the polls for making themselves the second-best paid Legislature in the country.

At the start of the election year, to have the governor still be up (by) double digits after all of the hoopla about Swann, I think is significant. But of course, the race is just beginning, so we have a long way to go.

The bottom line is that even when things are equal in New Jersey, the Democrats win.

For a governor who signed the despised legislative pay raise and saw his plan to use gambling money to lower property taxes go down in flames, Ed Rendell ought to be called Teflon Ed.

This is interesting. Usually corruption doesn't even come up in polls.

I'm sure that was among the factors that changed the margin in this.

If voters are in a Florio anti-tax mood, his approval rating will suffer. If he's able to convince them that tax increases are necessary to maintain state services they want, then his approval rating, while not going up sharply, should not be too badly damaged.

If there were a third-party candidate on the ballot who is pro-choice, that candidate could draw heavily from Casey backers among liberal Democrats, enough to make it a close race.