From one end of the Jersey Turnpike to the other, political scandals are popping up like mushrooms in the Garden State, resurrecting New Jersey's reputation as a toxic waste dump of corruption. Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco dropped out of the governor's race last week after a series of news stories about alleged conflicts of interest in his business and legal dealings. And state Supreme Court Justice Peter G. Verniero narrowly avoided impeachment proceedings last week over allegations he misled lawmakers during his confirmation hearing about racial profiling by State Police. In the past year, Camden's mayor was convicted of taking payoffs from the mob, the Bergen County sheriff admitted shaking down employees for contributions to his re-election campaign, and Passaic County's Republican party chairman was accused of brokering corrupt contracts.
New Jersey is no better, no worse than any other state in the country.
If anything, the scandals have proved that the jokes about New Jersey being polluted both environmentally and politically were buried in a shallow grave. Last week, when he dropped out of the governor's race, DiFrancesco said the intense media coverage of his business dealings had hurt his family, and he cited an editorial cartoon showing TV's fictional New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano reading newspaper headlines about DiFrancesco, Torricelli and Verniero. Political analysts and others agree New Jersey's reputation for political corruption was deserved, but only up until the early 1980s, around the time a senator and a Camden mayor were convicted in the Abscam case, in which FBI agents posed as Arab businessmen dangling bribes. Since then, a string of vigorous federal prosecutions seemed to clean state and local government. Reform governors worked to make the state a model.