This spending buys exposure mostly to people who are not New Jersey voters. Corzine's expenses included millions for 40 or so consultants and for thousands of people to knock on doors. Corzine made hundreds of millions as CEO of Goldman Sachs, and no law does or should restrain his spending of it. Franks's argument is that Corzine has a God-given right to toss his money to the wind but that Corzine plans a similar tossing of taxpayers' money. This, says Franks, is only to be expected from someone who, the poor dear, has been unhinged by good fortune and rendered, through no fault of his own, incapable of understanding how the other 99.99 percent of Americans live.
Recent history offers Franks a sample of how such an argument can be made.
On the eve of the 1994 elections that ended 40 years of Democratic control of the House of Representatives, Speaker Tom Foley rejected the idea that members of Congress are overpaid. Which does not mean Corzine can be beaten by a comparable argument that he cannot possibly fathom the realities of life as experienced by the average voter. A recent poll shows that 52 percent of New Jersey voters are bothered not at all by Corzine's spending. Almost one-third of the electorate is, for Franks, a promising base of disaffected voters. The more Corzine spends, to the point of wretched excess, the better it might be for Franks, who led by five points in a Gannett poll last Sunday.