Richard Merkt

They may face each other in a gubernatorial primary election next year, but for now Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham) wants U.S. Attorney Chris Christie activated for a common purpose.

Tired of lobbying state channels and getting no results, Merkt today called on Christie to investigate a grant program that appears to have been "nothing more than a political pork slush fund for certain Democratic legislators," in Merkt’s words.

"We need to know what legislators, in addition to (former state Sen. Wayne Bryant D-Camden) had control of these funds, where they directed those funds, and whether they benefitted from the recipients," said Merkt, who’s probing a run for governor next year. "The U.S. Attorney now needs to look into the entire scope of this program to see whether there is wrongdoing that extends beyond Mr. Bryant’s actions."

Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham) and Mendham Committeewoman Jane Tiger.: Politicker file photoOn the occasion of Gov. Jon Corzine’s release today of wide-ranging ethics reform, GOP gubernatorial candidate Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Mendham), criticized Corzine for dragging his heels.

"The Governor acknowledged from his first day in office that there was a need for a change in the culture of corruption enveloping Trenton," said Merkt, who launched an exploratory committee for a 2009 bid in late summer. "That being the case, it is hard to understand why it took him three years to propose ethics reforms that he could have demanded on his first day in office. In the meantime, dozens of public officials have been indicted and millions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered as these corrupt practices continued without any meaningful opposition by the administration.

Gov. Jon Corzine at the convention.: Politicker photo 

DENVER - The clash of speaking styles could not have been more dramatic.

There was U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), consigning Karl Rove to the most fiery furnaces of Dante’s Inferno, and putting extra incisors in the teeth of the party attack dog on the tail end of a Thursday breakfast in which half the crowd had appeared asleep before Pascrell arrived and roused them.

Then came Gov. Jon Corzine, and one could almost imagine the house lights again going way down as he began his morning remarks.

On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, the governor went to that oratorical touchstone to refer back to something even earlier, which King had also invoked in his 1963 speech: the words "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence.

"We now have an opportunity as a nation and as a human race to make that real," Corzine told the crowd. "We will be as hard as Joe Biden’s mother told him to be, but we shouldn’t lose track of the fact that there is a vision for a better world."

It was a quintessential Corzine statement, delivered in the most self-effacing Midwestern tones. Every time he slid a Jersey edge into his rhetoric, as when he roared moments later that Democrats are in the hardest fight of their lives and have one hell of a chance, he still carried the thought to a idealistic conclusion.

Assemblyman Rick Merkt (R-Medham) is thinking about running for Governor in 2009.
DENVER - When people ask him if he’s a mountain man - one of those hard right warriors from Northwestern Jersey, Assemblyman Rick Merkt (R-Randolph) responds that he’s "more of a foothill guy."

Whatever the colloquialism, Merkt said today that he is very serious about trying to climb over the obstacles to challenge Gov. Jon Corzine. Tomorrow he will officially establish an exploratory committee toward that end.

How serious is he?

"I will not seek re-election to the Assembly," said the 11-year legislative veteran, a corporate attorney with TDI Power in Hackettstown.

"This is no trial balloon," Merkt said. "I’ve been considering this for a number of months, and I am convinced that New Jersey needs a governor who respects the people."

Two Democrats today publicly withdrew an ethics complaint they filed against Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R-Morris) last year.

Burlington County Democratic Chairman Rick Perr and former Somerset County Democratic Chairman Elia Pelios last year filed a complaint with the Joint Committee on Ethical Standards alleging that Merkt had violated the state’s conflicts of interest law and the legislative code of ethics related to his vote on the 2002 budget.

The ethics complaint, which was also filed against six other Repulbican legislators, was dismissed a month later after the committee found that it went beyond the statute of limitations. But Merkt took particular offense to it, filing a lawsuit against the the two Democrats charging libel and defamation of character.