South Jersey Soprano

U.S. Senator Jon Corzine has just discovered an unexpected opponent in his campaign for the New Jersey governor's office: Potty-mouthed Democratic political boss George Norcross III.

A New Jersey corruption probe found Mr. Norcross, a banking executive and party fundraiser who holds no government office, bragging about how elected Democratic officials across the state and at all levels were beholden to him. The 117 minutes of secretly taped meetings released by state prosecutors are just a bite of the more than 300 hours yet to be made public. They show the influential Mr. Norcross to be a bullying puppeteer. He calls two assemblymen "boobs" and boasts of storming into a private state-house meeting to tell an assemblyman: "Don't [expletive] with me on this one because if I catch you one more time doing it, you're going to get your [expletive] cut off." (Come on, George, tell us how you really feel.)

Mr. Corzine's relationship with Mr. Norcross has been mixed. During Mr. Corzine's run for U.S. Senate, Mr. Norcross supported his rival, former governor Jim Florio. But relations warmed after the primary, eventually maturing into a $1 million personal donation from Mr. Corzine to Mr. Norcross's political committee. Mr. Norcross is heard saying on a tape: "In the end, the McGreeveys, the Corzines, they're going to be with me. Not because they like me, but because they have no choice."

The Norcross affair poses both an opportunity and challenge for Mr. Corzine in his gubernatorial quest. Mr. Corzine will be funding his campaign out of his own deep pockets, and running largely on an ethics and anticorruption platform, saying he "can't be bought." But Doug Forrester, his potential GOP opponent, is also a rich businessman and also will be running on a platform that highlights his aloofness from Trenton corruption.

How well Sen. Corzine fares in this contest of white knights may depend on what else is on the remaining 17,883 minutes of Norcross recordings. Since being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000, Mr. Corzine has involved himself heavily in New Jersey's elective politics, spreading his own money around among local office-holders, building a network of dependents and beneficiaries to aid his planned political rise (ultimately aimed at the White House, many New Jerseyans believe). In the process, he couldn't help but have dealings with the publicity-shy Mr. Norcross, whose brother Donald is also a powerful South Jersey labor leader and head of the Camden County Democrats.

We'll look forward to more of Mr. Norcross's colorful insight into New Jersey's unsavory boss system of favors and retribution as more of the tapes are revealed. How Mr. Corzine will feel about these wild-card revelations from Mr. Norcross's potty mouth is less certain.

-- Christian Knoebel