Most New Jersey residents think President Bush is doing a poor job, but state Republican Party leaders believe he can help them raise enough money to be competitive in the November general election.
Bush is scheduled to appear at the Expo Center in Edison, N.J., today to raise money for legislative candidates. All 120 Statehouse seats are up for grabs in the fall, as well as numerous county courthouse and municipal seats. Tickets are $300 to attend and $5,000 for a photo with the president.
Democrats have $17 million on hand, $10 million more than the state's Republicans. And, Democrats, who are in power in Trenton, have been using their money to run tough races in GOP strongholds, including Cape May and Burlington Counties.
In Burlington, one Democratic state Senate candidate, Rich Dennison, has been holding news conferences outside GOP State Sen. Diane Allen's office asking her to disavow the president. Allen has not taken the bait.
New Jersey voters, like many in the Northeast, are unhappy with the president's performance in office, with only 28 percent of New Jersey voters saying they approve of him, according to a May 6 poll of 648 voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Still, voter disapproval will likely not affect donor enthusiasm, according to several observers of New Jersey politics.
"Bush will make money for the Republicans in New Jersey," said Mickey Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University poll. "A president is a draw no matter what."
The Quinnipiac University poll in April of 1,424 New Jersey voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points, showed that 25 percent of the respondents approved of Bush's handling of his job as president. In the Philadelphia area, Bush had the lowest of all ratings, at 18 percent.
Nationally, Bush is holding a 32 percent approval rating, according to a distillation of various polls produced by pollster.com.
While having a popular president boosts the morale of party workers, a lack of popularity doesn't have much effect on local races, said Peter Wooley, of Fairleigh Dickinson's PublicMind poll.
