IMPERFECT TOGETHER:

In a Tough Sell, Corzine Works to Connect (DAVID W. CHEN, 3/10/09, NY Times)

Mr. Corzine is unlikely to win many new friends on Tuesday, when he is expected to propose a series of difficult steps to help the state close a $7 billion budget deficit: raising income taxes among the wealthiest residents, demanding that state workers agree to a wage freeze and take 12 unpaid days off, and reducing spending by billions. Small wonder, then, that Republicans are optimistic that they can win their first statewide election since 1997; one leading contender, a former United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, is already ahead in at least two polls.

Mr. Corzine, 62, may in part be a casualty of anxieties about the economy, as are elected officials around the country. But what complicates his second-term aspirations is the fact that Mr. Corzine, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, has never been particularly popular. His highest approval ratings in Quinnipiac University’s poll, 51 percent, came shortly after his car accident, a figure that political analysts now attribute to pity, and Mr. Corzine’s public service announcement urging seat belt use.

Yet now, with the political clock ticking fast against the backdrop of a national recession, Mr. Corzine, a lumbering public speaker, must do something that he has always struggled with: connect with the average resident.