Judith Enck, New York's deputy secretary for the environment, was announced yesterday as the pick by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who used to run the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection until earlier this year.

NJ Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel likes the pick and says a strong EPA regional administrator is needed as an unknown quantity in Gov.-elect Chris Christie is getting ready to take the helm. "With a new administration coming in that has not been tested, we must have an experienced EPA head," he said.

Environmentalists were disillusioned by outgoing Gov. Jon Corzine. Tittel's organization endorsed independent Chris Daggett, the New Jersey Environmental Federation went with Christie, and Environment New Jersey withheld endorsements from any candidate.

Daggett, by the way, ran the EPA's Region 2 office (which oversees NY, NJ, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands) from 1984, when then-Gov. Tom Kean won a political battle with then-Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., over which state would control the appointment, through 1988.

With Jackson, a New Jerseyan, holding the top job, the regional post has now shifted to New York. Region 2 administrators since the early to mid-'90s have included Jeanne Fox, Jane Kenny and Alan Steinberg.

"When the New Jersey legislature is sworn in on January 12, 2010, it will have 34 women (28.3 percent) among its 120 members. New Jersey will rank 15th in the nation for the proportion of women in its legislature. The peak was 31.7 percent in late 2009, briefly placing New Jersey 7th among the states.

"The new legislature will include 26 women elected to the Assembly on Tuesday (17D, 9R). All were re-elected incumbents; no women won open seats or defeated incumbents. The number of women in the Assembly will drop from the 2009 total, since two assemblywomen did not seek re-election.

"There were no regular elections for the New Jersey Senate this year, but eight holdovers (6D, 2R) will remain in office. The number of women in the Senate dropped by two; Senator Marcia Karrow lost her primary, and Senator Dana Redd, who was elected Mayor of Camden, will step down to assume that post."

Christie and Lt. Gov.-elect Kim Guadagno hold a roundtable discussion with Ocean County mayors at 11 a.m. at the Toms River Municipal Building. They'll later travel north to North Middletown for a 3 p.m. small business roundtable and tour at Guttenplan's Frozen Dough Inc. on Route 36.

The visits bring Christie to the region that delivered him overwhelming pluralities en route to his election Tuesday -- a 70,000 vote margin in Ocean County and 64,000 in Monmouth County. They also mark his first stops in GOP territory since his victory.

In mid-October, the Treasury Department had announced $205 million in savings maneuvers and said Corzine had directed Cabinet officers to identify another $200 million in reductions by Dec. 1. At a Cabinet meeting at the Statehouse Thursday, Corzine doubled that request to $400 million.

Corzine has promised a smooth transition to Gov.-elect Chris Christie, who thwarted Corzine's re-election effort in Tuesday's election. His office released photos Wednesday of the governor calling Christie to talk about the transfer of power. His directive Thursday, along with a call for lawmakers to avoid passing bills during the upcoming lame-duck session that result in added spending, have been welcomed by GOP lawmakers, whose tone toward Corzine has changed a bit since Christie unseated him.

"My administration will continue to live up to our responsibility to maintain a fiscally balanced budget during the next two months," Corzine said. "These cuts will be tough but necessary choices that need to be addressed now. Ignoring these issues over the next two months will not make them go away and will only hurt the people of New Jersey. I will not allow politics to stand in the way of doing what is right."

Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. today, on Corzine requesting $400 million more in savings by Dec. 1: "Governor Corzine is making the tough, necessary decisions to ensure that the state budget remains in balance throughout the remainder of the current fiscal year. It is encouraging that he moved quickly to address the revenue shortfall."

Kean two-plus weeks ago, when Corzine announced $205 million in reductions and plans for $200 million more: "The governor has announced he’s planning to adjust the budget by $405 million when it’s clear that we could have a $1 billion problem in this year alone. The governor’s poor fiscal management could lead to an additional billion dollar deficit that could result in losses in state aid and dramatic increases in local property taxes."

Democratic Assemblyman Louis Greenwald maintained the pre-election, sharp-elbows approach and said Democrats "will not repeat (the) last minute Republican feeding frenzy" from when they lost the governor's office (and the Legislature) eight years ago: "One thing we won’t do is repeat what happened in 2001, when Republicans went on a wild and chaotic feeding frenzy and at the last minute irresponsibly spent hundreds of millions of dollars we didn’t have as a recession loomed. ... We will not repeat the Republican mistakes of the past.”

• Princeton Public Affairs Group hosts a post-election luncheon at the Forsgate Country Club in Monroe, to discuss the 2009 election and the upcoming legislative session. Participants include Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts and Minority Leader Alex DeCroce; state party chairmen Joe Cryan for the Democrats and Jay Webber for the Republicans, both members of the Assembly; and Christie campaign strategist Mike DuHaime and Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor Loretta Weinberg, a state senator.
• The New Jersey Education Association wraps up its annual teachers' convention in Atlantic City.
• New Jersey Citizen Action sponsors an informational picket at American International Group offices in Jersey City urging that bonus awards be rescinded and taken back from AIG executives. NJCA says AIG has promised $475 million in bonuses to employees in the unit responsible for many of the losses that have prompted the federal government to put $182 billion into the company.
• The U.S. Marshal's office and state Office of the Attorney General continue their latest Operation Safe Surrender at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, allowing individuals wanted for nonviolent felony or misdemeanor warrants to turn themselves in. Public defenders and representatives of social service agencies are there to meet the folks re-entering the court system.

My Home News Tribune colleague, Sergio Bichao, who covered Christie's walk through downtown Woodbridge today, said the Republican announced that his brother, Todd, and advisor William J. Palatucci will co-chair the inaugural committee to "organize different events surrounding the inaugural."

Palatucci, 51, of Westfield, is senior vice president and general counsel for public affairs at Community Education Centers, which provides offender reentry and in-prison treatment services. Before joining its staff, he represented the company for 15+ years as outside counsel and lobbyist while a partner at the law Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci, where Christie once also once a partner.

Todd Christie, 45, of Mendham, is a managing member of Morristown-based Big Blue Trading LLC. He and Palatucci attended the Republican National Convention together in 2008, in a sense standing in for Christie's brother, who at the time was U.S. Attorney and not supposed to take part in partisan politics. He has made more than $401,000 in contributions to state candidates and committees since 2001 and some $500,000 in federal contributions -- including, by the way, donations to Democrats Max Cleland and John Kerry. On top of that, his $200,000 donation to the Republican Governors Association this fall was attacked by independent Chris Daggett after the RGA began running ads attacking his tax proposals.

Todd Christie also played an unsought role in the recent campaign. He was one of 20 traders accused of improper trading in a stock fraud investigation in New York but wound up being one of five not charged criminally; his company, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, paid a civil penalty of $16.5 million. The lead investigator from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, David Kelley, was selected two years later by Chris Christie, then the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, to oversee an out-of-court settlement with five medical device manufacturers implicated in a doctor kickback scheme.

In his election night speech, Christie condemned the political attacks on his family.

"In February when I announced for governor, I said I knew this campaign would get into the gutter, and that I would not follow my opponents into that gutter. And I told you then I did not know whether that was a winning strategy or a losing strategy, but I told you it was my strategy -- that I had worked too hard over my life to give away my integrity for any job, not even this one.

"Let me tell you this: Through their overwhelming support tonight, the people of New Jersey said, 'No more negative personal campaigns.' In the face of a $30 million onslaught that consisted almost exclusively of a negative personal campaign against me, my family and my friends, the people of New Jersey decided enough is enough."

Lonegan said the appropriation-based contract bonds violate the state constitution because voters didn't approve them. The courts say they have already dealt with Lonegan's complaint when it was first brought in 2002. The appeals court said Lonegan's current case "is indistinguishable in any meaningful respect from his prior challenge ... that the Court rejected."

The Garden State Equality ads (which can be seen back-to-back below) include a 60-second spot about a Middlesex County couple who raised two disabled children and struggled, as one of the children was dying, to get would-be employers to recognize their civil union. The other says civil unions don't adequately guarantee people access to visit a partner in a hospital room. Both ads talk about the "freedom to marry, " with the first ending with this phrase: "It won't affect your marriage. But it will mean everything to them."

On the flip side, opponents of gay marriage such as the New Jersey Family Policy Council say Corzine lost re-election in part due to his support for the issue, claiming that may have cost him votes among blacks and Hispanics in urban centers, where his vote was smaller than Democrats garnered in recent years.

"Listen, my job in 76 days is to be governor of the state of New Jersey. Whatever else is going on in the other 49 states, let them have at it. I've got enough on my plate with the mess in this state and how broken it is. I can't worry about what's happening in any of the other states."

Christie and Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell are both conservatives who downplayed those credentials (though were hammered with them often by their Democratic opponents) while seeking support -- successfully, exit polls showed -- from independents.

In a special election to fill a vacant House seat in upstate New York, the Democratic candidate defeated a Conservative whose success in polls had compelled the Republican nominee to drop out of the race -- and endorse the Democrat. That seat had been held by Republicans for roughly 150 years.

Christie recorded surprising wins in Middlesex County and in Woodbridge, some of the many blue-to-red transitions that catapulted him to victory. Christie's camp says it realized Tuesday night that it would win around 9 p.m., when it learned it had won in Woodbridge.

"I'm going to go in there with an optimistic point of view. The voters obviously spoke very clearly last night. A race that people were saying the last couple of days was too close to call, many people in the days leading up to it saying the governor had momentum and was going to win, was a race that was really over last night for all practical purposes by 9 o'clock. And so I think the voters have spoken really clearly. As a result, I think members of the Legislature understand that people have voted for change. What that means is we have to be cooperating with each other. The points of view that I espoused in the campaign were not ambivalent. I laid out exactly what my philosophy was going to be, and the voters voted for it. So now we're going to have to engage in the compromise that will occur always when people have different views. And I'm optimistic that whoever the leadership will be of both houses of the Legislature will be ready to cooperate. So I go into it optimistic.

"To answer your second question, am I willing to fight? Of course I am. You've watched me for eight years now. I'm not a wallflower. If it's something that I feel very strongly about, if it's a matter of principle for me and for (Lt.Gov.-elect) Kim (Guadagno), then we'll fight. But I don't go into it with that assumption. I go into it with the assumption that leadership and the members of the Legislature are people of good will who heard the voters."

• Gov.-elect. Chris Christie told reporters Tuesday that he would be making more announcements today about his transition office and plans.
• The New Jersey Education Association opens its annual teachers' convention in Atlantic City.
• Monmouth University in West Long Branch hosts a post-election panel discussion about the governor's race and the political scene in 2010. The moderators are Michael Murphy, lobbyist and 1997 candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, and Alan Steinberg, Republican and former EPA regional director. Panelists include Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray and campaign strategists Bill Pascoe (R) and Julie Roginsky (D).
• The U.S. Marshal's office and state Office of the Attorney General continue their latest Operation Safe Surrender at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, allowing individuals wanted for nonviolent felony or misdemeanor warrants to turn themselves in. Public defenders and representatives of social service agencies are there to meet the folks re-entering the court system.
• Assm. Wayne DeAngelo turns 44.

Jeffrey S. Chiesa, 44, of Branchburg, a former executive assistant U.S. Attorney and counsel when Christie headed that office, will be executive director of the transition committee, heading its day-to-day operations. He was a partner with Christie at Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci before working at the U.S. Attorney's Office from 2002 to 2009. He's currently working at Wolff & Samson, too.

Christie said other announcements about the transition will have wait until tomorrow or later.

"Show me the money!" they yelled, to a bit of laughter.

The plea/lobbying effort is a common refrain whenever public officials come calling at Robert Treat, organized by Adubato -- or "Big Steve," as Christie later called him.

"Thanks for that 'Show me the money' thing," Christie said later. "It's always one of my favorite parts about coming to visit Robert Treat Academy."

Adubato earlier was hugging Christie from behind around the neck and shoulders at the start of the assembly, which opened with the students singing Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," followed by the Robert Treat alma mater.

Christie supports charter schools and said he came to Robert Treat today to encourage media coverage of its success; Christie says charter schools often succeed while spending significantly less money, especially in places like Jersey City and Newark, than traditional public schools.

Christie's performance was most potent along the Shore. He won in both Monmouth and Ocean counties by 48,000 more votes each than Republican Doug Forrester did in 2005.

On the opposite side, Gov. Jon Corzine's victory margin fell by 14,000 in Camden County, 15,000 in Hudson County, 17,000 in Union County and 20,700 in Essex County.

• The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University hosts its traditional post-election "morning after" program to analyze the election results. Panelists include Kathleen Donovan, a Republican who currently serves as Bergen County clerk, and Gordon MacInnes, a Democrat and a former assistant education commissioner. Both are former lawmakers. Associated Press reporter Angela Delli Santi and Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran are also panelists.
• The U.S. Marshal's office and state Office of the Attorney General kick off their latest Operation Safe Surrender at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, allowing individuals wanted for nonviolent felony or misdemeanor warrants to turn themselves in. Public defenders and representatives of social service agencies are there to meet the folks re-entering the court system.
• The Health Care Facilities Financing Authority finance committee meets in Trenton.

Christie drew 39,674, or 47.3%, to Corzine's 36,842, or 43.9%. Independent candidate Chris Daggett drew 8%.

Christie is at 217,064, Corzine at 182,462. (I don't have on-the-fly numbers including the 10 independents, headed by Chris Daggett.) Those numbers include incomplete returns from key Democratic counties such as Essex and Hudson and key Republican counties such as Monmouth and Ocean. Missing are any numbers from half of the state's counties, so take it with a grain of salt.

The economy and jobs was named by 33% and property taxes by 27%. They were followed by corruption at 21% and health care at 19%.

But voters’ top issue depended on who they supported today. Among Christie voters, 33% named property taxes and 31% focused on corruption. But among Corzine voters, the economy and jobs was the number one concern of 41%, followed by health care at 32%.

Monmouth/Gannett poll director Patrick Murray speculated that the reason the economy topped property taxes, which normally ranks first among voters' concerns, is that the candidates didn't talk about the issue much.

“One of the reasons why property taxes is polling lower now than pre-election polls is that the pre-election polls asked what issues the voters most wanted to hear about. The exit poll asked which issue factored most in your vote. Since the two main contenders avoided this issue like the plague, many voters had to search for another issue on which to base their decision,” said Murray.