Zulima V. Farber, who resigned Tuesday, and
Gov. Jon S. Corzine. Only hours before, Ms.
Farber was intent on remaining attorney general.
Attorney General Put Up a Fight Before Relenting and Resigning
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Published: August 17, 2006
TRENTON, Aug. 16 — Even as Gov. Jon S. Corzine was minutes away from publicly calling for the resignation of Attorney General Zulima V. Farber, Ms. Farber was deciding whether to fight the effort to force her out, according to four people involved in the complex negotiations.
On Monday, a special prosecutor released a report harshly criticizing Ms. Farber for interceding with the police on behalf of her companion during a traffic stop on May 26. Ms. Farber and her allies quickly began an effort to help her save her job as the state’s chief law enforcement official. The public interest group Women Advocating for Good Government, which lists Ms. Farber as a member of the executive board, started an e-mail campaign urging the governor and legislators not to push her from office.
In discussions with members of the governor’s inner circle on Wednesday, Ms. Farber and her allies also insisted that her misjudgment was no worse than Mr. Corzine’s actions in February, when he lent $5,000 in bail money to help a former Trenton lobbyist and campaign aide, Karen Golding, who was arrested and accused of stalking the chairman of the State Democratic Party.
“Zulima felt that if her appearance as attorney general was improper, so was his interference with Karen Golding,” said one person who has known both people for years, and was familiar with the negotiations this week. “She was upset there was no special investigation into that. And she was going to take him on.”
But Mr. Corzine was not swayed by that argument or the possibility of a protracted public fight to remove her. He met with Ms. Farber at his apartment in Hoboken on Monday night and listened to her pleas that she be punished with a fine, a letter of reprimand or some other sanction that would preserve her job. But by Tuesday morning, when Mr. Corzine and Ms. Farber met in his office in the Gateway Center in Newark, the governor stopped short of directly asking for a resignation, but told her that he thought it would be best if she stepped down, according to his aides.
Even then, Ms. Farber was unwilling to relent. By 3 p.m., as ranking legislators from both parties demanded that she step down, Mr. Corzine’s staff told Ms. Farber’s aides that the governor had scheduled a 4 p.m. news conference to call for her resignation. Only 15 minutes before Mr. Corzine was to step up to the lectern in his outer office at the State House on Tuesday, Ms. Farber’s advisers told the governor that she had decided to resign and asked that the announcement be pushed back to 6 p.m. so they could appear jointly.
Big difference between Golding and Farber. Regardless of her actions, Corzine chose to help a friend. It wasn't smart, but it didn't involve state government administration.
She was the attorney general, she has a list of traffic violations as long as your arm and so did her boyfriend. She then used her office to make another violation disappear. Corzine was warned about her before he hired her.
If he tried to keep her on, the local papers, as well as the NY and Philly papers would have hammered him.
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