Release Date September 20, 2005

Most New Jersey Candidates Refuse to
Provide Issue Information to Public

Great Divide Ranch, MT September 20, 2005-- Today Project Vote Smart released the results of the National Political Awareness Test for New Jersey. Five of the ten candidates for Governor refused to provide information on the Political Courage Test. Among others, major party candidates Senator John Corzine (D) and Doug Forrester (R) answered no and chose to ignore repeated requests from their own party members, Project Vote Smart, and the media asking them to provide the public with their issue positions. The five candidates who completed the Political Courage Test are Wesley K. Bell, Edward "NJ Weedman" Forchion, Jeffrey Pawlowski, Constantino Rozzo, and Matthew Thieke. Sixty-one out of 180 candidates for state legislature (36 percent) were willing to complete the Political Courage Test, which is slightly higher than the 33 percent who answered yes in 2003.

The Political Courage Test has one central purpose: to ask candidates if they are willing to provide voters with their positions on the issues they will most likely face if elected. All candidates in New Jersey participated in the Political Courage Test by stating whether or not they were willing to provide voters with this crucial issue information. Candidates passed by answering "yes" and filling out at least 70 percent of the Political Courage Test, or failedby answering "no" and refusing to return the Political Courage Test even after they had been asked to do so numerous times by the media, leaders of both major parties, and Project staff. The results gathered from the Political Courage Test are clear: either candidates are willing to tell the public what their views on the issues are, or they are not. Either response allows the public to evaluate the character of their candidates.

These results indicate that two-thirds of the candidates for state legislature and half of the gubernatorial candidates refused to answerquestions on the issues of most concern to New Jersey citizens. "Unfortunately, these results in New Jersey show the influence of a disturbing national trend for political candidates to refuse to provide issue positions," said Richard Kimball, Project Vote Smart President."Candidates are forcing voters to go to the polls without the crucial information needed for self-governance."

The Political Courage Test has been created, designed and drafted by more than 200 of the nation's most prominent journalists, political scientists, and leaders of the major and third political parties. The testing period for New Jersey was from August 3rd to September 14th, giving the candidates six weeks to complete the test.

The results of each candidate's Political Courage Test may be obtained from:

• The toll-free Voter's Research Hotline (888-VOTE-SMART)
• The Vote Smart web site (www.vote-smart.org)

Other information available through the Hotline and web site includes campaign finance data, biographical information, voting records, issue positions, special interest groups' ratings and contact information, where available, on close to 40,000 candidates and elected officials at the presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, state and local levels.

The Project recently added judicial information to the online database. New Jersey citizens can now access biographical information and court opinions for the US Supreme Court and Supreme Court nominees, and judges for the US Courts of Appeals, US District Courts, state supreme courts, and other state courts of last resort.

Project Vote Smart is a national research organization founded by national leaders such as Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, John McCain and Geraldine Ferraro. It is funded entirely through foundation grants and the individual contributions of 45,000 members.