Zimmer, Sabrin won't ask Bush for campaign aid

Zimmer, Sabrin won't ask Bush for campaign aid
By TOM BALDWIN
Gannett State Bureau

They danced around the question Tuesday, but Richard A. Zimmer and Murray Sabrin, competing to be the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, agreed they won't be asking for campaign help from President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.

Zimmer said he planned to campaign with U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Sabrin, who has criticized McCain on war policy, said he would campaign with anyone in sync with his conservative positions.

Both ultimately excluded the current national standard-bearers of their party.

That was one of numerous questions the pair fielded from Gannett New Jersey newspapers' editorial board representatives at the offices of the Home News Tribune.

The third Republican in the June 3 primary, state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio, R-Morris, did not attend because of a previously scheduled family obligation.

He also has suspended his campaign for a few days due to a death in the family.

Neither Sabrin nor Zimmer embraced many of Bush's initiatives.

"He's expanded the welfare state. . . . He's been a disappointment," said Sabrin.

"I agree with his veto of the farm bill. . . . We've got to live within our means," Zimmer said.

Both said the nation is still not as secure from terror as they would prefer.

And they took issue with the Bush administration's argument that anti-terror measures are working as evidenced by the fact the United States has not weathered any attacks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"Our borders are still unsecure," Sabrin said.

The absence of attacks "doesn't mean we are secure," said Zimmer.

"Fences make good neighbors," said Sabrin, who rejected Zimmer's idea for a "tamper-proof, employee-identifi- cation system."

Sabrin called it a national ID card.

Both want the nation's troops out of Iraq where they are "mired in a civil war," as Sabrin said, noting, "I opposed the Iraq war from the very beginning."

Where they differed most decidedly was in each man's qualifications to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate.

Zimmer, 63, a former three-term congressman, state assemblyman and state senator, is a lawyer who of late has been lobbying in Washington. He said he alone has a track record on the federal level.

Sabrin, 61, is an economics professor at Ramapo College who said he had been beating the conservative, small-government drumbeat for decades.

Reach Tom Baldwin at tbaldwi@gannett.com