Jon Corzine
Jon Stevens Corzine is an American financial executive and retired politician who served as a United States Senator from New Jersey from 2001 to 2006, and the 54th governor of New Jersey from 2006 to 2010. Corzine ran for a second term as governor in 2009 but was defeated for re-election by Republican Chris Christie. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously worked at Goldman Sachs; after leaving politics, he was CEO of MF Global from 2010 until its collapse in 2011.
Education and early business career
Corzine was born in Taylorville, Illinois, the son of Nancy June and Roy Allen Corzine, Jr. His grandfather Roy A. Corzine, Sr. served in the Illinois General Assembly. He grew up on a small family farm in Willey Station, Illinois near Taylorville. After completing high school at Taylorville High School, where he had been the football quarterback and basketball captain, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and graduated in 1969, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors. While in college, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and served from 1969 until 1975, attaining the rank of sergeant. In 1970, he enrolled in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, from which he received a Master of Business Administration degree in 1973.His first business experience was in the bond department of Continental Illinois National Bank, where he worked days while attending the Booth School of Business MBA program at night. He then moved to BancOhio National Bank, a regional bank in Columbus, Ohio, that was acquired in 1984 by National City Bank. Corzine worked at BancOhio until 1975, when he moved his family to New Jersey and was hired as a bond trader for Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs
In 1976, Corzine joined Goldman Sachs as a bond trader and then became co-manager of the Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities Division. He became a partner in 1980, and a member of the management committee in 1984. He served as Goldman Sachs' CFO, and a senior partner. During his leadership, Corzine oversaw the firm's expansion into Asia and was instrumental in leading the transition of the firm from a private partnership to a public company.Corzine also chaired a presidential commission on capital budgeting for Bill Clinton and served as Chairman of the United States Department of the Treasury's borrowing committee. As the Goldman Sachs senior partner, he helped develop a private sector plan to rescue the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management when the leveraged fund's collapse in the fall of 1998 threatened contagion across the U.S. financial system. According to U.S. News & World Report, Corzine did not get along with co-CEO Henry Paulson, who came from the other major area of the bank, investment banking. When Corzine participated in structuring the bailout, Paulson seized control of the firm. When Goldman Sachs went public after Corzine's departure, Corzine made $400 million.
Corzine has participated in meetings of the Bilderberg Group, a network of leaders in the fields of politics, business and banking. He is a former member of the group's steering committee.
Corzine is a member of Kappa Beta Phi.
U.S. Senate
2000 election
After being forced out from Goldman Sachs in January 1999, Corzine launched a campaign for the New Jersey U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Frank Lautenberg. Despite initially trailing behind his opponent, former governor James Florio, in the Democratic primary by 30 percentage points, Corzine won the nomination by 16 points. He later attributed his successful primary run to pollster Bob Shrum who convinced him to run not as "a seasoned investment banker and job creator" but as a "liberal progressive". In the general election, Corzine won by just a three-point margin over his Republican opponent, four-term United States Congressman Bob Franks, in the November 2000 election. He was sworn into the Senate in January 2001.He spent more than $62 million of his own money on his campaign, the most expensive Senate campaign in U.S. historyover $33 million of this was spent on the primary election alone, where he defeated former Governor James Florio 58–42%. Franks had been a last-minute choice because New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman had been expected to run for the Senate. The record $62 million amount surpassed Michael Huffington, who spent nearly $28 million in an unsuccessful 1994 Senate race.
During the campaign, Corzine refused to release his income tax return records. He claimed an interest in doing so, but he cited a confidentiality agreement with Goldman Sachs. Skeptics argued that Corzine should have followed the example of his predecessor Robert Rubin, who converted his equity stake into debt upon leaving Goldman.
Corzine campaigned for state government programs including universal health care, universal gun registration, mandatory public preschool, and more taxpayer funding for college education. He pushed affirmative action and same-sex marriage. David Brooks opined that Corzine was so liberal that his election, although the fact that his predecessor was also a Democrat, helped push the Senate to the left.
During Corzine's campaign for the United States Senate, he made some controversial off-color statements. When introduced to a man with an Italian name who said he was in the construction business, Corzine quipped: "Oh, you make cement shoes!" according to Emanuel Alfano, chairman of the Italian-American One Voice Committee. Alfano reported that when introduced to a lawyer named David Stein, Corzine said: "He's not Italian, is he? Oh, I guess he's your Jewish lawyer who is here to get the rest of you out of jail." Corzine denied mentioning religion, but did not deny the quip about Italians, stating that some of his own ancestors were probably Italian, or maybe French.
Also in 2000, Corzine denied having made payments to African-American ministers, although the foundation controlled by Jon and Joanne Corzine had paid one influential black church $25,000. Reginald T. Jackson, director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, had campaigned against a form of racial profiling whereby police officers stop minority drivers, and had gotten New Jersey state police superintendent Carl A. Williams fired. Corzine had donated to Jackson prior to getting what appears to be a reciprocal endorsement.
Tenure
Corzine entered Congress in a class of 10 new senators, eight of whom were Democrats. According to U.S. News & World Report, Corzine, Hillary Clinton and Jean Carnahan were the more notable new senators in 2000. During his five-year senatorial career, he was present at 1,503 of 1,673 votes, cosponsored 1,014 bills, sponsored 145 bills, and had one sponsored bill enacted.He co-authored the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. In the aftermath of Enron, he cosponsored legislation, which was later propounded by Ted Kennedy, that reforms the 401 plan to minimize the risk of investment portfolios. The plan was opposed by President George W. Bush and faced strong opposition in Congress. Restrictions on retirement account allocations were in direct opposition to the contemporaneous movement towards self-directed individual retirement accounts for Social Security.
Corzine was a sponsor of the Start Healthy, Stay Healthy Act. He supported providing a two-year tax break to victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and help grant citizenship to victims who were legal resident aliens. He supported gun control laws, outlawing racial profiling, and subsidies for Amtrak. He was the chief sponsor, along with U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, of the Darfur Accountability Act. He was one of 23 Senators to vote against the Iraq War Resolution. Corzine was the prime sponsor, along with fellow New Jersey U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, of a federal version of John's Law, in memory of Navy Ensign John R. Elliott, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who was killed by a drunk driver. The legislation provides federal highway safety grant incentives to encourage states to impound the cars of DUI suspects. He was an early contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Corzine and Peter Fitzgerald attempted to mold a more disciplined bailout of the airline industry, but even the redesigned plan was not entirely satisfactory to Corzine. Corzine opposed the reduction in low-income student eligibility for Pell Grant funding caused by changes in the "expected family contribution".
Corzine tried and failed to introduce legislation for chemical plant regulation six weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Subsequent efforts by then-Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 2002 were also squelched. Along with Hillary Clinton, he was one of the few senators who attempted to pressure the Bush administration to clamp down on regulation of the chemical and nuclear-power industries. His efforts helped make New Jersey one of the stricter states in the nation in terms of chemical plant regulation.
In 2001, Corzine coauthored a tax-cut proposal aimed at lowering the marginal tax bracket from 15% to 10% on the first $19,000 of taxable income. In 2002, he proposed a tax cut that exempted the first $10,000 of income from the $765 of Social Security taxes for both employers and employees. Corzine also proposed making dividend payments tax deductible to companies as a form of economic stimulus.
While in the Senate, he chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2003 to 2005. In this role he was influential in convincing certain potential candidates to not run in order to avoid costly primaries in three key states during the 2004 United States Senate elections. He also played a role in the selection of Senator John Edwards as a running mate for Senator John Kerry. In 2002, Corzine called for the resignation of United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt.