Mark Shields, nationally known columnist and commentator, is the moderator of CNN's The Capital Gang

Mark Shields: Will New Jersey voters finally be embarrassed?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Did you hear the bad economic news from New Jersey? Yesterday, the Soprano family was forced to lay off three judges. If you live in New Jersey, it not only means you pay the highest car insurance premiums in the nation, it also means you do not think of citrus when people talk about "the Oranges" and that you have either been in or seen a fistfight over the Giants-Jets game You have to be thick-skinned to live in Jersey.

This week, New Jersey took another hit when the Senate ethics committee "severely admonished" the state's senior Democratic U.S. senator, Robert Torricelli, for accepting expensive gifts from David Chang, a major campaign contributor who became a personal friend as well as a convicted felon, and for actions by Torricelli that constituted "violations of Senate rules" and "created at least the appearance of impropriety."

His characteristic combativeness was missing when a contrite Torricelli went to the Senate floor to announce, "I agree with the committee's conclusions, fully accept their findings and take full responsibility," before immediately contradicting himself with these words, "I believe at no time did I accept any gifts or break any Senate rules."

For Democrats fighting to keep Senate power, which they now hold by a one-vote margin, the ethics story could not have come at a worse time on the heels of the latest Gallup poll, which showed their party's congressional candidates opening up for the first time over Republicans a solid lead nationally -- largely attributable to the public perception of the GOP's uncritical closeness to and tolerance of big money and law-breaking CEOs.

The day after the ethics committee report, Jennifer Duffy, Senate expert for the respected Cook Political Report, changed the 2002 New Jersey senate race in which Republican businessman Doug Forrester had trailed Torricelli by 44 percent to 36 percent in a late June poll by Quinnipiac University from "leaning Democrat" to "toss-up."

In Duffy's judgment, "While Torricelli is relentlessly aggressive, knows how to raise money, and how to run a campaign, this (the rebuke from the ethics committee) hits him at a time when he's politically weak to begin with, and it will help Forrester to raise money."

What the ethics rebuke also could prove to be, Democrats fear, is the final embarrassment New Jersey voters will tolerate from their officeholders. Just in the last two years, the state's acting governor, confronted by ethics questions, chose not to seek election; a state Supreme court justice has been seriously accused of being a public liar; a major Republican county executive ended his own Senate campaign after the FBI raided his office ; and a major Democratic county executive resigned after involuntarily becoming an informant for the FBI to collect evidence against his corporate associates.

Republicans and editorial pages are pressuring Torricelli, known as "the Torch" (as much for his abrasive, pit-bull personality, which has singed adversary and ally alike, as for the abbreviation of his name) to make public his testimony before the ethics panel. Strange as it might seem, but while the Senate Foreign Relations Committee encourages open and public debate over the wisdom, morality and practicality of U.S. military action against Iraq, the Senate ethics committee operates entirely behind closed doors.

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that to win the New Jersey Senate election, Republicans must make the race a referendum on the incumbent Torricelli. It will not be easy. The New Jersey GOP has lost 10 consecutive U.S. Senate races. Bill Clinton and Al Gore both won the state by landslide margins.

But control of the U.S. Senate could very well depend upon whether any lingering sense of outrage flickers still in the understandably jaded New Jersey electorate. If Garden State voters decide, this year, finally that they have had their fill of politicians who cut too many corners and too many deals, then one casualty could be a Democratic Senate.