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New Jersey - Incumbent New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine has won the state's Democratic gubernatorial nomination and will seek his second term in November.

Corzine easily defeated three little-known competitors Tuesday in a low-key primary election.

The 62-year-old will have a tougher challenge in November, As former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie has won the Republican nomination against Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan.

The Republican candidate Christie is also ahead of Corzine, whose disapproval rating climbed to the highest ever measured for a New Jersey governor after he proposed worker furloughs, eliminating tax rebates and raising levies on liquor and the wealthy to balance the budget.

Republicans still face an uphill battle unseating Corzine, a multimillionaire who is allied with President Barack Obama in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1997. Vice President Joe Biden will join Corzine at the kickoff, bringing the national party’s backing.

“It’s going to be tough for the Republicans because they are really swimming upstream against a Democratic tide,” said Peter Woolley, director of the PublicMind poll at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey. “But it’s not a ‘gimme’ for the governor, either, because he’s in so much hot water with the finances of the state.”

Corzine, 62, who faces no major primary opposition, has already contributed $3 million on his second-term bid, campaign finance filings show. The former chief executive officer of Goldman, Sachs & Co. spent more than $44 million running for governor and $60 million for U.S. Senate in 2000. He is the only incumbent governor in the nation up for re-election this year.

Corzine promised in his 2005 campaign to use his Wall Street expertise to end New Jersey’s fiscal problems. Since he took office, he has had to cope with unemployment that rose to 8.4 percent in April from 4.8 percent in January 2006 and slumping consumer spending amid the Wall Street collapse.

New Jersey’s tax collections have dropped more than 12 percent in the past two years. Corzine’s administration is projecting revenue will fall to $27.3 billion in the next fiscal year without his tax measures, below $28.7 billion when he took office in January 2006. In Corzine’s first year, the state took in $31.2 billion.

The governor had a disapproval rating of 53 percent in a May 20 poll by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, just shy of a record 54 percent in April. Sixty percent of voters disapproved of the way he is handling the economy, and 54 percent said he shouldn’t be re-elected.

The poll of 2,532 New Jersey registered voters, which had an error margin of 2 percentage points, had Christie leading Corzine 45 percent to 38 percent.

Christie Proposals

Christie, in an interview last week, said he intends to propose “common-sense principles that can unite our party and, in the long-run, attract independents as well.” He said decisions made by Corzine have contributed to the state’s fiscal woes, and vowed to cut government spending.

Corzine, speaking to reporters yesterday after a press conference in Secaucus, said he is “reasonably confident” he will win in November.

“People actually understand that we have a very serious national economic crisis,” Corzine said. “Good policies, and dealing with the current circumstance, which every state in the nation is facing, will be what ends up determining whether people feel I deserve an additional term.”