One of President Barack Obama’s key political advisers has become the central strategist in New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s bruising campaign for re-election, a race the White House desperately wants to win to avert the consequences for its own agenda of a Republican winning in a traditionally Democratic state.  The White House was so concerned about Corzine’s chances during the summer that Corzine’s aides feared the first-term governor was being pressured to step aside for a stronger candidate. Those fears turned out to be groundless, but were part of the reason Corzine hired Joel Benenson, who has helped impose discipline on a struggling campaign and crystallize Corzine’s aggressive attacks on the character of his Republican opponent, former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

The race is seen as extremely close, complicated by the presence of a third candidate, Chris Daggett. For the White House, it’s a crucial symbolic prize. With Democrat Creigh Deeds running far behind his Republican rival in Virginia, the New Jersey race – once believed to be hopeless for Corzine – is now seen as the White House’s best bet to make the 2009 election cycle a political wash and to calm the nerves of congressional Democrats approaching the crucial 2010 midterm elections.

Both Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden have campaigned for Corzine in the state, and Obama has cut television and radio ads for the governor. This Sunday, on the final weekend of the campaign, the president is returning to New Jersey for two events to try to pull Corzine over the finish line.

Benenson, the chief pollster in Obama’s 2008 campaign, along with David Plouffe, his former campaign manager, and a handful of others, make up a political inner circle that still meets regularly with White House senior advisor David Axelrod. Just as Bill Clinton once dispatched his political team to take over troubled campaigns from New York to Israel, Benenson’s arrival in New Jersey has stirred perceptions of a White House takeover – something he flatly denied.

“I’m known as a pretty strong New Jersey pollster and all [his hiring] says is that the campaign thought that I could add some value at a time when they felt they needed to make a move,” Berenson said.

 Corzine trailed Christie badly in the polls throughout the summer, and according to three aides, began to suspect that the White House was considering pushing him to step aside for another candidate – a tactic the White House unsuccessfully tried against another northeastern Democrat in similar trouble – New York Gov. David Paterson.

Among the other names floated by other New Jersey Democrats as possible replacements were State Senate President Richard Codey and Newark Mayor Corey Booker.

When White House officials, including Axelrod and political director Patrick Gaspard, traveled to New Jersey to express their concern in early August, Corzine argued that his campaign had a plausible strategy to turn the race around.

 “We were able to show a path to victory that was credible,” said one Corzine aide, who said the White House officials brought discipline to a feuding campaign.

 “It scares you – the White House is going to be sitting at the table, and you’ve got to take that seriously,” the aide said.

 Some Corzine aides perceived the visit as a threat. “They were basically sending the message, ‘you should get out of the race,’” said one aide to Corzine, who, in the aide’s opinion, would never have considered dropping out.

 Benenson, however, said that was never in the cards, and that White House officials were careful to put those rumors to rest.

“That meeting opened with the White House saying, ‘We’re not here to change this – we want to win this campaign,’” he said.

Later that month, Corzine pushed his main pollster, Mark Mellman, aside, and brought on Benenson, who lives in New Jersey and has worked on many other statewide contests in the state.

The hiring may also have had the intent, and effect, of soothing White House nerves. “They have a very competent team, including Joel Benenson, who we know well. We have confidence in them,” Axelrod said in an email.

Corzine insiders said Benenson gave direction to a campaign that had already embraced the sort of slash-and-burn politics Obama used to decry on the campaign trail. Under his direction, scattershot attacks on Christie gave way to a more coherent narrative.

A Democrat involved in the campaign’s internal discussion said that the central argument against Christie – that he has “one set of rules for himself, another for everybody else” – “came from Joel and the White House.”

The theme emerged most clearly in an ad attacking the overweight Christie with the charge that he was “throwing his weight around.”

Some Corzine advisers see Benenson as a proxy for the White House; one told POLITICO that the White House has effective “veto power” over the campaign, something White House and Corzine campaign officials heatedly rejected.

Corzine’s communications director, Sean Darcy, confirmed elements of the White House role but downplayed its significance.

“We show them our ads before they go up the same way we show county chairs, staff and others,” he said, referring – another aide said – to television ads that have already been sent to stations.

 The campaign also shows White House officials its polling, but “they do not provide strategic input,” he said, adding that Corzine had righted his political ship not – as widely thought inside and outside his campaign – through attacks on Christie, but because “the focus [of the campaign] became issue-based.”

“We don’t screen ads, we don’t construct or review polling, we are not calling the shots in New Jersey,” said Axelrod in his email. “I do check in periodically to see where they think the race is at because we are, of course, interested.” Politico