In Jersey, Bon Jovi is the hot political ticket

By Jeremy W. Peters
Published: December 26, 2007


He calls her "Mrs. C." And she calls on him to add a little celebrity gloss to her presidential campaign.

The rock singer Jon Bon Jovi and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been friends for more than a decade, uniting for state dinners at the White House and campaign fund-raisers.

If it seems strange that a rocker who sings paeans of working-class New Jersey is so friendly with a senator and former first lady who is using a Celine Dion song as the theme of her presidential campaign, consider a few items on Bon Jovi's social calendar in the last few months.

There were dinners with Clinton and another Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, her fiercest rival for the nomination, asked Bon Jovi to hear him speak in New York. And the former Vice President Al Gore caught up with him in London for a photo op.

Bon Jovi, 45, whose tousled golden mane and porcelain-white smile have twice helped him earn People magazine's award for sexiest rock star, can lay claim to an unofficial new title these days: the New Jersey's elder statesman.


In New Jersey, it is practically a requirement for any high-ranking politician to attend at least one of his shows. And despite his left-leaning political allegiances, Democrats and Republicans alike seek him out as if he were New Jersey's very own Bono.

When a former governor, Christie Whitman, was deciding whether to build a sports arena, she consulted Bon Jovi - part owner of the Arena Football League team the Philadelphia Soul - and took his advice to pass on it. When Newark needed a marquee name to christen the Prudential Center arena, one of its most important new developments in decades, it turned to him.

"He basically says, 'Hey, here's where I'm from, like it or not,' " said Whitman, a Republican who later became administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush. "And that's refreshing for the state of New Jersey because we don't have a lot of that."

Former New Jersey governors, senators and state legislators who have worked or played with him over the years say it is a combination of his fealty to New Jersey and his blue-collar authenticity that draws politicians to him. And as someone who sings about his "plastic dashboard Jesus" and performs at concerts to fight global warming, his appeal is broad.

Unlike many other celebrities, he keeps his thoughts about the war in Iraq and Bush largely to himself. While a fellow New Jersey rock star, Bruce Springsteen, is not shy about taking Bush to task and speaks out against the war on his new CD, Bon Jovi is more comfortable talking about poverty and affordable housing. And his attention to those causes has earned him an audience with some of the biggest American political names.

"My impression of Jon Bon Jovi is, every time he's been asked to help his state, he's done it," said a former governor, Thomas Kean Sr., a Republican. "We have an enormous amount of entertainers in New Jersey, and I can't say that about a lot of them."

Bon Jovi's high visibility recently touched off speculation in gossip columns that he had designs on running for office, possibly governor, because he is keeping his estate in New Jersey even though he and his family spend most of their time in New York.

But Bon Jovi dismissed the rumors. Life as a rock star, he said, suited him quite well. In a recent interview by telephone from London, he recounted a conversation with President Bill Clinton about two years ago.

The two were on a flight to Maryland for a day of horse racing at the Pimlico race course with some friends when someone asked them to compare occupations. "He said, 'Mr. President, which is better, your job or Jon's?' I said, 'I know the answer to that. Mine, because I get to keep the airplane and the house.' "
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