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Joe Roberts: Marriage Equality Lifeline?

by: Jay Lassiter

Tue Jan 05, 2010 at 08:09:25 PM EST

Promoted by Rosi

Something for the Blue Jersey community to consider:

1. The marriage equality fight seemed lost when the Assembly Judiciary Committee didn't schedule a vote yesterday.

2. A debate on that committee would have been another 7 hour knock-down drag-out Assembly version of the same scene that played out in the Senate.

3. It's very rare for the Assembly Speaker to exercise the prerogative and post a bill for a full vote without the (largely pro-forma) Assembly Judiciary panel hearing, which is what Speaker Roberts has done in this instance.

4. The Speaker's moved shifted the fulcrum point back to Dick Codey and to the Senate, and (co-incidentally?) a Senate vote was promptly posted.

5. The marriage equality bill is posted for a full vote in both houses! We'll know soon enough who the heros and villains are, right? In the meantime -- and I'll repeat -- we got the bill posted! So the smartest tact at this point is for us activists to focus all our energies at Senators like Shirley Turner and Paul Sarlo or even Jennifer Beck.

I know as well as anyone that passions run incredibly deep but we gotta stay disciplined for the next few days. There's important Senate side-work left to do.

And not a lot of time to do it.

Jay Lassiter :: Joe Roberts: Marriage Equality Lifeline?

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Joe Roberts: Marriage Equality Lifeline? | 12 comments

*As seen in Blue Jersey Radio!* (4.00 / 1)

http://www.bluejersey.com/diar...

activist for hire.

by: Jay Lassiter @ Wed Jan 06, 2010 at 02:15:23 AM UTC

by: you @ soon

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Isn't Monday the last day of lame duck? (0.00 / 0)

If so, Roberts had no choice but to go straight to a vote.

If Roberts was the hero that he claims to be, he would have allowed the AJC to hold hearings on the issue.

You are free to defend him if you like, Jay, but at some point in time, you are going to have to realize that the Norcross cabal and EVERYONE associated with it is bad news.

by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Wed Jan 06, 2010 at 03:01:36 AM UTC

by: you @ soon

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I am not sure.... (0.00 / 0)

.....any of us can confirm the what the roll call on that panel would have been and it only takes one democrat to vote NO to stop a 4-2 panel in it's tracks.

I am wrong often enough that i wouldn't go citing this diary at the final truth. I'm just throwing something to consider.

activist for hire.

by: Jay Lassiter @ Wed Jan 06, 2010 at 20:07:46 PM UTC

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by: you @ soon

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Please stop spinning for Joe Roberts (0.00 / 0)

Which of the following Democrats on the AJC is a potential no vote?

Greenstein, Linda R. - Chair
Barnes, Peter J. - Vice-Chair
Casagrande, Caroline
Gusciora, Reed
Handlin, Amy H.
Spencer, L. Grace

Linda Greenstein? She's a good friend and not bloody likely. Peter Barnes? Babs would kick his ass all over Edison. Reed Gusciora? He should have blocked the civil unions law when he had the chance. Grace Spencer? I don't know her well enough to say for sure, but she doesn't seem like the type who will put her neck on the line to oppose someone else's civil rights, but then again, I would have thought the same thing about Shirley Turner.

The Catch-22 that Roberts has created is that the only way that we can get the Assembly on the record on this issue is if the Senate passes the bill, which is going to take a miracle at this point. However, had Roberts allowed the AJC to hear the bill on Monday, the Assembly vote would have taken place this week and if it passed, the ball would be in the Senate's court and even if it failed, both houses would be on the record and we could spend the next two years making the No voters pay for their sins.

There is no good reason for Joe Roberts to have prevented the AJC from hearing the bill and the Assembly from voting. If he and Codey were so panicked about going first, they could have scheduled their votes to take place on the same day and at the same time.

However, there is even less reason for anybody to have anything nice to say about Joe Roberts at this point in time. If a miracle happens and both the Senate and the Assembly pass the bill and it becomes law, we can say our mea culpas at that time, but until then, let's stop kissing ass and start kicking some.

by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Thu Jan 07, 2010 at 01:06:48 AM UTC

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Barnes. (4.00 / 1)

Rumor is he was a potential no vote. I wouldn't be shocked if Spencer was also a no vote - but I haven't heard anything about her.

by: Matthew Jordan @ Thu Jan 07, 2010 at 01:34:14 AM UTC

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Spencer was a definite yes (4.00 / 1)

no doubt about it.

she apologized on the way out to me (and Jeff Gardner) that it didn't make it to a vote.

by: kwilkinson @ Fri Jan 08, 2010 at 05:22:03 AM UTC

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Barnes and Hobbits (0.00 / 0)

This guy doesn't strike me as the kind of person who is going to put himself out there as the lone Democratic opposition to marriage equality on the AJC, particularly when there are a long line of people in his district who would be more than happy to take GSE's money in a primary fight against him.

Joe Roberts has to take a hit for his failure of leadership in not allowing the AJC to hear the bill and for the Assembly to not have a chance to vote on it at the same time as the Senate today.

I am not going to look at the long lists of bills that the houses voted on today, but I have to think that there was at least one that covered the same issue.

Jay Lassiter can defend him all that he wants to for the same reason that he will find some justification to defend the South Jersey Senators who either voted against this bill or abstained, which is probably the same or similar justification that will be used to explain why neither Girgenti nor Rice Sr. nor Sacco nor Sarlo nor Turner will face primary challengers in 2011.

by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Fri Jan 08, 2010 at 07:29:40 AM UTC

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