Congratulations, Jackie Cornell-Bechelli, NJ State Director for Obama's Re-Election Campaign

by: Rosi Efthim

Wed Jan 04, 2012 at 05:51:00 PM EST

Today, we learn that Jackie Cornell-Bechelli has been named the President's State Director for NJ. Jackie put time into Organizing for America (OFA) as NJ State Director after Obama's campaign morphed into the OFA structure. I'm not a fan of OFA, which always struck me as trying hard to look like a bottom-up organizing effort when it was actually quite the opposite. And not a fan of curtailing DNC's wildly-successful 50-State Strategy (under which we took the White House, and both Houses of Congress, and many state & local offices) in favor of OFA's expensive concentration on the fortunes of just one candidate, the President. That said, it makes sense that Obama's re-election campaign rely on somebody already "in the family" who is both known and appreciated by the Obama campaign structure.

Plus, Jackie Cornell-Bechelli also spent a year as New Jersey Citizen Action's Political Director, a well-staffed citizen watchdog organization I admire. She leaves that job for the Obama position. For 7 years, she also worked for Planned Parenthood, for which organization every woman I know is grateful.

It's a struggle to suppress my dissatisfaction with the President's first term. Well, until I look at the GOP alternatives, particularly the clown car passenger who nearly won the Iowa caucuses last night. And Romney hisself, who has yet to rise above platitude and the reciting of patriotic song lyrics (as one @BlueJersey Twitter follower pointed out, bet we won't hear 'ole Mittens recite Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land on the stump).

Congratulations to Jackie Cornell-Bechelli. We'll be interested to see how she intends to wean New Jersey away from Chris Christie's idea of the best direction.