GOP Senate Primary Cheatsheet

by: Jason Springer

Thu Apr 10, 2008 at 09:42:17 PM EDT

While people may not remember the road traveled come September, the traveling circus known as the GOP U.S. Senate Primary campaign has seen many twists and turns.

In less than one year, the NJ GOP has gone through or proposed 15 candidates, experienced many false starts, had calls for resignation of the State chair and for candidates to drop out all while giving us tons of fun to watch. Here's a recap, in case you haven't been following along...

4/26/07- Assemblyman Mike Doherty became the first candidate to join the show.

5/2/07- A blog aimed at encouraging former baseball player Al Leiter to seek the nomination was started.

7/11/07- Anne Estabrook dipped her toes in the water forming an exploratory committee.

8/9/07- Assemblyman"Jersey Joe" Pennacchio said he was mulling a Senate bid.

8/10/07- Assemblyman Doherty ended his short lived Senate bid leaving only Estabrook and Penachio as candidates expressing interest.

9/10/07- Pennacchio tapped Morris GOP chair to oversee his then exploratory bid.

10/22/07- Anne Estabrook let people know she would run for the Senate seat.

11/13/07- Al Leiter crushed the hopes of conservative bloggers by saying he had his eye on a Senate seat just not Lautenberg's in '08.

This is only the beginning of the ridiculousness. There is MUCH more below the fold...

There's More... :: (2 Comments, 656 words in story)

A Child's Stigma

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I Knew They Were Desperate, But ...

by: huntsu

Wed Mar 05, 2008 at 01:05:16 PM EST

UPDATE: It's worse than I thought. The Monmouth GOP chair just called for Giuliani -- from NY -- to run. That's three names floated in three hours. The NJ GOP is really bereft of talent.

I know the NJ GOP is pretty desperate, but I had no idea how desperate they truly are. Today we get to see with three articles on ~~PoliticsNJ.com~~ PolitckerNJ about the NJ Senate race against Frank Lautenberg.

First we have GOP Chairman Tom Wilson sticking his keyboard in his mouth with this unintentional gem from a written statement:

"Anne Estabrook ran for all the right reasons and is ending her campaign for the right reason,? he said in a statement.

Estabrook withdrew because she had a mini-stroke, which I don't really think should be called the "right reason." But we've long ago expected Wilson to say the wrong thing even while trying to say the right.

Next we see that the grassroots GOP doesn't really think they have any bench strength, or really any strength, in their current crop of candidates or even the entire state. PolitickerNJ has two articles, one with Al Leiter saying he will not run and the other with Mike Huckabee's NJ chair saying Huckabee will not run.

Why is this desperate? Because Leiter lives in Florida and Huckabee lives in Arkansas. They're not NJ residents.

Now, that worked in New York for Hillary Clinton back in 2000, but she chose that and then won it convincingly. Oh, yeah. And she's a Democrat.

The last time the GOP tried to import a US Senate candidate it was Alan Keyes who got crushed by Barack Obama back in 2004.

But I encourage them to try it again, given their awesome success rate with candidates -- whether from NJ or not.

Discuss :: (6 Comments)

Republican Draft Al Effort Appears to Fail

by: huntsu

Sun Jun 17, 2007 at 08:20:14 AM EDT

Early last month PoliticsNJ noted that Red Generation founder and general crooner about town Dino P. Crocetti founded an effort to draft Al Leiter to run for Senate against Frank Lautenberg.

We're not entirely sure why Wally Edge decided to promote this particular Draft Al project. The effort is, apparently, simply a blog (on Blogger) of four posts in four months and a new MySpace page with a whopping 10 friends. Only one of those friends is a human being.

The Draft Leiter effort is now facing a bigger problem: On yesterday's Mets-Yankees pregame show on WFAN radio, Joe Benigno specifically asked the former pitcher if he would be running for political office anytime soon. Here's a fairly accurate transcription of what Leiter said:

No way. I'm not willing to do the things that politicians have to do to get elected. I talk with Mayor Bloomberg, who's a friend of mine, and there's no way I want to do the things he has to do to get elected.

The Democratic Draft Al effort at least has a reluctant but listening candidate -- the Republican Draft Al effort has a candidate that wants nothing to do with them.

UPDATE: Terrible error: Dino didn't found Red Generation, and it's now called Red Jersey. Since I don't bother to read their site I didn't know the latter, and the former doesn't really matter all that much since he posts a lot there.

Discuss :: (7 Comments)