Most of this is going to be below the fold, because I'm looking at three YouTube vids featuring Chris Myers (Asshat - Medford). Presented in reverse order, it shows the education of Mr. Myers on the fundamentals of the economy. First, the "Blame-it-on-Bush" Myers, which is the current incarnation:
At odds with the establishment Republicans in her home county, Allen said she was happy to drive the hour and a half to stand with Lance against the Stender/DCCC attack machine.
She said she's working hard for the McCain/Palin ticket and for local candidates. As for publicly backing the machine-endorsed Medford Mayor Chris Myers in his fight with state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) - or taking a shot at Myers - Allen demurred on both counts.
"My card is full," she said.
Yep. Not only have Myers' own employees dissed him, now the rank-and-file of his own party are just not going to mention him at all.
The Adler campaign also released a copy of an Oct. 1 check for $5,000 made out to its own campaign committee from the Employee's Political Action Committee at Lockheed Martin, where Myers is a vice president.
Is this a message to the boss from his employees? If so, we'd like to thank the employees of Chris Myers for attempting to spare us from his representation.
For horserace politics, nothing is more anticipated or easily understood than FEC filings on campaign contributions. It's a cakewalk to look at the numbers and say Campaign A raised $X and Campaign B raised $Y, and to tell the difference.
Today is the last regular filing for the Congressional campaigns, including all contributions from October 1 to October 20. You can go to the FEC website to look for the reports, which are posted pretty quickly.
After today any contribution -- in kind, loan or money -- has to be reported to the FEC within 48 hours, so if there is late money coming in it will be seen within 48 hours.
So there will be a good bit of money news coming out in the next two weeks for our Congressional campaigns. Be on the lookout, and post diaries if the front pagers don't get to it first!
MYERS: Look, folks, George Bush is part of the problem, but so is Trenton politician John Adler.
Under Adler, property taxes are out of control, people are losing their jobs, and our economy stinks. Think about it...
Holy cow. There's enough baloney in those two and a half sentences to feed a middle school for a week.
He's right. George Bush is part of the problem. Yet for some reason, mayor Myers wants to continue George Bush's disastrous economic policy and George Bush's disastrous strategy in Iraq. The AC Press, endorsing Adler, ripped Myers thus on Iraq:
And on Iraq, while both Myers and Adler favor a careful withdrawal of U.S. troops, Myers is still insisting that the United States "must achieve victory on our terms," that "we can't send the message that the United States is weak," and that he'd "rather fight terrorists overseas than in New Jersey." Please. We have all heard these bromides before - from Bush.
And if Myers really thinks Bush is part of the problem, how come he hasn't denounced Freedom's Watch, run by Karl Rove and the rest of the Bush calvary, for running racist robocalls in New Jersey to help his campaign? Hmm.
Myers also blames Adler for all of New Jersey's ills-- property taxes, job losses and a poor economy. This is especially interesting given that Adler has supported a constitutional convention to fix property taxes in this state and wants to give a middle class tax cut to working families to get our economy going again. It's interesting still that Myers somehow blames John Adler instead of George Bush for our recession-bound economy.
Then, again, this is the same Chris Myers who said the economy was "basically strong" only a few months ago. On the economy, he's more erratic than John McCain on six cups of coffee.
In the last week, John Adler's lead over Chris Myers has grown to an eight percent lead. Last Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a poll showing that the race between John Adler and Chris Myers favored Adler 38 percent to 34 percent and with 29 percent of voters still undecided. One week later, the undecided voters have begun to decide and there is a clear preference towards Adler. A new DCCC survey of 400 likely voters conducted by Grove Insight from October 15 -16 shows that Adler leads Myers 43 percent to 35 percent, with 22 percent undecided (4.9 percent margin of error).
I feel obliged to state that there are lot of undecideds and a high margin of error. Furthermore, internal polls must always be viewed with caution because if the results were bad the DCCC wouldn't release it. Still, we have a great chance to win this seat.
Earlier in the cycle, Freedom's watch reared their head for Leonard Lance going after Linda Stender. Now we have them doing the bidding of Chris Myers attacking John Adler with a new robo call going into district homes. You can hear the audio and the caller goes after Adler for supposedly supporting:
"legislation that could give taxpayer funded healthcare to illegal aliens and taxpayers like you would pay for it."
"It's been evident for weeks now that Chris Myers has run out of ideas and has no plan to solve the very serious problems facing middle-class Americans, but stooping to these kinds of Karl Rove dirty tricks is an insult to the voters in Burlington, Ocean and Camden counties," said Mark Warren, Adler's campaign manager. "The accusations that Freedom's Watch is making are false, inflammatory and a sad reflection on Chris Myers. Myers should disavow Freedom's Watch's support and demand that they stay out of the third district race. Not surprisingly, the fingerprints of George W. Bush are all over this sorry gambit as the president, Karl Rove and their deep-pocketed friends use this radical right-wing group to bail out Myers, Bush's handpicked candidate in the 3rd District."
Rather than answering the charges, Myers campaign predictably attacked Adler back saying he was trying to distract attention, as if the Adler campaign asked Freedom's Watch to start making these phone calls. We'll see what their entrance means to overall race.
This evening, The League of Women Voters sponsored a candidate forum/debate between Adler and Myers at the Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill. The debate was lively, the attendance was strong (probably over 200), and our guy Adler put on quite a performance -- this after, I heard him say, two other events in 24 hours. The debate was moderated by someone from LWV, and there were three panelists who first directed questions to the candidates; of the three panelists, there was Mike Daniels, the editorial page director for the (too conservative at times) Courier Post, and a Rutgers business professor.
he has run a disturbingly combative and negative campaign, and too often merely parrots Republican talking points on foreign policy, trickle-down economics and other issues.
On Myers criticism of Adler trying to get grants for his district:
Myers was asked if his criticism meant that he would not have sought the grants - which paid for cameras in police cars in Haddon Heights, bathroom upgrades for a community center in Cherry Hill and traffic improvements in Haddonfield - Myers ducked the question. That's because he knows the answer, and he knows his accusation is unfair: He would have done the same thing he is criticizing Adler for doing. Any politician would have
Debunking the anti-business, bad for the economy attacks:
But perhaps most important, Adler offers a fresh approach, while Myers simply touts the benefits of trickle-down economics and corporate-friendly policies as a way to reverse the economic downturn.
Adler says bluntly, "Trickle-down clearly has not worked." And he's right.
Myers says Adler is anti-business - but the political action committee associated with the New Jersey Business and Industry Association has endorsed Adler in state legislative elections.
Noting Myers relationship with President Bush:
Myers tries to distance himself from President Bush, noting several issues on which he differs with the unpopular president. But he can't distance himself from Bush that much - the president came to New Jersey to campaign for him.
The board has flashbacks with Myers Iraq arguments:
And on Iraq, while both Myers and Adler favor a careful withdrawal of U.S. troops, Myers is still insisting that the United States "must achieve victory on our terms," that "we can't send the message that the United States is weak," and that he'd "rather fight terrorists overseas than in New Jersey." Please. We have all heard these bromides before - from Bush.
In conclusion, they say:
Ultimately, Adler offers the cleanest break from the failed policies of the past eight years. He won't be a rubber-stamp for anyone in Washington. What he is ... is a slightly wonkish lawmaker who studies issues carefully and comes to independent conclusions.
Myers is no slouch. But Adler is the better choice.
Given that the GOP is trying to game the election by offering Myers a seat on the Armed Services Commission (talk about conceit!), this becomes an important point for military veterans. Why vote for someone who won't show up for you?
According to Swing State Project the DCCC dropped $133,435 in NJ7 and $110,307 in NJ3.
In a sign that the NRCC still thinks NJ7 is salvageable, they put $19,385 down on Leonard Lance's behalf. Of course, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the money the DCCC is throwing at the race.
But they did nothing in NJ3, an indication that their polling may show a lost cause for Chris Meyers.
Update: Today is October 15, so we should start seeing real fundraising numbers as reported to the FEC coming out later today. It may tell us a lot.
This may be the saddest announcement I've ever seen. Why?
Romney is also holding a fundraiser for 7th District Congressional candidate Leonard Lance tomorrow.
Apparently, Mitt Romney is in Medford to get the heck out of town as soon as possible. Maybe he's still upset that Myers didn't endorse him for President...
Anyway, this gives us the opportunity to see two economic gurus in the flesh. After all, Chris Myers claims that, as an employee of a defense contractor, he is responsible for creating jobs. Mitt Romney has good teeth.
Will Mitt agree with Chris that the economy is "still basically strong"? Well, considering that Mitt just used $10,000 for his portrait, maybe he isn't the one to tell us that he can feel our pain. Especially since he used money from his campaign to pay for it - money that he told people he'd use to run for office.
But then again, John McCain spent over $100 grand for household help (in however many houses he has now). So maybe the economy is still good in that rarified air. For the rest of us - not so much.
As PNJ points out, the $369K for Myers doesn't include money George Bush raised for him, but the $550 for Adler doesn't include the hundreds of thousands the DCCC is spending for him.
Capital One Financial Corp said on Friday it will stop financing vehicle inventory for auto dealers in the states of New York and New Jersey, starting November.
The decision comes at a time when the global credit crunch has put a squeeze on auto dealers, who face more expensive credit to finance consumer purchases as well as their own inventory amid a steep plunge in U.S. vehicle sales.
Capital One spokeswoman Tatiana Stead said that it was a business decision based on a variety of factors.
They say this only deals with inventory financing and won't affect auto loans, but this certainly isn't going to help the already struggling auto dealerships. And for a reminder, less than a month ago before they converted into crisis mode, John McCain, George Bush and Chris Myers were still trying to convince people the economy was basically strong:
Officials at the VFW-PAC offices in Washington, D.C., did not return repeated phone calls for comment on the non-endorsement. In its magazine, the organization states the endorsed candidates "have a voting record supporting, or have demonstrated their support for veterans rights and a strong national defense."
The VFW has traditionally supported Republicans including Congressman Jim Saxton. The Myers campaign, obviously troubled by the non-endorsement fired back at Adler and the intertubes:
"With these facts in mind, I'm as interested as anyone to see how the VFW explains not endorsing a fellow veteran to their rank-and-file membership across the district," Russell said.
On the non-endorsement, the Adler campaign offered this:
Adler responded in a statement that he was thankful for the VFW's consideration and promised that if elected to Congress he would seek out guidance from veterans on foreign and domestic issues as well as fight to fully fund the Veterans Administration and increase funding for research and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
Ingrid Reed of Rutgers offered this simple possible explanation:
"Just being a veteran may not be the most compelling factor for them," Reed said.
There could be many reasons why they didn't endorse, but in a close race where every vote will matter, it will be interesting to see how this plays.
In an election where the Democratic Party is expected to make large gains, no young candidate has generated more buzz than Josh Zeitz, the Democratic candidate for Congress in New Jersey's 4th District. Polling data putting his incumbent opponent well below the 50% mark just weeks before election day, Josh's already record breaking fundraising, and an influx of new registrants making Democratic voters the majority in this district may very well be the perfect recipe for change from years of ineffective Republican rule in this part of the state.
Visuals: Opening image of New York Stock Exchange floor, followed dark screen with words "Fire Scott Garrett" followed by Garrett's face alongside the Capitol building and then Countrywide mortgage office as phrases spoken by narrator appear on screen. Ends with image of Shulman.
Analysis: Shulman, who has aired only negative ads this fall, continues his head-on attack of Garrett. If voters believe the markets-know-best attitude caused the current crisis, the ad - despite exaggerations - could do some damage because Garrett has generally been a free-market champion.
Here is the ad. It's a great example of linking the Congressman and his actions to the current situation.
Lance admitted he opposed Stender's bill and believed women should be forced instead to rely on pharmacist referrals for their prescriptions if they were not able to obtain their birth control. Stender denounced this as an undue burden for women, stating, "Women should not have to drive around just to get their basic prescriptions filled. Leonard Lance is truly out of touch if he believes women should be forced to drive from pharmacy to pharmacy looking for someone to give them their medication."
I wasn't aware this is such a huge issue in the 7th. I might mention that whether a woman is able to get birth control becomes less of a factor if she can't afford the birth control because she already makes less at the job she hopes she doesn't lose because she won't be able to find another one in the bad economy. They mention driving from pharmacy to pharmacy, but don't make the connection to the burden of the cost of gas. Lance has tried to focus on the Property Tax grant program as well, not making any mention of the economy.
Update: I was running out the door. Here is some more.
The Cape May County League of Women Voters and 98.7 FM WCZT, The Coast radio station, are joining forces this year to sponsor the only Candidates Forum in the county where all six candidates running for the 2nd Congressional District will be present.
All of the candidates went after Lobiondo's record at the last debate to which he responded if you have any question to call his office, so I wouldn't expect anything different once again. Kurkowski also has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow at 2pm to discuss Lobiondo's broken contract with America.
My hope at this point is that any recovery plan focuses first and foremost on the root cause that haunts Main Street. All attempts should be made to see that honest, hardworking people can somehow remain in their homes and avoid foreclosure. This is essential to stop the slide in the market overall. Stimulating the economy comes next. Many options are on the table, including efforts to create jobs through a conversion to a green economy.
I went to read the Star Ledger article about the drivers settling their contract that Scott posted in the roundup. As I got halfway through the article, I saw a web ad on the right side of the page from the DCCC for the website truthaboutchrismyers.com.
Clicking over to the website, you see the astronaut ad that is currently running on TV here in the 3rd district. The site mocks Chris Myers saying he will fit right in to Washington as a graphic on the header shows Myers with a place to wind him up following George Bush. The content of the site attempts to tie Myers to George Bush and Dick Cheney by pointing out the policies he has supported dealing with business and the Iraq war, while pointing out contributions Myers has made.
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