In an interview on Sirius-XM Radio early Wednesday, Daggett said businessman Christy Mihos had called him to urge him to quit the race, saying he may be blamed for giving Corzine four more years. Mihos ran for Massachusetts governor as an independent in 2006, and he is now running as a Republican for that post.
"He felt that he did a lousy job when he ran [as] an independent, and now people are blaming him for it, and trying to act as though, or worry that I might be blamed in New Jersey for a Republican losing," Daggett said.
But Daggett wasn't having any of that talk and pushed back as he has consistently against arguments that he was going to cost the GOP the race:
"If the Republicans lose in New Jersey, they've got to look in the mirror," Daggett said. "The Republicans are the party of no. They don't participate meaningfully in the debate about how to fix things."
Daggett, asked if Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele had contacted him, said no. But, he said, Republicans "have sent other missionaries."
A spokesman for the Republican Governors Association said the organization did not urge Mihos to contact Daggett.
This isn't the first time in this campaign we've seen a candidate receive pressure from the right side to drop their campaigns. In the primary, Rick Merckt said that John Inglesino, a fundraiser for and friend of Chris Christie offered him a "major position" if he dropped his run for office. Christie of course said Inglesino was just a volunteer and that he had no knowledge of the offer. I guess they just figure they can't lose to people they don't actually end up running against.
The Chairman of the Republican Party - the Grand Ol' Party - is reported to have said that Chris Christie is not running as a member of the party.
Richard LaRossa in PNJ reported that he has multi-sourced a comment by a frustrated Jay Webber (the bold is from the original):
According to multiple sources familiar with the meeting, an exasperated Webber blurted out: "This doesn't help Chris Christie because Chris Christie isn't out there running as the Republican candidate."
Jay Webber is the hand-picked Republican state chair of Chris Christie, and also is someone who ran against an incumbent Republican to get his Assembly seat. And he says that Christie is not running as the Republican candidate.
Now, from a strategic perspective that's probably the right move. Republicans are a significant minority in the state, and haven't won in a long time. The positions of the Republican platform are unpopular in the state, so running an honest campaign and telling the voters of New Jersey what he actually intends to do would be a loser.
Christie cannot -- and Webber admits this -- win a campaign by telling the truth about what he wants to do as Governor. He has to stick to platitudes like "end corruption" and "cut taxes" without telling anything about his real plans.
Which is why he won't tell us his real plans. It's why he won't say what parts of the budget he will cut, how many employees he plans to lay off, what departments he intends to gut, what policies he wants to pursue.
All he will do is stand there and say, "I put people in jail! Cut taxes!"
Because telling the truth, for Christie, is a loser.
Republican NJ-Gov candidate Chris Christie doesn't seem too interested in letting Spanish-speaking voters know he's a Republican. Compare the English and Spanish versions of his new "Bringing Back Our Cities" web ad. The Spanish one omits the word "Republican" in a couple places where the English one identifies Christie with his party.
Here's the first ad in english. In the opening 30 seconds, he mentions the fact that he is a Republican twice:And here is the ad in spanish. While I'm no expert, I don't hear the word Republican at all:A viewer of the Spanish version was insulted by the omission and left this comment:
Hablamos diferente idioma, no somos estupidos.
That's exactly right, they may speak a different language, but they're not stupid. So what gives with the Christie campaign and what is their explanation for only being a Republican in English? Maybe it's just like he was only a conservative for the primary too.
What does this say about the state of the National Republican party, if a hopeful for Governor is considered by anyone to be the 3rd most influential person in the whole party. But that's just what the Fix has:
3. Chris Christie: The more we look at this November's New Jersey gubernatorial race, the more convinced we become that Christie, a former U.S. Attorney, is going to beat Gov. Jon Corzine (D). Now, campaigns matter and there is still plenty of time for Corzine to make up ground. But, he hasn't yet and that puts Christie in the catbird's seat. A Republican win in true-blue New Jersey would turn Christie into a national figure in much the same way that Christie Todd Whitman's victory in the Garden State way back in 1993 established her as a player at the national level. Christie seems to sense the opportunity to be the moderate voice for the GOP; he came out in favor of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation this morning. (Previous ranking: N/A)
It's a pretty meteoric rise for Christie and if he were to pull off the victory, he would certainly increase his influence. But #3 right now? Time will tell if Cilizza's prognostication skills are accurate, but I love how he calls it an "opportunity to be the moderate voice," while completely glossing over his attempt to be the conservative in the primary.In past elections, that would have been painted as flip flopping or waffling, but now it's seizing the opportunity according to Cilizza. This moderate conversion has Paul Mulshine calling for a reliever from the GOP bullpen to replace Christie on the ticket before it's too late. Maybe Christie is just like gumby, you can mold him to be whatever you want. Possibly two face, like huntsu referred to him. Or maybe that's what he's hoping people will do, see him as they want to, not for what he really is.
"I am not saying to Christian conservatives, 'There is no place for you.'. I am saying, 'Please stop saying there is no place for us.'
Pam's House Blend points us to comments made to the Christian News Service that Whitman wants the "Preserving Traditional Marriage" plank deleted altogether:
"Well, I am somebody who believes in the separation of church and state and that the government, frankly, ought to be out of the business of marriage entirely," Whitman told CNSNews.com after her speech.
"It ought to be everybody - heterosexual, homosexual. When you go down and register to get married, that's when the legal transfer of everything occurs and that's a legal recognition of a relationship - and if you want to get married in a church, a temple, whatever, and you find one, great!" she said.
..."I would like them to take it out. I just don't think it's an issue that ought to be in a party platform. It's a personal issue, not a political one."
While speaking with CNSNews.com, Whitman also called for the open acceptance of homosexuals and lesbians in the U.S. military.
"I don't care if he is straight," said Whitman, in reference to a soldier's sexuality. "I care if he can shoot straight."
There definitely is a battle in the Republican party right now over what they will stand for and who will lead them. We'll have to see whether they actually get rid of the plank, but these are certainly some bold words from the former Governor.
The NJ GOP repeatedly whines that any increase in the tax rate for people making lots of money will create an exodus from the state. If they have to pay another $3000 a year to the state they will give up their homes, short commutes, school systems, their children's friends, etc. even though it is a small percentage of their annual income.
Leaving aside the evidence that previous progressive tax structures have not created a mass movement of rich folks out of the state, let's assume that the Republicans are right about this. That when a state increases taxes on the rich the rich will run to the nearest border state.
Well, then, good news! Just in time for the Census count that will determine the number of US Representatives New Jersey gets New York has done us the incredible favor of increasing taxes on people making $300,000 or more a year.
Now we can expect an influx of right Manhattanites crossing the border to buy our McMansions in Bergen, Morris, Somerset and Hundson counties. No more vacancies as the rich flee New York State! They'll give up museums, restaurants, Central Park, convenience and everything else they love about the city to move to the burbs and increase their commute from 15 minutes to a hour and a half.
I expect to hear the GOP cheering that our long shrinking population -- which the Census actually says has grown by 271,000 in the past seven years -- will now grow with rich New Yorkers. Yippeeeeeeee!
With the GOP Congressional caucus in full-on goosestep mode, it's entirely possible you've wondered what led to all this chronic naysaying? I've been curious about that myself, and came up with this hypothesis.
Well look at how Pete Sessions, the Chair of the NRCC is advising his members to fight the stimulus package. I don't know if this is the most effective messaging ever (Emphasis mine):
"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."
Nope, of course he's not saying the Republicans are like the Taliban. He's just saying Congressional Republicans will study the Taliban to develop their strategy. As head of the NRCC, is he advising Lance, LoBiondo, Smith, Frelinghuysen and Garrett plan to sign up for insurgency training? Is the NJ GOP planning to study the Taliban for tips and tricks too? So much for toning down the rhetoric.
"If our party publicly expressed satisfaction with New Jersey and National Republican results in Tuesday's election, all they were doing was reinforcing rank and file Republican cynicism for our party's leadership," he said. "Once again Republicans find themselves with no message, no money and no direction going into next year's gubernatorial election. To say our Republicans 'Ship of State' was run aground by our captain, would imply that it had a direction. That simply was not so."
He may want to talk to his State Chairman Tom Wilson, who thought election night was like New Year's because once the clock struck midnight they were all ready for the 2009 elections. Wilson must not have many fun New Year's celebrations if he enjoyed Tuesday night.
Apparently there is a bit of an enthusiasm gap in Somerset County. The main Democratic campaign office in Martinsville is packed, every identified voter in the county has been lit dropped, people are on every phone reminding people to vote, and they are actually working to find things for the overflow volunteers to do.
Word is that the Republican office has less than a half dozen people, and the parking lot in front of the Lance office is nearly empty.
Courtesy of a NJ Democratic State Committee Press Release:
This year, we have 556,000 newly-registered Democratic voters; an unprecedented surge fueled by anti-Bush sentiment, pro-Democrat support, Obama enthusiasm, young voters and the growing recognition of the importance of the election.
The partisan advantage in New Jersey is now totals 1.6 million Democrats to less than 1 million Republicans. Last year, the party split was 1 million Democrats to 830,000 Republicans.
Democrats now have the voter-registration advantage in 15 counties to 6 counties for the GOP. Last year, the split was 11 to 10 in favor of Democrats
The ongoing ratio of new party registrations is Three To One in favor of Democrats.
Let's hope these numbers help candidates up and down the ballot on Election Day.
"We are the party of younger people," Baroni said. "New Jersey's Republican Party is diverse. It is youth-driven."
The Republicans are "the party of younger people?" Tell that to Tom Kean, who lost 18-29 year olds more than 2 to 1 to Bob Menendez in 2006. Or George W. Bush, who lost the same group 64-35 to John Kerry in 2004.
The youngest member of New Jersey's delegation to the Republican National Convention is 25-year-old Ryan Peene. Five Democratic delegates and alternates are as young as or younger than Peene: Justin Woska, Alessandra Norcross, Brian McGinnis, David Smith, and Richard Locklear. Granted, the Democratic delegation is larger than the Republican delegation, but not five times larger.
And if the New Jersey GOP is as "diverse" as Bill Baroni says it is, why is there not a single African-American Republican delegate?
Today's quote comes from another positive story about Dennis Shulman, who really has had a good few weeks. The article goes over the the current political climate, giving us this analysis:
The Republican administration has simply made so many mistakes that people have given up on seeing Republican leadership as dealing with the issues facing the country, said Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics.
During a conference call, the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman instructed candidates, campaign managers and press secretaries that given the anti-incumbent environment, it could be beneficial for House GOP candidates to distance themselves from politicians they may be serving with next year.
These [congressional approval] ratings are worse than we had on the eve of losing the majority, Cole said. Don't be afraid to say you are disappointed in fellow Republicans, don't hesitate to be anti-Washington, D.C.
Do you hear that everyone? Don't be afraid to say how disappointed you are in the Republicans and their policies. It'll be interesting to watch our GOP candidates here in NJ do this two step, as many of them have already lined up behind current administration policies. Enjoy the show.
Joseph Lucas, the former construction manager for the embattled Somerset County Park Commission was sentenced Friday to five years in state prison
after the appeal of his official misconduct charge was rejected.
There were kickbacks, free rent, county cars given to office workers to take on vacation, a Freeholder who owned a landscaping business that got county contracts, etc., etc., etc., and still not one GOP leader in Somerset got nailed. Just this one guy.
For all Chris Christie talks about corruption, here's a huge neon sign with flashing lights screaming for investigation in a Republican county and nothing happens. The same is true in the Burlington County Bridge Commission scandal where one guy went down for bribing people to keep his contracts but no one he bribed got nailed!
Then there's Andy Unanue who admits to living in New York, filing taxes in New York but voting in New Jersey. Then he files to run after saying he's not interested solely in order to hand his position on the Republican line to Dick Zimmer. No investigation.
One is a coincidence. Two is a theme. Three is a pattern.
Here's Jack Kelly, candidate for the Republican nomination for the US House in NJ3 (phew):
"The message I will continue to carry forward is that we must not allow the tax-and-spend Democrats to won (sic) one more seat in Congress and continue their assault on the middle class," Kelly said, speaking before about 50 members and guests of the Moores-town Republican Club, which sponsored the forum.
The Democrats? I'm sorry, but to blame the crap going on in Washington on the Democrats is just plain ridiculous. You see, contrary to what the Republicans want you to believe and the media reports, we haven't been in charge for most of the last 30 years.
Want proof? Here's a little chart of who has had control of the federal government since 1980.
Note the Supreme Court there, which has actually been controlled by Republican nominees since 1969. The House has been in Democratic hands more than Republicans since 1980, but since 1995 the Dems have been in control only 1.5 years. The Senate, most folks forget, was Reagan's for his first six years until it turned back to the Dems through 1994.
But all in all, the next time a Republican wants you to believe that the spending, taxing and corruption down in DC is our fault you can remind them that Washington DC is mostly a Republican town.
And the next time a reporter or columnist wants to blame Democrats for the mess in DC, you can send them this chart.
Not that facts or numbers mean anything to either the GOP or the media.
This is a transcript of Andy Unanue, the current savior of the NJ Republican Party's effort to win a statewide race, where he defends himself against the charge of being drunk on the job by saying he was just hung over.
Q: Did you hear some testimony regarding your drinking alcohol [on the job]?
A: Yeah.
Q: Were you ever drunk in the office at GFI's [Goya Foods] headquarters?
A: No
Q: Were you ever drunk in any other offices where you worked?
A: No.
Q: Were you ever hung over in the office?
A: Sure, yes.
"Sure, yes." he says. As if this were a normal occurrence for an officer of a major corporation to show up to the office hung over.
If that's what he did while managing the family business, imagine what he would do in the US Senate.
A scandal most foul is bubbling up like raw sewerage around House Republicans in Washington, and a whiff of the scandal is wafting around retiring Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ3).
House GOP officials acknowledged on Thursday that the longtime and trusted treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee may have skimmed as much as $1 million from the committee. From today's WaPo:
For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, used wire transfers to funnel money out of the NRCC and into other political committees he controlled, then shifted the funds into his own personal accounts, the committee said.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Ward is treasurer of SAXPAC, Saxton's leadership PAC formed in 2005.
True to form, with the prospect of some of the most right-wing members of the legislature losing their seats to Democrats, Republicans in Jersey have decided to play the terror card. September 11 is not a distant memory for most in this state, and the GOP knows it. So they're really left with no other way to go after an increasing Democratic majority than by appealing to fear.
The New York Times wrote up a comprehensive review of their tactics this morning. Here are the most galling examples. I think you'll agree that the charges of terrorist sympathy are stretches at best and straight up lies at worst.
In Bergen County's 39th LD, incumbent Senator and right-wing lunatic Gerald Cardinale is attacking Democratic challenger Joe Ariyan because Ariyan's law partner is an Arab-American who is involved with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The ADC is a favorite target of David Horowitz, whose front-groups are clearly the source of the Cardinale campaign's talking points. But according to Cardinale's own wife, the state chapter of the Anti Defamation League has refused to condemn the ADC, denying that they are aligned with terrorists, calling them "benign." This whisper campaign against Ariyan has only started peaking its head in the press, but it's widely expected that the GOP will be doing a heavy direct mail campaign on this to close out the election.
In Burlington County's 8th LD, Democratic Assembly challenger Tracy Riley is being attacked because her husband is the court-appointed public defender for one of the men accused of plotting a terror attack on Fort Dix. Mail sent to voters in the district shows photos of masked men with guns overlaid with the question, "Tracey Riley: Whose values will she represent in Trenton? Ours? Or theirs?"
In Toms River's mayoral race, Democratic challenger Richard Strada is being attacked by the incumbent Republican's campaign for holding an interfaith panel as the dean at Ocean County College, which was attended by an associate of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. The associate, Mohamed Nabeel Elmasry, was not invited by Strada, who was also unaware of his association with Rahman.
In the case of both Ariyan and Strada, their Republican opponents had conducted polling (some called it push-polling) that implied that the Democrats supported terrorism. And in all three races, Republican favorites are feeling the heat from Democratic challengers.
Sadly, this is what we've become used to from Republicans in New Jersey and across the nation. Since September 11, every time they're in trouble, they pull the proverbial fire alarm and scream terrorism at the top of their lungs. It's interesting to note that this time, the media doesn't seem to be buying it. Though the Times is the first to give this trend its attention this election cycle, PoliticsNJ reporters Matt Friedman and Max Pizarro have been on these stories from the start (check here, here, and here for examples).
We can only hope that the voters are as astute as the reporters in sifting through these Republican scare tactics and recognizing them for what they are -- baseless garbage.
Only a handful of legislators attended the event held at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, where attendees drank from plastic cups and were entertained by the Montgomery High School Jazz Band, an award-winning group from Wilson's hometown of Killman.
I'm sure the band was fantastic and well worth the show, but plastic cups? Why not just go with styrofoam? I know you don't pay for the food at fundraisers, but i might be a little insulted being given the plastic for a $300 event.
So lets recap: many were afraid to acknowledge publicly they were attending, only a handful of legislators actually did attend, those who came had to drink out of plastic cups and the media were forced to move their TV trucks because the owner of the property didn't want to acknowledge he was holding the event. So with all this wondeful information, what did the NY Times have to say?
The most prominent New Jersey Republican officials on hand were the party's top leaders in the Legislature: Leonard Lance, Senate minority leader, and Alex DeCroce, Assembly minority leader.
The event also played out without a hitch, in contrast to what happened last year when Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to Newark for a fund-raiser on behalf of Mr. Kean, the Senate candidate.
Mr. Kean was tardy after taking the usually traffic-clogged Route 1 from Trenton rather than the speedier New Jersey Turnpike. That generated speculation that while Mr. Kean wanted the money that was raised ($400,000), he did not want to be photographed with the vice president.
Wow, has the bar been lowered so much that as long as you don't give a pathetic excuse, the event went off without a hitch? Yeah, sounds like a huge success to me.
Update: While i've had alot of fun railing on this event for the past few weeks and the plastic cups may not be a huge issue, I think the fact that they only raised $700,000 having the President of the United States in town is very telling. Compare that number with the fact that in Dec. 2003, the Star Ledger reported on Dec 2. that Bush took $1 M for his campaign at an event in Morris County. In July 2001, The Bergen Record on July 31 reported that Vice President Cheney raised $3.5 million for Gubernatorial Candidate Bret Schundler. In fact, in 1999, Bush earned $800,000 for the assembly republicans alone, not even the State Party.
The time is going to come to pay the piper for the misgivings and misspendings of the GOP run amok the past six years. It is not going to be an easy pill to swallow. But before the GOP gets a chance to start playing the game, and trying to set a trap of blaming the Democrats for being "tax and spend" crazy, please allow me to offer you New Jersey up as an example of what happens when you allow "Borrow and Spend" policies to rule the land.
It is easy to blame the "tax and spend" Democrats, but really, if you look at the root cause of this problem, it was the "Borrow and Spend" tactics of Kean Sr. and Whitman that we are now being forced to pay for that is the biggest problem. If the State wasn't so bogged down with debt, and so many tax dollars being spent to service the debt of Republican scammers that don't spend any less, but cut taxes leaving a huge debt load, we wouldn't be in this position.
If people didn't lose their collective minds when Florio raised the sales tax to cover the misspending and out of balance budget of the Kean years, that extra what would it be now 14 years (or so) of paying down the debt load, instead of just adding to it while Christie Whitman cut taxes while continuing to spend, maybe just maybe we wouldn't be in this deep hole. But we are. The time has come to pay up. New Jersey residents are not happy about it. We are suffering through some severe pains in Property Taxes and such, and now must endure more in a Sales Tax increase before things get better.
But the key to all of this is, that if we hadn't had such a burden of debt layed upon us by "Conservative" ideals that cut taxes and spent, we wouldn't be in this position.
We cannot allow our National debts to carry on this way as well. We need to balance the budget and pay-off our debts now! Before it becomes an unmanageable burden as it did here. Just remember, it was your (the GOP that is of course) fiscal irresponsibility that put us in this position. Don't go crying when you are asked to ante up your share to pay it off.
