I live in Hunterdon County, which distinguished itself in the last election by delivering the biggest percentage victory for Chris Christie of all 21 counties. (Don't fight with me, Ocean.) In Hunterdon, that's the reality of our 21-County Strategy(except sometimes). I was reminded of that fact getting ready for tonight's Hunterdon DFA meeting. We're launching a 3-month series called Winning Uphill Battles, because here everything, everything, everything is uphill. (Tonight we screen Street Fight at Friendly Grounds Coffee, Flemington).
So, I'm fighting county-envy right now, with the news that our neighbors to the northeast - Somerset County Dems - are scouting for not one, but two interns. Actually, I'm kind of stoked for them.
Sixteen months ago, some of my friends made history. In late October, 2008, for the first time ever, registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans in a county the GOP used to own without effort. Now, I do not think a good enough effort was made to hold onto any of the half-million new Democrats in the Obama surge. But I like watching Somerset County try.
Somerset's building infrastructure, and I'm encouraged by it, given how uphill progress has been in both our counties. Somerset Dems, who have had a full-time, paid Executive Director in Alex Radus since last year (sigh, Hunterdon lacks one), are now enlarging their intern pool from one Executive Campaign Assistant position last year to two, adding a Finance Assistant internship. Both positions are now open, and they're looking for applicants for the summer and spring terms. Internships are unpaid, but school credit is encouraged. (No, no internships in Hunterdon ... yet.)
UPDATE: Ah, I'm now informed the 2 internship job descriptions can have multiple people filling them at the same time, i.e. last summer there were 4 Executive Campaign Assistants. So, go apply, people!
For more info, job descriptions and how to apply, go here and click Internships.
A stink bomb was thrown into the Somerset County Democratic Headquarters a little after noon today, the office where the Corzine for Governor campaign is coordinating their field efforts in the county.
This is the same Division Street office Governor Corzine visited last weekend during the Opening Day Party of the field office.
One person was present - an intern named Lash Green II, who was in the office working on invitations for an upcoming event with Mayor Cory Booker. Green told police he believed the stink bomb was thrown from the passenger window of a white Chrysler 300 that pulled away from the curb in front of the HQ entrance moments after. Somerville police responded but refused to file a report, citing lack of damage.
No one was hurt but the stink bomb produced a cloud of acrid sulphur odor. County Party Executive Director Alex Radus said a few minutes of work time were lost but the staff continued to work even in the "very uncomfortable environment". Said Somerset Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer:
This kind of childish behavior takes on grave significance when a political organization is targeted. It is a mark of intolerance, and amounts to nothing less than assault, voter intimidation and harassment.
The incident was filed with the NJ Secretary of State, the entity charged with overseeing the election process.
Just under 10 years ago I met Jon Corzine, a retired investment banker with a lot of money ... and perhaps the worst public speaker I'd seen in a long time. It was amazing to me that he was running against Jim Florio for the US Senate seat. It seemed like he was doomed to fail even with the tax revolt baggage Florio unfairly carried.
Today I saw a different Corzine, a better Corzine. The new Corzine is still a little stilted at times, but he is an angry, populist and aggressive speaker who knows what he wants and is willing to fight for it.
He rattled off a long list of accomplishments -- from expanding SCHIP to getting unemployment funds from the stimulus package (he forgot to note Christie opposed that) to reducing the state budget while increasing school aid to increasing the income levels for senior property tax relief to the toughest global warming bill in the country and on and on and on.
He even noted that under his Governorship more New Jerseyans are wearing seatbelts than ever before. That got a big laugh, though a nervous one.
I took the video on one of those mini Flip cameras and uploaded it to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Turn the volume up all the way.
Many people projected that Somerset County and the NJ7 would go blue as part of the Obama wave. It didn't happen...not even close. Why? How did the Freeholder and NJ7 campaigns go so wrong? Or is this "As Good As It Gets?"
In Republican Counties (see useful table below the fold to see where your county sits in the rank), I think there has been too much focus on county-wide, Legislative, and Congressional campaigns. These county and regional campaigns just don't seem to be winable...not yet. I feel that the focus should be on municipal success. We need to build strong Democratic Municipal Committees (DMCs). Strong DMCs can do grassroots education to make voters understand the importance of local, county, and congressional government positions. And a strong DMC is vital for building the resumes and experience of candidates at the higher levels. We need to crawl before we can walk.
This year there is a real chance that Democrats can take one or two seats on the Somerset County Freeholder Board. For years the myth of the "good managers" Republican Freeholders has kept them in power as they're raised tax collections by millions every year with unchecked spending.
Shockingly, Republican Freeholder Peter Palmer voluntarily said "So What" to the fact that many managers in the county are paid more than 90 percent of Governors in the United States. Democratic councilman Doug Singleterry from North Plainfield nails him by noting that Palmer may pass out high salaries all he wants, Singleterry has voted against pay raises in these difficult times.
You can donate to Singleterry and his running mate Cecilia Birge at Change for Somerset.
I am asking you to take Election Day off from work and come to Somerset County to make this election as painful as possible for the Republican bosses. We can win this county for Barack Obama and put some serious dents in the Republican hold here.
Just last month Somerset's registration advantage moved from the GOP to the Democrats, we have awesome candidates for Freeholder in Doug Singleterry and Cecilia Xie Birge, have four different Congressional races (Pallone, Holt, Wyka and Stender), and candidates running in just about every town. This is an opportunity we haven't seen in a long time, and we need your help to make it happen.
We will be working out of Bridgewater (Martinsville), Hillsborough, Montgomery and maybe one other town but our goal is to reach every single district in the county at least once. We need you to give us a few hours to make this happen.
This is an amazing opportunity to put NJ7 in the Democrats' pocket, elect Democratic Freeholders in Somerset for the first time since 1979, take some of the wind out of Rodney Frelinghuysen, and win control of at least four towns.
We need challengers at the polls, van drivers for our volunteers, people to go door-to-door to our voters reminding them to get to the polls, and others to staff the staging areas. Anyone 16 years or older can volunteer on election day and make a real difference.
If you can give us one, two, three, four or eight hours on election day, please give me a call at (908) 561-6387 or e-mail me at nathanrudy@gmail.com .
If you can't come to Somerset, please be sure to volunteer in your home town or county. The more workers we have the more votes we'll get!
Over on PoliticsNJ they have an article about an massive phone banking effort by the Somerset County Republicans led by former Congressional Candidate and Iraq War Veteran Tom Rougheen.
"Every night for 18 nights we will have people from a different town in Somerset County in here making calls for Sen. McCain, supplemented by women making targeted calls on Wednesdays and veterans calling people on Tuesdays," said Roughneen, who serves as the McCain campaign's coordinator for Somerset County.
Eighteen of the next 35 nights -- just about half of them -- they'll be calling to support McCain and the Republican ticket.
So how's it going?
Roughneen said he hopes to get more volunteers in the coming days to bolster turnout in this base Republican county.
"Our first Tuesday was a little weak," he admitted, referring to Tuesday afternoon's head count.
The head count? Two.
The quality of the volunteers?
Two women - Carol Dragon and Alice Ann Mason, both of Bedminster - made calls out of GOP headquarters on Main Street in late afternoon.
"We're trying to register absentee voters," said Mason.
They're trying to register voters over the phone. OVER THE PHONE! Over the phone.
Hee hee. They're registering voters over the phone.
Good news, I'm pretty sure, for the Democrats running in Somerset County, I'm pretty sure.
[This is mostly in Linda Stender's NJ7 -- throwing these two candidates some ducats means more help getting Linda and the rest of the ticket the last mile so pony up! -- huntsu]
Somerset County Freeholder candidates North Plainfield Councilman Doug Singleterry and Montgomery Mayor Cecilia Birge on on the air!
First things first, this is not an indictment of the GOP Freeholders in Somerset or the idea of doing energy audits on public buildings. This is an indictment of our redundant forms of government in NJ.
The Somerset County Freeholders are voting this week to authorize a quarter million dollars to perform energy audits in schools and town buildings throughout the county.
But there are towns that are already engaged in energy audits using their own funding. And there are state funds available for doing energy audits. And there are federal funds for doing energy audits. And there are private funds for doing energy audits.
But there is no comprehensive program overseeing whether the audits are being done across all communities in the same manner, whether the costs are reasonable, looking at economies of scale for both audit contracts and implementation of recommendations, group purchasing of energy saving materials, etc.
And so it becomes $250,000 here, a quarter million there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
The cause is good, it needs to be done, but it needs to be done rationally and without the incredible redundancy that we see in New Jersey's governmental systems.
Until we do a full reorganization of our state governments, until we review which level of government performs which types of services, no half-penny tax increase or toll plan is going to make a difference.
Our issues are with the structure, not revenue. It's time we addressed the real problem and give up on stop-gap measures.
Montgomery Mayor Cecilia Xie Birge is running for Somerset County Freeholder, but neither her current gig nor the one she's running for are her first shots at political activism. Cecilia was born in China and ... well, I'll let her tell you.
Cecilia Xie Birge was born in China at the height of the Cultural Revolution and spent part of her childhood in Chinese labor camps where her Western-educated parents were sent. As a student in Beijing, she participated in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and came to America the following year on a full scholarship to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
That's a pretty good pedigree, demanding democracy in a terrible dictatorship like China. Cecilia wants to bring that dedication and work to Somerset County, as well.
From family and friends in China, she has learned the government has blocked access to her website, www.birgegroup.com.
China's internet censors, "clearly have targeted me as a person," Birge said. "It's disappointing and puzzling. What does a county campaign have to do with the Olympics?"
While odd and ridiculous, the situation "shows the extent to which the Chinese government will go to present its, and only its, image to the world," said Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.
In a massive reversal of fortune, the Democrats in Somerset County actually got column 1 for the November election. The last time that happened was ... well, I don't know when it was. It was a long time ago, though. At least six or seven years.
Somerset County has been tightening of late, and the massive surge in Democratic registrations this winter put the two major parties essentially in a tie. Of course, there are a ton of undeclared voters who consider themselves Republicans, but they can't be that interested if they don't vote in primaries.
Had Linda Stender had the first column in 2006 ... she still would have lost, but it would have been a little closer. Yeah, sad but true. This year, however, it's possible that the column could mean enough extra votes for Linda or lost votes for Leonard Lance to put her over the top.
And Michael Hsing, the Republican Councilman from Bridgewater who is running for Congress as an independent, is bracketed with the Libertarians in the third column instead of being buried somewhere in column 15 with the Marijuana Party like independents often are.
The GOP is in column 2.
All in all, this is the best case scenario for the Somerset County ballots. It's not gonna deliver a heck of a lot of votes, but it will help the Democrats a little bit. And in a tight race, that little bit could put us over the top.
Do you ever get sick of hearing how so many people are leaving New Jersey, or want to leave New Jersey, or plan to leave New Jersey. Why would anyone want to live here, anyway? It's actually become a recurring theme from republican politicians and candidates who alternately seek to paint New Jersey as either anti-business or anti-family.
So, when I saw that Forbes Magazine recently rated the top 20 counties in the U.S. to raise a family, I was sure New Jersey couldn't possibly fair well. Right?
Wrong. The magazine used ten data points, including such things as air quality, crime rate, commute time, graduation rate and standardized test scores. But, significantly, in order to account for disparities in incomes from state to state, it also took into account cost of living, home price, and property tax rate as a percentage of median home price.
And guess what? New Jersey landed 3 counties in the top 20 best places to raise a family - more than any other state - with Morris County leading the way at #6, Hunterdon just behind at #7, and Somerset finishing strongly at #16. Plus, the article notes that some wealthy counties in the nation didn't make the cut because their rankings were tainted by too high home prices. Makes me wonder how close counties like Bergen or Essex or Monmouth might have been to making the cut, save for the home prices there. It must have been close.
I guess if we keep this up, no one will want to live in New Jersey anymore - it'll be too popular.
Yesterday we brought you the news that Cecilia Birge and Doug Singleterry, Democrats for Somerset County Freeholder, went after the all-GOP Freeholder Board for buying $50,000 in self-promotional giveaways.
Buying that much crap just to promote yourselves is pretty bad, but this rationale for why they need the mood pencils (they change color with the heat of the skin) and beach balls for the annual 4H Fair.
"The county government tent is extremely well attended by the visitors, and the visitors are 20,000 plus each of the three days," Palmer said about the 4-H Fair. "They check out the various services that the county offers and typically they pick up, for lack of a better word, 'tchotchke' items."
"It's the one of the few opportunities that the county government has an opportunity to get out there and educate its customers about what services it offers," said Somerset County Counsel Thomas Miller.
One of the few opportunities? Pencils that change color when heated and beach balls are what the Somerset County Republican Party consider public education of the role of county government in their "customers'" lives.
After a few years of coming really close, the Democrats in Somerset County are in a position to really take on the all GOP Freeholder Board. Their excellent candidates -- Montgomery Mayor Cecilia Birge and North Plainfield Councilman Doug Singleterry -- aren't taking advantage of the past years' momentum or the current environment.
They're taking it to the Freeholders -- tonight!
Singleterry and Birge will attend tonight's Freeholder meeting and ask why the hell in this tight budget year they are spending $50,000 on mood pencils (yeah, you read that right) and other toys with the names of elected officials all over them.
The County last week released a request for quotation that includes the above items and many more. Most of the items are to be custom printed with the names and positions of various elected officials. For example, the very first item on the bid request is for 1,500 ?mood pencils? imprinted with ?Frank Bruno, Surrogate.? The single largest line item in the package is for 9,000 beach balls imprinted with ?Somerset County Freeholders.? This item alone will cost taxpayers approximately $10,000.
It's good to see this kind of early, aggressive action by Birge and Singleterry. Their fight could not only put Democrats on the Somerset County Freeholder Board for the first time in more than 25 years, but will also help bring out Democrats who will vote for Linda Stender for Congress.
Show these two excellent and aggressive progressives some love on their donation page. Your $15 could be what puts them over the top!
As some of you know -- and all of you should know (at least for the benefit of my ego - lol) -- I ran for Somerset County Freeholder as a Democrat in 2003 and 2004. Somerset County is a pretty unforgiving environment for Democrats, and 2003 (Iraq War) and 2004 (Presidential) were particularly brutal years.
Needless to say I got my ass handed to me. It wasn't worse than previous years, and better than some, but I had expected to do better.
Well, this year things are different for any number of reasons. We have a more active party grassroots thanks to DfA, Blue 7th PAC, Melonie Marano's Freeholder campaign last year (so close!), great local party organizations taking hold, etc. We have a changing national environment that makes things more likely to go the D way. We have an open seat in the 7th district and a great candidate again in Linda Stender. And frankly the demographics for a ticket headed by an African American man or a woman actually help us in this county.
Speaking of that presidential race, we have more than 10,000 new Democrats in Somerset County thanks to the February primary. Nice.
But the real reason we have a shot, besides all that nice environmental stuff, is we have two awesome candidates: Montgomery Mayor Cecilia Xie Birge and North Plainfield Councilman Doug Singleterry.
The Somerset County Democratic committee awarded the county line to Frank Lautenberg over Rob Andrews by a voice vote at their convention tonight. Also getting the line were Rep Frank Pallone and Rush Holt and challengers Tom Wyka and Linda Stender. The vote for freeholder will be by secret ballot.
Oh, yeah, baby! Wish I could have done it a dozen times.
Some quick notes for New Jerseyans:
1. Hillary has a crappy ballot position. She's number 4 from the left. Barack Obama has numero uno. The position on the ballot is assigned by lots. Her representative just drew a bad number. I almost pushed the button for Obama because I didn't read the ballot that was mailed to me. Don't let it happen to you (er, unless you WANT it to)!
2. I had to declare my party. This was really weird because I am registered as a Democrat. Voted Democrat all my life. Ran as a Democrat, WON as a Democrat. In this precinct, there is no one bluer than moi and everyone knows it. And YET, there was no party affiliation in the log by my name. The poll volunteers said a lot of people had no party affiliation and she too found that unususal. It's not a problem in NJ as long as you are a registered voter. You can vote for whomever you like as long as you declare at the poll. Update: I am reporting this irregularity to HillaryHub's form for polling problems . You know me, I'm paranoid and my tin-foil antenna are twitching. I put nothing past the Republicans, who virtually own my county. If there is a way they can take out their strongest opponent by making it look like an open primary to their Republican base, they just might do it. Anyway, it's worth keeping an eye on, especially if the number of Obama votes exceeds the number of Democrats in my precinct who voted in the last general election. Update 2: The pollingproblems link is correct but they must be bombarded right now because I can't get to the form. Spring for some extra bandwidth, guys. You are going to need it.
3. These two things put together, along with some other things, make me think that NJ is going to be very, very close and Clinton is going to need every vote. So, if you are a NJ resident and you are registered, get out there! The weather is no drearier than it usually is at this time of the year so there's no excuses.
This is pretty fricking amazing. Over the past year we've learned more and more about the Somerset County Parks Commission and the massive waste of taxpayers dollars while the Republican Freeholders looked the other way. Former Freeholders and Republican leaders were given cushy paying jobs, parks employees who worked in offices got cars, other parks employees got six figure salaries and incredibly low rents in publicly owned homes. It was essentially a legal slush fund for rewarding friends and family.
And now, after a year of this and still no indictments, we get another six figure gift from the Parks Commission to a Republican politician in Somerset County.
A $225,000 contract for advertising work with the Somerset County Park Commission created heated discussion during a meeting of the agency's governing board Thursday night.
Scotch Plains-based Gallagher Advertising Inc. was awarded the work in an 7-1 vote. Somerville Mayor Brian Gallagher is a vice president and lead account executive with the family-owned company.
Gallagher is a Republican, in case anyone was keeping score at home.
Even better, the only place the commission advertised for the nearly quarter of a million dollar contract was on their own website!
Absolutely astonishing what these people can get away with.
The insanity that has characterized the Somerset County Parks Commission continues. The Parks Commission's finance director, Peng Chen, basically had to have his arm twisted to give testimony in the case against Joe Lucas. He was informed that he could not use his fifth amendment rights to refuse to answer questions he had already given as sworn statements. Here's a few maddening details:
The queries ranged from his job description to identifying who approved agency purchases.
Rogers and Hawkes argued Chen had no grounds to plead the Fifth because he had already provided those details in sworn interviews with investigators from the prosecutor's office. But Chen had no idea his statements could ultimately be used against him, Pasquale said. He never waived his right to avoid incriminating himself, and he was never advised of his rights, Pasquale said.
Talk about a hole big enough to drive a truck through! He gives sworn statements to the prosecutor and then claims that he didn't know they could be used in court - what did he think they were for?
And what's the deal with not wanting to give your job description?
"He's being put on the stand while there is a state investigation going on," Pasquale said, adding, "Mr. Chen would be happy to testify if he had immunity. That's not being offered to him."
Yeah - he'll admit he's a crook just as long as there are no consequences to doing so.
Chen, a father of three who has a master's degree in public administration from American University in Washington, D.C., and a undergraduate degree in economics from Northeastern University in China, has been the commission's finance administrator since 1998.
He is also the purchasing agent and penned the park commission purchasing manual in 2004, which includes rules for hiring vendors for projects or goods that cost between $3,750 and $25,000. He included a special memo urging managers to pay particular attention to the requirement to obtain three price quotes directly from vendors for each job.
Hawkes also asked Chen to note the page in the manual indicating commission employees are "expressly prohibited" from accepting gratuities or other perks from any person or company to which an order for service might be awarded.
This guy, quite literally, wrote the book on the right way to do things. How can he claim with anything resembling a straight face that he doesn't have to testify about the rules he wrote?
This is just the latest evidence that the problems at the Parks Commission go far beyond a "few bad apples". The whole freaking tree here is rotten to the core and the only way to fix things is to take an axe to it - and in this case, that means electing Melonie Marano to shake things up. I only wish she were running in Hudson County...
Somerset County hasn't elected a Democrat to the Board of Chosen Freeholders since 1979, a sad record that affects all levels of Democrats running in Somerset County.
I know well, because I ran in 2003 and 2004 and couldn't break through myself.
This year, however, an awesome candidate is busting her butt and the Freeholders' poor management of county finances and parks has finally been made public. Combined, these factors resulted in an internal GOP poll that has the race even -- before Democrat Melonie Marano mailed out a single piece!
Well, on Thursday her first piece hit the mail, and it is excellent. Here's your example:
