Monday, June 1, 2009
Republican Revolution Or Revolting Republicans
| This is it. For more than five months now, the phone calls have been made, the speeches were given, rubber chicken dinners eaten, debates fought and thousands of miles were logged as candidates crisscrossed New Jersey for the right to challenge incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine for governor. The campaign has been constant and endless yet as hectic and nonstop as things have been, the approach of primary day reveals an even faster and more intense pace that reaches a furious crescendo of activity that is worse than any previous day that you thought couldn’t have been any busier. The energy and excitement courses through your veins as the clock ticks to the opening of the polls where you expect every voter to show up and pull the lever for your candidate. Complete exhaustion is stayed off only due to a steady stream of adrenaline. That and nervous energy keep a campaign worker going during the last 48 hours of a campaign. For me, these times are judged by packs and pots. You know it was a particularly stressful day when you have consumed two packs of cigarettes and two pots of coffee. There is just too much to do and right up to the last hour, you find yourself doing everything possible to make sure that every voter you identified as a supporter, has a ride to the polls, has voted and that every possible radio or television interview is exploited in the hopes that your persuasive, last minute, sound bite convinces that still undecided voter to vote for your candidate. It is during these closing hours of a campaign that another emotion kicks in. Fear. You begin to realize that there is only so much more you can do and you hope that you did all and that all you did was enough. Because this is it. But the combination of hope, fear, adrenaline, exhaustion, caffeine and nicotine also allows one to get deceived. In the closing days and hours of a campaign, with the media covering every detail and every campaign stop so that they can air clips as their top story, each campaign rushes from one corner of the state to the other for rallies designed to maximize your candidates vote in areas where he or she is has the strongest support You want to fire up the troops that are inclined to vote for you and you want the media to show the throngs of enthusiastic supporters to give the impression of a candidate whose popularity can propel him to victory. The settings are quite convincing and after the fourteenth or fifteenth campaign event like this, campaign staffers can really begin to believe it all. You are only seeing the public masses that like you and you are only going to places where your candidate is liked. Eventually, you begin to think that everyone loves your candidate and that you are really going to pull out a victory. The feeling can be misleading. In your delirium you tend to forget that your opponent is going through the same experiences, only with different people. And, sadly, I fear that it is the candidate with with the bigger crowds is the candidate whom I oppose. It is undeniable that Chris Christie, the former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey for the last eight years, is ahead. The guy I am behind, Steve Lonegan, is lagging in the polls. Oh, there are plenty of people who agree with Lonegan. They want “real change” in the state and they appreciate Steve’s anti-tax message and his defiance of state mandates. They appreciate his understanding of just how tough times have become in New Jersey and just how out of control our state government has gotten. They like his proposed state Flat Tax, his education reforms and his defiance of Trenton politics. The problem is,…….the establishment doesn’t like Steve Lonegan. There are no sacred cows to Steve Lonegan. He does not pander and he doesn’t pay to play. Lonegan tackles issues head on and calls it like it he sees it. That and the establishment’s tendency to put more value in the superficial than substance and policy, help to account for their falling over themselves to support Chris Christie. Even before Christie declared his candidacy, New Jersey Republican elected state and party officials lined up behind him like teenagers waiting to buy Britney Spears’ latest CD before they even heard the first single released on it. New Jersey establishment Republicans always act that way. When Bob Menendez was up for election to the U.S. Senate, the establishment got behind the son of a former popular Republican governor, Tom Kean and pushed Tom Kean, Jr. on us. His candidacy was so liberal and so lame that for the first time in my life, I did not vote for the Republican nominee. Instead I wrote in the name of WABC talk radio host Mark Levin. With Tom Kean, Jr. at the top of the ticket, Republicans lost big time. In the recent race for President, when New Jersey moved their Presidential Primary date to February, the establishment once again lined up behind Rudy Giuliani for the Presidential nomination. He was the popular Mayor of New Jersey neighbor, New York City, so once again, they went with the popular “name”. By the time the presidential primary rolled around, Giuliani had lost so big, he wasn’t even running anymore. So now again, the powers that be figure a candidate's popular name can ride us to victory over Corzine. That and the fact that Christie is a political insider has resulted in rock solid, establishment support for Christie and as a Republican insider, Chris Christie is every other Republican insiders friend and good buddy. Steve Lonegan on the other hand is not an insider and he does not come off as the friendliest man in the world. In fact, when talking about government and politics, New Jersey government and politics in particular, he sounds like a rather angry man. And he is angry. Angry over state mandated, social engineering schemes which have placed incredible, undue economic burdens on municipalities, who in turn, pass the cost on to already overburdened state taxpayers. Mandates like the state’s Committee On Affordable Housing which ordered every municipality in the state to construct a set percentage of affordable housing units. It is an ill conceived, bank breaking policy and it has led Steve Lonegan to not only promise to reverse, it is a policy offense that has led Steve Lonegan to vow to gut the Committee on Affordable Housing itself. Steve Lonegan is angry over our having the worst income tax, the highest top end rate in the east at 9%, along with the worst estate tax and highest sales and property taxes in the nation. Lonegan is angry over state officials who promise state rebates for property taxes or senior citizens who act as though these rebates were gifts back to the people. He is angry over Republicans who go along with Democrats in the majority to get along while neither are making a difference. Steve Lonegan is as angry as millions of other New Jerseyans who have been living in a state that started going through tough economic times three years before the rest of the nation fell into financial crisis. That is why Steve Lonegan is running for New Jersey’s Republican gubernatorial nomination. It is also why I am supporting Steve Lonegan. Lonegan may not be the soft and cuddly guy that you want to cozy up with on a warm winter’s night or the guy you want to play darts and have a beer with at the local pub. But on Tuesday, I am not voting for my new BFF. On Tuesday I will be selecting the person whom I want to govern New Jersey. I don’t want him to be my friend or to be the lover of the state’s Communication Workers of America union president, like Jon Corzine and Carla Katz. I want a governor that will make the right decisions for the right reasons. I want a governor who will gut the Committee on Affordable Housing and their insane mandates. I want someone who thinks the idea of collecting money from people and sending it back to them as though it is some sort of present is absurd. Someone who understands that the number one driving force behind increases in property taxes in New Jersey is the state government and because of that understanding is willing to cut state programs. New Jersey needs a governor who understands that is insane to operate a state education system that has the 33 most expensive school districts in America. School districts where we are spending as much as $25,000 and $30,000 per student. Yet we still have students coming out of these school districts with less than mediocre education and often in unsafe schools. New Jersey needs a governor who acknowledges and understands these problems and who has a cohesive plan to change them Steve Lo As a former mayor, Steve Lonegan knows what he is talking about. He understands just how responsible the state is for increasing the costs to operate municipal governments. As a former mayor he understands the ramifications of the legislation and mandates that come out of Trenton and unlike Chris Christie, Steve Lonegan put forth his plans to rectify our problems. Christie has spent the last four months running on empty. He lacks any details and any bold new ideas or promising changes and unlike Lonegan he has not demonstrated a willingness to tackle any of the political third rails that need either adjusting or gutting. That might be why at a leadership conference in Raritan, one of the last stops of a long Sunday, I overhead a man in his 80’s tell Steve Lonegan that as a lifetime resident of New Jersey, he never felt more sure of his choice for a nomination than as he does now in his support for Steve Lonegan. With one hand grasping a cane that bore his weight and the other clasping the hand of Mayor Lonegan, this gentleman said “You are the only candidate who is not repeating all the failed initiatives that I have heard over the course of my life. You are the only candidate willing to tell us what we really need and the only candidate willing to lead”. Most conservatives in New Jersey agree with that statement. Problem is, there are not many conservatives in New Jersey. Which brings me back to an earlier point I made about the weariness created by a campaign. Tired and tapped out, hearing hordes of people give such glowing endorsements, I begin to see sparks of hope. My adrenaline pumps out a strong sense of hope as I think to myself………….”maybe there is an undercurrent of angry people fed up with the establishment”. Maybe there are more people sick and tired of status quo niceties and platitudes passed out by the favorite sons of party politics. You begin to wonder if maybe…..just maybe, enough people will prevent the party establishmentarians from taking us down a path of failure that we have been down too many times before with the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Tom Kean, Jr. and others who had big names but small ideas. White-knuckled holds on hope help prompt such thinking but logic would make one think that a much more traditional outcome will be discerned. Right now with the full and organized backing of the establishment, Christie is the favorite and barring that undercurrent which I hope does exist, the only way for Lonegan to pull out an upset victory would be for their to be a low voter turnout. Diehard conservatives are staunch Lonegan supporters. They have a deep rooted appreciation for him and his policy direction that makes them more likely to actually go out to vote for Lonegan. Whereas moderate and liberal Republicans only have a mild appreciation for Christie. They like him less for who he is what he stands for and more for the fact that he is the frontrunner who can easily defeat the unpopular Jon Corzine in November. This makes them less likely to go out of their way to cast a ballot for Christie. So this is the phenomenon that experts say could determine the election. Its not the issues of taxes or immigration or education. Its voter turnout. If this election produces above average turnout, Christie is likely to win. If there is low turnout that is substantially below average, as is often the case in primaries, than Lonegan could pull it out and become the Republican nominee for Governor. I’m not saying I don’t want people to vote, but a June snowstorm this Tuesday would be nice. |
| |
<< Home