Has the NJFPC lost its moral authority?

The New Jersey Family Policy Council (NJFPC) is a not-for-profit corporation organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Code.  The group is supposed to be educational, not political.  According to its public filings with the IRS, the NJFPC has been around since 1996.  It’s mission is to support traditional conservative religious values such as the right-to-life.

The NJFPC is run by Len Deo, who as President of the NJFPC received a salary of $103,225.00 in 2016.  William Horsey is the Chairman and Ray Velez is the Vice Chairman/Treasurer.  They, along with 8 trustees, are responsible for the actions of the NJFPC.  The NJFPC also operates a lobby organization called NJ Family First, but this organization does not appear to be genuinely independent, relying totally on the operations of its parent for its existence. 

According to the public records filed with the IRS, the NJFPC was recently operating in the red.  Salaries account for most of the NJFPC’s outflow.   Since 2014, financial contributions to the NJFPC have steeply declined. 

So where did they come up with the money to trash a pro-life, conservative candidate in a Republican Primary?

Just before the June 5th Republican primary, NJ Family First – a subsidiary of the New Jersey Family Policy Council – did something it has never done before.  It instructed Republican primary voters on how to vote, explicitly telling them to vote for one candidate and against another.

They had never done so against a Democrat.  Even the most liberal, far-left, anti-traditional values, pro-abortion Democrats have been spared this kind of treatment.  They saved this kind of trashing for a Republican.

And guess which Republican they attacked?

Yes, the NJFPC attacked the most consistently Pro-Life/Pro-Traditional Values Republican in New Jersey.  The conservative Republican who led the fight and who put the money together to defeat the 2007 ballot question to use taxpayer money to fund embryonic stem-cell research in New Jersey.  The conservative Republican who led the fight and who put the money together to defeat Garden State Equality’s same-sex marriage legislative push in 2009-10.  The conservative Republican who led the fight and who put the money together to stop the nomination of left-wing sexologist Janet Rosenzweig as the State’s Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families. 

The NJFPC chose to attack Steve Lonegan, a conservative Republican who was ENDORSED by the New Jersey Right to Life PAC, the National Right to Life PAC, United States Senator Ted Cruz, United States Senator Rand Paul, State Senator Mike Doherty, State Senator Gerry Cardinale, State Senator Joe Pennacchio, State Senator Steve Oroho, and every other Pro-Life Legislator in the State.

Why?  And from where did they get the money to pay for the attack?

The answer to that question might lay with who the NJFPC’s attack mailer asked voters to support:  Pro-abortion candidate John McCann.  Yes, the same John McCann who challenged Scott Garrett and Gerry Cardinale for the 5th District Congressional seat in 2002 on the grounds that they were “Pro-Life” and “too conservative.”

Just days before the NJFPC’s attack mailer hit, McCann was quoted in the Bergen Record (June 1, 2018):

“Lonegan is staunchly pro-life, and recently told an audience at the Knights of Columbus in Fair Lawn that he'd support every anti-abortion bill that came before him. He's tried to tag McCann as being pro-choice, but McCann says the label doesn't fit.  

‘I believe that life begins at conception,’ McCann said.

But when asked whether he would support any future bill to further limit abortion, McCann indicated he would not.

‘The law is what is,’ he said.”

John McCann has made so many contradictory  statements regarding traditional values, conservatives, abortion – even with regards to his own spouse (an OB-GYN physician).  McCann is clearly uncomfortable with the people who support groups like the NJFPC.  Year in and year out, the New Jersey Family Policy Council pleads for money from good traditional values conservatives.  Is this how NJFPC uses its good name?

How is the New Jersey Family Policy Council ever going to get its good name back?  Having seen its endorsement so obviously compromised – some would say “bought” – how can the NJFPC hold its head up to take a principled stand?  How can it ever be taken seriously again?

John McCann admits to The Record that he’s pro-abortion/anti-gun rights.

From our very first interview with congressional candidate John McCann, we found him to be a very different kind of Republican candidate.  Here are some curious FACTS about McCann:

John McCann was recruited from a Democrat office to run in the Republican primary for Congress.  That’s right, McCann was a $151,000 a year (plus benefits) Bergen County patronage employee – working for a Democrat office holder in a Democrat-controlled county – when he was plucked from obscurity to challenge long time conservative Steve Lonegan. 

McCann, an attorney, had a deal with his Democrat employers that was so good that they allowed him to collect $498,000 in “fees” in one year – that’s in addition to his full-time salary (with benefits).  That’s right, he owed the Democrats a lot.

John McCann is the hand-picked candidate of a party boss who was convicted on public corruption charges and sent to prison.  Read more on that here:

https://www.jerseyconservative.org/blog/2018/5/24/murphy-endorsement-of-mccann-endangers-hugin

John McCann’s political consultant is a Democrat who ran the campaigns of some of the most far-left candidates in his state’s history.  McCann’s campaign chair is a liberal pro-abortion acolyte of former Governor Christie Whitman.  McCann’s campaign manager holds contracts from Democrat politicians. 

Now comes the latest…

Since his campaign began, John McCann has flipped back and forth on where he stands on abortion and guns.  A long time pro-choicer on abortion and advocate for gun-control, McCann started his campaign embracing those positions in order to give his candidacy clear blue water between him and Lonegan.  He even argued that a Pro-Lifer/ Pro-Gun guy like Lonegan couldn’t win.

Then they did a poll…  McCann’s team sat their candidate down and told him to lie.  To his credit, he showed some reluctance in public… but his campaign communications and especially his campaign mail hasn’t.  It’s been a full on lie and a remarkably disciplined lie so far as the campaign is concerned.

But then you have the candidate.  He gets caught in these interviews, where he reverts to form – to the positions on Life and the Second Amendment that McCann has held all his life and that are dear to him.  A case in point, was Friday’s Bergen Record.  Here, read it for yourself…

Lonegan is staunchly pro-life, and recently told an audience at the Knights of Columbus in Fair Lawn that he'd support every anti-abortion bill that came before him. He's tried to tag McCann as being pro-choice, but McCann says the label doesn't fit.  

"I believe that life begins at conception," McCann said.

But when asked whether he would support any future bill to further limit abortion, McCann indicated he would not. 

"The law is what is," he said. 

Hey, that’s NOT Pro-Life.  That is pro-status quo, which equals, pro-abortion.

Now on guns:

Both candidates wrap themselves in the Second Amendment right to bear arms. McCann favors requiring universal background checks on perspective [sic] gun buyers but Lonegan opposes them they would  just "add another layer of bureaucracy."

Ditto on the Second Amendment.

Here read the whole article for yourselves:

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/01/nj-election-2018-john-mccann-steve-lonegan-congress-candidates-play-trump-card-primary/659599002/

Too bad the New Jersey Family Policy Council chose the day after this Bergen Record article hit to do an attack on Steve Lonegan and an endorsement of John McCann as a pro-lifer that clearly fell outside the group’s non-profit guidelines.  It looks like John McCann, the candidate, couldn’t help himself and ended up screwing the reputation of the NJFPC and its leadership.  Who ever sweet-talked the NJFPC into doing this has a lot to answer for.

Beck set off GOP primary stirrings for 2017

It started with GOP Senator Jennifer Beck, looking for an issue to run on next year, and soon got crazily out of hand.  Beck, a member of the GOP Senate leadership no less, got NJ 101.5's Bill "pulled-pork" Spadea to start the movement to publicly call for running primary campaigns against Republican legislators in 2017 and it took off from there.

Next it was taken up in the pages of the SaveJersey blog, with a call for open Republican-on-Republican warfare:

And who are these offending Republicans? Here’s the Rogue’s Gallery – read it and make them weep:

Jon Bramnick, LD 21 (Union, Somerset and Morris); Chris Brown, LD 2 (Atlantic):  Rob Clifton, LD 12 (Monmouth, Ocean, Burlington and Middlesex);  BettyLou DeCroce,  LD 26 (Morris, Essex and Passaic); Joe Howarth, LD 8 (Burlington, Atlantic and Camden);  Sean Kean,  LD 30 (Monmouth and Ocean); Nancy Munoz,  LD 21 (Union, Morris and Somerset); David Rible,  LD 30 (Monmouth); Maria Rodriguez-Gregg, LD 8 (Burlington, Atlantic and Camden) and Scott Rumana, LD 40 (Passaic, Bergen, Essex and Morris).

Note that many of this exceedingly motley crew are in the GOP leadership in the Assembly, including Assemblyman Bramnick, the putative leader of the caucus.

...For their support of the gas tax-hike abomination, the Gang of 10 need to be primaried, hounded, called out, denounced, condemned and run to ground as traitors to the state’s already oppressed taxpayers.

The writer also explicitly fingers the new GOP "Solutions NJ" super PAC as being "GOP up-and-comers who loathe the idea of a gas-tax hike." 

Why did the leadership of the Senate Republican Caucus encourage one of their members to negotiate a tax cut/TTF-funding deal, while a member of GOP leadership itself was allowed to publicly make war on that deal?  That miscalculation has opened up the possibility of primaries against legislative Republicans across the state.

The so-called "left" of the conservative movement in New Jersey -- represented by the anti-government, libertarian-leaning Liberty & Prosperity group of Atlantic and Cape May counties -- got into the act, calling for an Argentina-style "repudiation" of the $16 billion debt used to fund the TTF.  Yes, they want to default on the debt, walk away from it, and they have what could be a sound legal argument for doing so.  They also want to "identify, recruit, train, and support qualified candidates to run against (Assemblyman Chris Brown and others) in the Primary Elections next June."

Assemblyman Brown is one of three Republicans in the state who share a legislative district with two Democrats.  He is hyper-vulnerable in 2017.  If he is defeated for re-election, it will be the fault of Senator Jennifer Beck and the GOP Senate leadership for riling up and galvanizing the opposition against him.

Coming from the social-conservative "right" on this issue is the New Jersey Family Policy Council.  In an email blast in which they remind readers that they "don't usually get too involved in fiscal issues," the NJFPC goes after Governor Chris Christie, Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick, and other Republicans for voting for A-12, which increased the gas tax while reducing the sales tax and eliminating the tax on retirement income for most retirees.

Curiously, the NJFPC uses the talking points of far-left former Democrat State Senator Gordon MacInnes' Policy Perspectives group, and lifts its points directly from another publication.  MacInnes is an old-Great Society social warrior and former White House staffer under LBJ (for those of you too young to remember, that stands for President Lyndon Baines Johnson).

This is being follow-up with a political campaign seminar tomorrow at the Church of Grace & Peace in Toms River.  The seminar is run by a campaign professional from out West named George Khalaf, dubbed by NJFPC's Len Deo as "the Lebanese Lion from Arizona."  We don't know a soul who calls him that, by-the-way, apart from maybe his pal Paul Weber. 

George Khalaf is the former political director of the Arizona Republican Party, who started his own polling and general consulting firm two years ago and is now out looking for new clients.  The seminar tomorrow promises to "change the culture by winning campaigns... at all levels of elected offices, from School Board to Town Council, to County Office and all the way up to the State and Federal elections!"

Well the Lion has come to the right place to do some hunting.  New Jersey is one of the last breeding grounds of that nearly extinct creature -- the culturally far-left Republican elected official.  These people can't even tell the difference between boys and girls.  They want adult male sex offenders showering with the high school girls' soccer team.  In Arizona, their heads adorn every political consultant's office in every county. 

But it gets better.  The NJGOP lost legislative seats even with a popular Governor at the helm.  The GOP couldn't pick up a single Senate seat even when the Governor was winning by 20 percentage points.  In contrast, in Pennsylvania the GOP won 12 new legislative seats while their incumbent Governor was LOSING by 10 points!  Going into 2017, the NJGOP isn't going to have enough money to protect its vulnerable incumbents in the GENERAL ELECTION.  Forget about having the spare money for one or two or more or a bunch of primaries.

And as a pollster of some repute, George Khalaf will soon discover that most Republicans in the Garden State are over 60 years old and think culturally more like average Republicans do in Arizona than GOP "leaders" do in New Jersey.  New Jersey Republicans are utterly turned-off by these creatures who claim to represent them, their culture, or their country.  So let the Lion loose and... good hunting!  Or should we say, good dining?

By-the-way, great work Senator Beck... great work!