Anti-Jordan NY Congressman has political connections to NJ

By Rubashov

Conservative activists have been lobbying the “anti-MAGA” GOP holdouts who refused to confirm Conservative Congressman Jim Jordan as Speaker. They circulated a handy list and urged grassroots Republicans inside and outside their districts to call the offices of those GOP holdouts.
 

One of those GOP incumbents – New York’s Michael Lawler – is potentially more exposed than the others. Lawler founded CheckMate Strategies with Chris Russell, Jack Ciattarelli’s strategist, and their political consulting firm came to dominate New Jersey Republican politics. The State of New Jersey’s corporate filings lists him as co-owner of the firm as does his congressional financial disclosure statement (made as a candidate) for 2022.
 

CheckMate Strategies is listed as the administrator on numerous campaign social media pages. For example, on the Facebook page used by Assemblyman Parker Space’s Senate campaign, the disclaimer reads: “CHECKMATE STRATEGIES LLC is responsible for this Page.”
 

CheckMate runs numerous campaigns in New Jersey and before his election to Congress in 2022, Lawler handled many of those accounts personally. It is also noteworthy that on his 2022 congressional financial disclosure statement, Congressman Michael Lawler lists that he earned income as a lobbyist for International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 825. 

Did Bob Hugin arbitrarily put NJGOP on the side of LGBTQ+ Curriculum?

By Rubashov
 
All across America, parents want the right to control the sexual indoctrination of their children. They are trying to re-establish primacy over when and what their children will be exposed to. Until recently, parental primacy over such matters was a given – universally accepted. My house, my rules.
 
Special interest money – their lobbyists and activists – ran a successful stealth campaign that undermined parental rights. Until the COVID pandemic sent school children home and distance learning exposed their parents to the curriculum they were learning from. The backlash was predictable.
 
Many in the academic, media, corporate, and political establishment are in hock to the special interest money that looks upon public schools as their house, their rules. Of course, what they forget is that property tax payers pay for most of the public education in New Jersey – and income tax payers pay for the rest. That’s whose house it is. The establishment are really just a group of squatters. Illegal trespassers. Which is why they need to cheat.
 

***

 
If you are a member of one of the world’s traditional religions – and literally billions of people are (billions) – the word “pride” carries a warning with it. Throughout the world’s great faiths, “pride” is something to keep in check. The Buddha warned to “let go of anger, let go of pride.” In Hinduism, pride is a poison that presents an obstacle to one's peace and happiness. Islam warns us that “evil is the abode of pride.”
 
In the Christian tradition, pride is the original sin. Thomas Aquinas argued that all other sins stem from Pride, making this the root sin and the most important to focus on: “Inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin...the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule.”
 
In modern America (and elsewhere in the West) we no longer celebrate many of the Christian holidays, but we do celebrate the Advent-long festival of Pride, named after one of the seven deadly sins of the Bible (listed, in order, as “pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth”). What anthropologists of the future will make of it we can only guess?
 
Who came up with such a name might be their first question? Apparently, it is generally accepted that the term was first used during an act of violence – specifically, a riot, directed at the police. Think of it as if America celebrated the Boston Massacre instead of Independence Day. The Stonewall Riot (“Stonewall” being the name of a bar) took place on June 28, 1969. It has also been called the Stonewall Uprising and the Stonewall Insurrection. The term “Pride” came from the brain of one of the insurrectionists, Brenda Howard, known as the “Mother of Pride”.
  
Brenda Howard was a Marxist and anti-war activist who became a feminist because she believed the anti-war movement was too dominated by men. According to Wikipedia: “In 1987 Howard helped found the New York Area Bisexual Network to help co-ordinate services to the region's growing Bisexual community. She was also an active member of the early bisexual political activist group BiPAC/Bialogue, a Regional Organizer for BiNet USA, a co-facilitator of the Bisexual S/M Discussion Group and a founder of the nation's first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals. On a national level, Howard's activism included work on both the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation where she was female co-chair of the leather contingent and Stonewall 25 in 1994. In addition to being openly bisexual, Howard was openly polyamorous and involved in BDSM.”
 
That said, Brenda Howard’s most profound accomplishment must be her etymological feat of turning what had been every religion’s sin – Pride – into America’s foremost high holy month. A stunning achievement by any measure.
 

***

 
The advance of so much of the “Pride” agenda has been done apart from the democratic process. Public pressure, threats, name-calling, and ostracization have featured heavily in moving the agenda forward. Special interest group lobbying, political contributions, and appointed judiciaries won victories instead of democratic argument and the votes of both legislatures and electorates. America didn’t get it done the way countries like Ireland did, by a democratic vote of the people, and so the winners have never been comfortable in the way that those who win the hearts and minds of actual voters can be.
 
And so the ceaseless, insecure demands continue. The insistence that more can always be done… must always be done. What should have been a celebration of “live and let live” or “do your own thing” has taken the form of religious proselytization – a replacement religion of a kind America has never had: Standardized, mandatory, practiced everywhere and by everyone… or else, face the consequences.
 

***

 
Democracy requires humility. It requires the wisdom to reject certainty, that one side has all the answers, and the good nature to accept that “this time we lost but there is aways next time”. Religion is not like that. Religion seeks adherence because it believes that there is only one truth and that everyone should accept it. That is how “Pride” resembles a religion – because it leads otherwise honorable people to subvert democratic solutions in favor of “getting the job done, one way or the other”.
 
And so, we come to the NJGOP and its Chairman, Bob Hugin. Instead of calling for a meeting of the members of the Republican State Committee, to put before them the question of whether they wanted the NJGOP to formally go on the record as celebrating the secular/religious holiday of “Pride Month” (just as they acknowledge and celebrate the secular/religious holiday of Christmas), either Hugin or someone in authority at the NJGOP arbitrarily did so without a vote. The May meeting was cancelled. A June meeting has yet to be held.
 
Sussex County’s Nick D'Agostino, the newest member of the Republican State Committee, bravely took on the party. Under the “Pride flag” posted on the NJGOP’s website, Nick wrote:
 
“You don’t speak for all of us in the NJGOP. Many of us believe the American Flag represent ALL of us and refuse to pander to the woke left. Many of us believe God is in control and not cancel culture. Many of us understand that voters choosing between a Democrat and a wannabe Democrat, will choose the actual Democrat… almost every time. Ultimately though, the people are in charge. They are waking up and they are sick of losing elections and their freedoms. Soon, every weak Republican will be replaced with true patriots and principled conservatives. Then, and only then, NJ will turn red!”
 
Nick D'Agostino spoke up for democratic principles and the consent of the governed. Nick spoke truth to power. That took guts and leadership. Godspeed.

Sussex County Republican State Committeeman Nick D'Agostino and wife Breelagh.

Nick also serves as President of the Sussex-Wantage Regional Board of Education.

Author and civil rights pioneer Lillian Smith gave this sound advice when she accepted the Charles S. Johnson Award for her work:

“It is his millions of relationships that will give man his humanity… It is not our ideological rights that are important but the quality of our relationships with each other, with all men, with knowledge and art and God that count.

The civil rights movement has done a magnificent job but it is now faced with the ancient choice between good and evil, between love for all men and lust for a group’s power.”

“Every group on earth that has put ideology before human relations has failed; always disaster and bitterness and bloodshed have come. This movement, too, may fail. If it does, it will be because it aroused in men more hate than love, more concern for their own group than for all people, more lust for power than compassion for human need.”

“We must avoid the trap of totalism which lures a man into thinking there is only one way, one answer, one option, and that others must be forced into this One Way, and forced into it Now.”

National Republicans argue that CRT makes places like NJ winnable

By Rubashov

Ryan Grim at The Hill’s “Rising” has an interesting segment on Republican prospects for the U.S. Senate – which could translate into where the NJGOP should be heading for 2023, when control of both chambers of the State Legislature are up for grabs. Grim, recently interviewed U.S. Senator Rick Scott, who is heading up the Senate Republicans’ campaign efforts this year.

Grim was the D.C. bureau chief for HuffPost and is the D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept. He is also a political commentator for The Young Turks and The Majority Report with Sam Seder. His writings have appeared in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and Politico. The author of two books, he cofounded Strong Arm Press, an independent progressive publishing house and has been a co-host of The Hill's Rising since June of last year. He is decidedly a man of the Left. That said, his journalism is generally balanced and he appears to be intellectually curious, taking pains to tell the whole story.

Grim suggests there’s merit in the national GOP’s view that “culture war” issues have opened the door to states like New Jersey. Fear of crime, which he makes the point helped fuel the Republican takeover of the Senate in 1980, is back in a big way. In the interview, Senator Scott said that national Republicans will run campaigns on “inflation, school issues, crime, and the border.” Scott later added “job creation” to that list.

The NJGOP has never embraced a “culture war” strategy and whether New Jersey Republicans can adapt to mirror this national strategy remains to be seen. With this in mind, it does represent a starting point in the discussion. You can watch the entire segment here:

Will it be 1980 all over again?

NJGOP: Controlling the narrative by controlling the data

By Rubashov

Last November, New Jersey Democrats weathered a national tidal wave that swept away Democrat majorities and gave the GOP its first gubernatorial win in Virginia since 2009. New Jersey Democrats maintained healthy majorities in both chambers of the Legislature and Phil Murphy bucked history to become the first Democrat governor to be re-elected since 1977.

But in the fantasyland inhabited by the cabal of consultants who dominate the NJGOP, New Jersey Republicans really won last November. The tide rose high enough for the GOP to pick up a respectable number of legislative seats and local offices… but Republicans still didn’t win control of the governor’s office or a single chamber of the Legislature. And the loss of two longtime Republican counties – Burlington and Somerset – was only more firmly established.

Why then is last November being sold as a “victory”? There are three reasons.

First, the consultants who have spent millions in losing the GOP congressional delegation, key counties like Burlington and Somerset, and dozens of other GOP candidates at the statewide, legislative district, county, and municipal levels have a reputation to maintain. They need something to pitch potential clients and keep existing ones. If you don’t have a victory to pitch, these guys have the talent to come up with a pitch that sounds like a victory – even when it isn’t. Hey, we all know bullshit fuels politics. This is just one example.

Second, Jack Ciattarelli is running for Governor in 2025 and he’s invested in this narrative. He needs to convince existing and potential donors to invest again, so it’s important that the blame not fall on his campaign and consultants. So the story goes: “We didn’t leave any votes on the table, did everything right, achieved something like a victory, and next time…”

Third, these consultants might as well own the NJGOP. They recruited Bob Hugin, made him a statewide candidate, and their latest statewide candidate – Jack Ciattarelli – handpicked Hugin for the job of NJGOP Chairman.

A big part of their narrative is that the Bob Hugin-Jack Ciattarrelli model of campaigning, in particular the turnout model, is the only “viable” way forward (to use their favorite term). Unfortunately, the two times that their model was actually used (2018 for Hugin and 2021 for Ciattarelli), it lost. And that’s kind of the opposite of “viable”.

You might have noticed that in contrast to past years, these consultants are going all out to present an examination of the data. They claim it will show how successful they were in not winning the governor’s office, state senate, and state assembly. The Save Jersey blog just did a post-mortem of sorts and the NJGOP is planning to put together a dog and pony show in March to further “prove” their point.

Some wags have pointed out that all this activity was hastened after the announcement that the GOP legislative leadership would conduct its own post-mortem into what was done and how it failed to capture a single legislative chamber. This is nothing new. Every legislative leadership in every state does it after every election cycle.

But the wags have also pointed out that this is the reason why NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin is withholding access to the data necessary to complete a legislative post-mortem. Yes, it’s the Republican National Committee’s data, granted to each state committee as a resource for legislative and other party leaders to study voter history, conduct post-mortems, create voter turnout models, recruit candidates, and create direct-mail databases.

So why isn’t Bob Hugin and the NJGOP sharing this data with Republican legislative leaders? Could it be that they don't want the legislative post-mortem to happen? Why else would they want the NJGOP to be a one-idea operation?

Hugin and his consultants have the data. They are making selective use of it to create a narrative supporting the theory that the Bob Hugin-Jack Ciattarrelli model of campaigning, in particular the turnout model, is the only “viable” way forward. By withholding the data from competing models – like the one Bill Stepien’s team is working on for GOP legislative leaders – Hugin and his consultants are attempting to abort a potential competition of ideas.

Is this kind of cheating the Big Pharma way? If you fix it so there’s no competition allowed, you can pretty much do what you want and not be held to account for it.

For our part, we don’t like cheating. We think New Jersey Republicans can handle more than one way, in other words, a choice. And we don’t think they will explode just because they have more than one idea to consider.

Don’t cheat. Different perspectives are good things. Don't try to block them from happening. Don't try to stop them. From them, maybe you’ll figure out how to win… for real win. Not fantasy spin win.

What happens when you spin yourself and fail to come to grips with reality.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

Jim McGreevey-linked group smears Allen (and Biden) over border.

By Rubashov

Poor Phil Murphy must be getting desperate. He’s got to be to look to Jim McGreevey for a lifeline.

If the former Governor hadn’t employed his novel diversion, does anybody doubt that there would have been a criminal investigation into the part he played in his corrupt administration? Corruption and kink – those were the features of McGreevey’s tenure as Governor. Didn’t the Star-Ledger and The Record do fat exclusives on it? Wasn’t it reported that he assigned one of his own staffers to have sex with his First Lady? Some crazy stuff.

Having taken the same road as Nixon-dirty tricks operative Chuck Colson, the former Governor is now a preacher – lecturing anyone who will listen about right from wrong. Like Colson, Jim McGreevey’s ministry involves prisons, but he can’t seem to stay out of politics. Of course, politics is where the money is… and the attention… and the celebrity (and the former Governor is, and always has been, a supreme narcissist).

On Saturday, the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com ran an opinion column by a director at Jim McGreevey’s organization. This fellow is the vice president of something called the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition. He co-wrote the column with the president of the aforementioned – who is, according to the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, “very active in the Union City Clergy Association of Mayor Brian Stack.”

Hey, are these guys ward healers… or members of the clergy?

Now if you search the Guidestar website, which rates the reliability of charitable organizations and other non-profits, you will not find the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition. You also won’t find them in a search of the Internal Revenue Service’s website. The group doesn’t appear to be registered with the IRS as a non-profit organization. It’s not even listed as an existing organization – or one that ever existed – with the New Jersey Department of the Treasury’s Division of Revenue. And that’s the Murphy administration!

So, where did this group come from?

From news reports in the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, it seems the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition was formed during Phil Murphy’s first campaign for Governor. As reported in the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, Murphy spent heavily on a coalition building effort led by operatives like Al Alvarez and Derek Green.

According to the Star-Ledger/ NJ.com, the Murphy campaign paid Green two million dollars for his efforts. Like Alvarez, Green was rewarded with a taxpayer-supported government appointment. Green became Murphy’s “senior adviser on diversity, faith, urban and regional growth.” Get the picture?

On July 6th, the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition held a press conference in Newark to formally endorse Governor Phil Murphy for re-election. Later that day, the Governor issued a statement accepting their endorsement.

The Star-Ledger/ NJ.com opinion column by the two men who run the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition followed the coordinated Democrat Party talking points that have been pushed by Murphy’s campaign, and by Murphy himself. Coincidence?

On August 9th, Governor Murphy attacked Diane Allen for suggesting that COVID-19 could be brought over the border by undocumented immigration. That’s undocumented – as in nobody got their names, let alone tested them for anything from STDs to COVID!

Murphy said that the idea that unmasked, unvaccinated people, kept in close confinement before being shepherded in tightly packed groups across the border, might pick up the virus along the way was “conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact”. He went on to suggest that even being concerned about the possibility of such a thing was “making people less healthy and putting their lives at risk”.

Murphy’s statements placed him in direct conflict with the administration of President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly extended the closure of the borders with Mexico and Canada due to concerns over cross-border transmission of coronavirus. The ban on all non-essential travel will continue to at least August 21st, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security announced. The restriction on non-essential travel began in March 2020 “due to the coronavirus pandemic” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

President Biden shares the same concerns as Senator Allen about cross-border transmission of COVID-19. Of course, being able to test those crossing the border is essential to containing the spread of coronavirus and its variants. Illegal border-crossings by undocumented immigrants totally defeats the ability to test, treat, and contain the virus.

Nowhere in their column do the two men who run the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition acknowledge that the borders with Mexico and Canada are currently closed, by the Biden administration, due to concerns about the transmission of COVID-19. People with titles like reverend and pastor shouldn’t openly lie like that. It damages their entire mission (if indeed they still have a mission beyond shilling for powerful people in government).

The leaders of the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition need to watch this video... and then issue an apology to Diane Allen (or make the same accusation against President Joe Biden).

One of the authors identifies as an American Baptist. The other was religiously educated at a seminary run by the Reformed Episcopal Church. We intend to write to both entities for their opinion about the dishonesty displayed by these two “clergymen” and by their use of a political candidate’s talking points in a deeply misogynistic attempt to smear a woman with a record that is clearly at odds with their mischaracterization of her. We will offer to debate the matter with them before both bodies.

And it gets worse. In their column, and on orders from God only knows who, these two deeply compromised men tried to label Diane Allen a “racist” for her words, while ignoring the words and actions of President Biden. Allen and Biden concur and the two cannot be separated.

We also find it strange that people who are ordained by color-blind religious denominations set themselves up as heads of exclusionary organizations that have more to do with voter-segmenting than the message of Christ that “all men are brothers”. Any honest reader of their column will agree that it has very little to do with Christianity and a whole lot to do with the campaign of Governor Phil Murphy and a political hit job. So, why put on your collars to do it?

In our opinion, a group with a name like “New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition” sounds exclusionary and racist. Why shouldn’t a church be open to everyone? Maybe that’s why Mayor Stack had the good sense to give his group a geographic-sounding name – “Union City Clergy Association” – instead of an exclusionary one.

So, who are the racists here?

Being political hatchet men may serve the personal needs of these two men, but we doubt it is the look desired by the American Baptist congregation or the Reformed Episcopal Church. In trading their clerical mantles for the misogynistic garb of political lowlifes, the only thing the leaders of the New Jersey Latino Pastors and Ministers Coalition have smeared is their congregations and the broader church.

Again, this is the beginning. Stay tuned…

“The entire business model of the Democratic Party is to avoid dealing with its own populists’ concerns, so they’ve never seen the Sanders wing of the party as anything but a threat to what they do for a living, which is basically take corporate money and then sell themselves as socially progressive. That’s what they do for a living. That’s their business.”

Matt Taibbi
Journalist and author of Hate, Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.

The humanity of Jack Ciattarelli vs. Phil Murphy’s Wall Street ego.

By Rubashov

The grumblings on the ground, amongst the hundreds of grassroots doers who make up what could be the activist base of the Republican Party in New Jersey, are not filtering up, not making it to the ears of the Establishment media in this state. Apart from the astute Paul Mulshine, who ever calls them?

For most of the Establishment media, such people are simply examples of Hilary Clinton’s deplorables, unworthy of consideration. How stripping people of their common humanity – a humanity the Establishment media insists be granted to child rapists and serial killers – became a species of so-called “liberalism”, we cannot know. It is a feature of the new class war described by Michael Lind in a book by the same name (The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite), published last year.

Lind argues that Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision-making in politics, the economy, and culture. Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists and save democracy.” Now, before anyone goes assuming that Lind is some “right-wing extremist”, recall that he has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins and is a Professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. An author of more than a dozen books, Professor Lind was an editor or staff writer at the New Yorker, Harper’s, The New Republic, and The National Interest. Professor Lind also writes some very good poetry.

With regards to the gubernatorial race between the incumbent Democrat, Phil Murphy, and the Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, the usually hostile Establishment media is full of “well-meaning” advice for the challenger. This advice goes from “give-up, Murphy’s got this” to “there should be no clear-blue water between the GOP and the Democrats, all those issues are settled, your policies should mimic those of the Democrats.”

But the grumblings continue – fueled by those “settled policies” pushed on them or imposed directly by Governor Murphy and his ideological allies (many of whom he has made taxpayer-paid vendors to his administration). As the Establishment media doesn’t talk to people like this, they find ways to talk to each other – so a new, contained, kind of media is created in the hundreds of social media and internet-based groups, formal and informal, that have filled the void left by Establishment media.

This vibrant new media serves much the same purpose as the phenomenon of “little magazines” did during the last century – when political, cultural, and literary movements (pushed aside or ignored by the Establishment) created their own media to communicate through. The question is: Will the NJGOP and its candidates acknowledge and promote this new media? Will they harness its possibilities?

So far, New Jersey Republicans have been slow to recognize the opportunities offered by this new media, slow to adapt and engage. Most have remained hard-wired to the Establishment media who (a) are not their friends, and who (b) no longer talk to or engage with the voters who are their friends. We see evidence of this in every fresh missive from official party sources. The party recognizes and promotes the same sources as it has done for decades – only the newspapers are now on life-support and instead of PoliticsNJ it is now called New Jersey Globe.

The most notable departure from this has been the Republican nominee himself, Jack Ciattarelli. Whoever he was four or more years ago, informed by his background as a small business owner and an accountant, he has grown through engaging with people and listening to them.

Jack Ciattarelli is among the best listeners in politics we’ve come across. And it doesn’t matter who he’s talking with – a kid in Newark wondering about his future, a restaurant owner trying to stay in business, a single-mom facing foreclosure, or parents sick and tired of government butting-in between them and their children – Jack listens. He listens, he thinks about it, he takes what he has heard into his heart – and he changes and makes it part of his platform.

You cannot ask for more from anyone running for public office. It doesn’t get any better than a genuine, honest listener – open to learning from the people he wants to represent. And isn’t that what representative democracy is all about?

Jack’s opponent is Phil Murphy, the incumbent Governor, and one-time boss at Wall Street’s Goldman-Sachs. A self-proclaimed “Master-of-the-Universe”. They do not listen. They know.

They know what is best for you. And they know that it is better for everyone when the silly proles know their place and leave the world to be run by people like them. People who don’t let ideas like freedom or democracy get in the way of profit. Masters-of-the-Universe who know that you can’t get all sentimental and worry about young Asian girls being worked like slaves in unsafe environments for pennies an hour. Especially when an “ideal” like profit is at stake.

These people send their children to private boarding schools that cost as much as a working person earns in a year. They turn their kids over to an institution that daily takes their place. Institutions that act as Nanny to inculcate an Establishment ethos into their charges.

It is their choice to do so. But they do not extend to others the same choice when they try to impose an ideological curriculum on their children. Phil and Tammy Murphy (herself an alumnus and board member of one of these private boarding schools) want to place their ideas about how your children should be raised between you and your own kids! And its not just the curriculum that they are messing with. Murphy’s Democrats wanted to make it a crime for the police to tell parents when the cops caught their kids using drugs.

Phil Murphy doesn’t respect the family. He doesn’t care about that special space that joins parents and children. He wants to break it all to pieces – just so he can hand a fat plum to his political allies at Garden State Equality. They want something. They need money. Mandating a new curriculum delivers on that. His allies get theirs. They endorse Murphy. Murphy profits – just like in the old days.

There is no doubt that the grumblings of the nascent new media will continue – even as it grows, knits itself together, and builds a following of people looking to read something by someone who doesn’t call them names. There are millions upon millions of such people – and they grow every time someone tells them that skin color marks some people as “bad” or that their country is something to be ashamed of.

And while the NJGOP and its allied organizations throughout the state may not get it, some do and, most importantly, Jack does. Jack Ciattarelli is a listener who has listened and who has taken crap from the Establishment media because he has listened… and he did not back down.
 
If there is to be a reckoning within the GOP, now is not the moment. All people – Republican, Democrat, Undeclared, Independent – who value individual liberty and personal freedom, who value the family and the small community, have in Jack Ciattarelli a champion who will listen. And that’s how it begins – with listening. How refreshingly different from the “shut up and know your place… or I’ll call you a bad word” of Phil Murphy and his unctuous crew.
 
Jack is listening. He needs your help. Focus your energies between now and November 2nd accordingly.

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

Robert Heinlein

Interview with Scott Bach, Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs

By Devorah

Threat To New Jersey Gun Owners Medical Privacy with new bill, S-568.

The Democrats have been passing legislation at lightning speed in New Jersey, with limited public interaction (which appears to be intentional). Each legislative bill proposed has been stripping away fundamental rights: God-given, Constitutional, civil rights.

In my interview with Mr. Scott Bach, Executive Director, ANJRPC, I asked several questions relating to the current and pressing concern over the bill S-568, which is set to, yet again, violate the medical rights and privacy of gun owners.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs is a statewide organization representing the rights of all New Jersey gun owners. Mr. Bach full legislative alert is posted below following the interview. People interested in reaching Mr. Bach can email him at: defendfreedom@earthlink.net. Here is his response.

What has made it difficult in educating the public that their civil rights are Constitutional and legal; and yet are treated as if the opposite?

"People are being tricked into giving up their rights by those trying to implement a global socialist agenda in which people are subject to the will of the state instead of the other way around. Especially in liberal New Jersey, many folks have swallowed the lie. Our job is to shine light on the subject and wake up as many people as possible to resist that agenda."

Tell us a bit on how you became involved in creating this alert?

"We send out many legislative alerts to gun owners on bills that are actually moving, and this was one of them. The implications of this bill for medical privacy and restoring gun rights to those who have genuinely recovered were far-reaching. It was basically an attempt to nullify what expungement actually means (a fresh start) and create a permanent stigma that can be used to block gun ownership for the rest of someone's life, regardless of their recovery."

Do you feel there is a bias on gun owners? And why?

"The bias against gun owners is blatant, systemic, and far-reaching. To some in government and the courts, the Constitution can simply be ignored when it comes to the rights of gun owners, and a different set of rules applies. Respect for the Second Amendment in New Jersey is gone among bureaucrats."

What is the most pressing thing you would want the public to be informed about for protecting the Second Amendment?

"People must ask themselves why government works so hard to extinguish gun rights. The phony claim that law-abiding citizens are made safer by more gun laws (which criminals ignore) is cover for a deeper agenda, which is to remove citizens' ability to defend themselves and their country against those trying to undermine it."

S-568 is legislation that would inject law enforcement into the process of evaluating whether someone has recovered from mental health issues and should be given an expungement so they can receive NJ firearms credentials. The bill would violate medical privacy laws by disclosing protected information to law enforcement, and jeopardizes millions of dollars in federal grant monies that NJ might be forced to return for blatantly violating such laws.

Medical privacy laws of gun owners must be respected, and personal opinions of non-medical personnel about someone's fitness to own firearms are irrelevant and should not be considered. Records should be expunged based on the opinions of medical professionals only, and the fact that an expungement has been given may not be used as a basis to deny a subsequent application for firearms credential (a longstanding issue that defeats the very purpose of expungements -- to clear someone's record after they have recovered and remove any lingering stigma).

Please tell members of the Senate to either fix or oppose S568. Potential amendments could include (1) excluding law enforcement opinion and speculation from the process, solely limiting law enforcement input to records of pre-existing written incident reports; (2) limiting requests issued to law enforcement so they do not expose that the purpose of the request is connected to medical issues or an expungement related to potential firearms ownership; and (3) clarifying that expungements and expunged records cannot be used as a basis for denial of any firearms permit or license.

“People must ask themselves why government works so hard to extinguish gun rights.”

Scott L. Bach, Esq.

Marks & Pappas argue: Far-Left Democrats are preferable to Moderate Republicans

A precedent is being set within New Jersey’s Republican family. It is the precedent of fratricide. That if you disagree on issues of substance – or even those of perceived “loyalty” to a national figure or, dare we say it in New Jersey, the national party platform (for there is none here) – then it is okay to kill your fellow Republican outside the arena of the primary.

The tradition of old was that these matters were settled in the internecine contests in June and that afterwards both winners and losers joined together in commonality to defeat the real enemy, the common foe. This method was created by men who had been to war, who had trained hard, unit pitted against unit, who had their likes and dislikes even within their own unit, but who understood that they had to put all that aside and fight together – if they wanted to survive.

But the draft ended a long time ago – before many in politics today were even born – and military service is no longer the commonplace it once was. Now we hold grudges, nurse them, fondle them, and make them the reason why.

And so we come to Martin Marks and Harry Pappas. They have formed a third ticket in the District 21 Assembly race. Like the Democrat Party candidates, they are running against incumbent Republicans Jon Bramnick and Nancy Munoz.

Marks is a former Republican mayor and Pappas is a former Democrat county chairman. Both have publicly stated that their campaign is about defeating the incumbent Republicans. Marks and Pappas acknowledge they have no chance of winning themselves and indeed they have not even taken the necessary measures to mount a serious campaign in terms of resources, organization, policies, or time.

Marks and Pappas are present in the race for the purpose of killing the Republicans. And in killing the Republicans, Marks and Pappas will play an important role in electing Democrat candidates Lisa Mandelblatt and Stacey Gunderman.

They are not just any Democrats. They are pink pussy-hat wearing members of Action Together New Jersey – a far-Left organization that supports the policies of the so-called “Jihad Squad”, so often criticized by President Donald Trump. They support Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal and are actively cohabitating with an Islamic group that campaigns for the anti-Semitic BDS Movement. This group has been designated a “terrorist” organization by one of America’s closest Islamic allies – and we have just sent troops there and they are actively engaged!

How can helping to engineer the election of two such dangerous, far-Left Democrats be thought of as a “conservative” act? It is an act of delusion by anyone advancing it.

Whether you like him or not, Jon Bramnick is the Republican Leader in the Assembly, and as such, he is our Colonel. If you have a disagreement with your commanding officer, you do not replace him by allowing the enemy to kill him.

Harry Pappas is clearly a fellow-traveler of the Left. His actions on behalf the Democrats are transparent. Worse is the so-called “idealism” expressed by Martin Marks. This “idealism” is like that of Jane Fonda, who hated the policies of her country so much that she called for the execution of American military personnel.

In killing the candidacy of Nancy Munoz, Martin Marks will be derailing one of the most important issues on the agenda of social conservatives: The Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Act. Assemblywoman Munoz is the legislation’s prime sponsor in the Assembly and its most outspoken proponent.

Both the U.S. State Department and the United Nations have warned about the rise in human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women and children. These and other national and international agencies have warned against the kind of porous borders created as the result of policies like Governor Phil Murphy’s illegal Sanctuary State scheme.

Due to the hard work of legislators like Assemblywoman Munoz – and activists like Rev. Mandy Leverett, Rev. Greg Quinlan, Rev. Dominick Cuozzo, Rev. Phil Rizzo, Gabriella Brandeal, Josh Jalinski, Barb Dedeyn, Theresa Yarosh, and many others – the Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Act has enough bi-partisan support to become law. The defeat of Assemblywoman Munoz at the hands of Marks & Pappas/ Mandelblatt & Gunderman would be a horrible set-back for those currently enslaved or about to be enslaved by human traffickers.

Martin Marks should have taken this into consideration before launching his petulant jihad against those with whom he has some disagreement, on behalf of those with whom he agrees on nothing. As in the Vietnam War – to any thinking man – the sins of your own should always be preferable to the tyranny of others.

Rev. Mandy Leverett has been working with victims across New Jersey – from all walks of life. Marks should have talked with her and met some of those victims before deciding to bring down the Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Prevention Act.

But all that is past now. Martin Marks has done what he has done –aided or guided by ex-Democrat Party boss Harry Pappas. The question now becomes… Who will follow him? Who will compound this?

A precedent is being set within New Jersey’s Republican family. It is the precedent of fratricide.

Regina Egea: New Jersey at a Crossroads

Regina Egea is one of the smartest thinkers on public policy in New Jersey.  An M.B.A., former AT&T executive, state Treasury Department official, and Governor’s Chief of Staff – Egea also served in local government as a Deputy Mayor and School Board Member.  As President of the Garden State Initiative, she is collecting the data, studying the issues, and coming up with solutions to New Jersey’s most pressing fiscal concerns.

Along with NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt, Regina Egea is redefining the mission of New Jersey Republicans.  With Steinhardt punching through to challenge the Democrats’ dead end tax-and-spend-and-waste thinking, Egea is providing the policy prescriptions that will inform the narrative on why Republicans should be elected.

Regina Egea was recently interviewed by Andrew Coen, the Northeast Regional reporter for The Bond Buyer, a leading publication covering state and municipal finance, for the publication's podcast.

This edition of The Bond Buyer Podcast is appropriately titled “New Jersey at a Crossroads”. In the interview, Coen and Egea cover a broad array of topics facing our state, including: Governor Murphy’s economic philosophy and his relationship with the Legislative leadership, the debate over tax incentives, pension and benefit reform, the state’s economic outlook and how GSI is playing a role in economic policy making.

The podcast, which is approximately 20 minutes, is available for download here.

For the latest updates, visit GSI’s website at gardenstateinitiative.org, or follow GSI on Facebook @GardenStateInitiative or on Twitter @GSI_NewJersey.

Cirucci and Rooney are heroes for defending Kate Smith

If New Jersey Republicans want to look around for inspiration, they need look no further than Dan Cirucci.  He is a businessman and public relations executive who manages his own blog (http://dancirucci.blogspot.com/). 

In less than 700 words, Cirucci reminded us of who Kate Smith was and of her service to America.  In the process he exposed the hypocrisy and wrongheadedness of those who have made Smith the latest victim of what has come to be a hate-based campaign to destroy the reputations of dead people who, of course, cannot explain or defend themselves. 

Matt Rooney, who published and promoted Dan Cirucci’s column on the Save Jersey website, should be applauded for doing so.  He is the founder and editor of the Save Jersey news site.  You can read the full Cirucci column there: 

https://savejersey.com/2019/04/yankees-flyers-kate-smith-god-bless-america-songs/

What has become known as the “new” Democrats are using ideological “purity” as a means to impose their strict hegemony on society.  They have created a parallel legal system in the court of public opinion, that uses shaming, shunning, and economic blackmail to punish “offenders”.  They are the authors of an undemocratic, unaccountable, extra-legal “code” that is applied to punish without such constraints as written laws, ethical transparency, logic, or justice.     

It appears the goal of these “new” Democrats is to destroy every cultural vestige of the America that freed the world from tyranny and built the world’s greatest economy.  They are seeking to replace Mom and Apple Pie, with Ass and Debt.  “Get your kink on and run up your credit cards (follow your leaders!)… debt slavery is the future!”

The “new” Democrats are really nothing more than old-style authoritarians, pursuing their long-dead targets with an intensity and passion worthy of Victor Hugo’s Inspector Javert.  It was Javert, with his obsession to hunt and punish “offenders”, who mocked the notions of redemption and the duality of man.  Today’s “new” Democrats are on no less a suicidal mission because, as Robespierre himself was to learn, nobody is ever pure enough to escape the guillotine. 

After all, when racism is extended to include racialism and petty bigotry, who can be exempt from the term “racist”?  We are marketed to from birth by the economic, academic, media, entertainment, and government Establishment to think in terms of the silly silos of race, ethnicity, gender, age, and religion.  In confusing the terms racist and racialist, every pitch or accommodation based on race becomes itself an act of racism.

So here’s to Dan Cirucci and Matt Rooney for standing up to la Terreur of our modern day.  May its time be short.

“If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of society.”

-       Maximilien Robespierre, butcher and murderer, ideological father to the “new” Democrats

Regina Egea: Why can’t NJ do what Massachusetts did?

Regina Egea is one of the smartest thinkers on public policy in New Jersey.  An M.B.A., former AT&T executive, state Treasury Department official, and Governor’s Chief of Staff – Egea also served in local government as a Deputy Mayor and School Board Member.  As President of the Garden State Initiative, she is collecting the data, studying the issues, and coming up with solutions to New Jersey’s most pressing fiscal concerns.

For New Jersey Republicans, she’s a breath of fresh air in a political culture too often dominated by stale thinking.  If the NJGOP wants to seriously contest for power again, it will be folks like Regina Egea who will provide the policy prescriptions that will inform the narrative on why Republicans should be elected.

Egea recently wrote:  “It is clear that we are at our ‘fork in the road’ in New Jersey and there’s a clear path to improve our economy. Massachusetts decided a generation ago to shed its ‘Taxachussetts’ label and cut its taxes by 25% between 1977 and 2014 while growing its economy and maintaining a public school system at the top of national rankings at a lower cost per pupil than New Jersey… we need leadership now willing to make the necessary reforms to reduce spending in Trenton and throughout New Jersey governments before ‘it’s over.’”

Below are excerpts from Regina Egea’s op-ed published yesterday in the Star-Ledger and on NJ.com:

“New Jersey… is losing income tax revenue. Using 2015-16 IRS data, the Bank of America analysis indicates that high tax states – such as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California – are currently experiencing a net loss of high income earners (defined by the Internal Revenue Service). Florida, which has no state income tax, experienced a net gain of over $17 billion in income between 2015 and 2016… In this same time period, New Jersey experienced a loss of approximately $3 billion.”

“The research firm Wealth X reported New Jersey lost 5,700 people with liquid assets between $1 million-$30 million in 2018 – and that’s before the implications of the state and local tax (SALT) cap on federal taxes have truly been felt.”

“The Bank of America also references a February TheHill.com article citing U.S. Census data that states growing in population are usually ‘the same states with lower tax and regulatory burdens, lower government debt and greater transparency and accountability for government spending.’”

“Ironically, New Jersey is turning being home to a relatively high number of ‘millionaires’ into a strategic vulnerability. The top 2 percent of all N.J. income tax filers (who make more than $500,000 per year) account for over 40 percent of all income tax revenue to the state. Since close to 40 percent of state revenues are from personal income taxes, that means more than a third of all state revenues come from the top 1 percent of residents. Increasing dependence on revenue from this group exacerbates our vulnerability. An individual loss in this income category reverberates throughout the state.”

“Now we’re at New Jersey’s ‘Fork in the Road.’ An example of one alternate path is just up I-95 in Massachusetts, where the highest marginal personal income tax rate is just 5 percent, compared to New Jersey where the rate is 10.75 percent (third-highest in the nation). Our second highest in the nation corporate income tax rate of 11.5 percent will inevitably lead to market share loss to not just Massachusetts’ 8 percent rate but other attractive states like North Carolina’s 2.5 percent rate, which helped to lure Honeywell from New Jersey.”

“Massachusetts solidly outflanks the Garden State when it comes to property taxes ($37 versus $51 per $1,000 of personal income) as well as the size of public workforces: theirs is 8 percent smaller than New Jersey.  And Massachusetts, whose annual K-12 education performance closely rivals New Jersey’s, spends nearly 20 percent less on a per pupil basis.”

To read Regina Egea’s entire op-ed, click the link below:

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/04/nj-is-at-a-fork-in-the-road-policy-group-says-its-time-to-take-the-less-taxing-path.html

For more information on the Garden State Initiative, explore their website:

https://www.gardenstateinitiative.org/

Must Reads: Two important columns from Save Jersey…

With the news that the Burlington County GOP has lost yet another Republican office-holder, Dan Cirucci has some useful insights into how New Jersey Republicans can pull themselves out of the rut they are in…

N.J. GOP’ers must discard the moldy, tweedy old cloak of timidity | CIRUCCI 

https://savejersey.com/2019/02/republican-party-new-jersey-gop/

And there’s an important lesson for all those GOP hopefuls who insist on sucking up to Garden State Equality (GSE)… Hey, they don’t like you and never will because they are DEMOCRATS first, LGBTQ activists second…

Op-Ed: Leading N.J. LGBTQ group puts far-left politics ahead of its own community | DE SENO 

https://savejersey.com/2019/02/garden-state-equality-donald-trump-gay-lgbtq-community-democrat/

Tucker Carlson: Do Republicans know who their base is?

Tucker Carlson had author J.D. Vance on last evening…

Closer to home, New Jersey Republicans are searching for a winning message with which to build a defensive wall around their remaining legislative districts – and as a springboard for taking back some of what has been lost. While those professionals with experience running campaigns appear to be no closer to coming up with an umbrella message under which they can unify the party, activists like John Robert Carman of the New Jersey Constitutional Republicans (NJCR), are taking a stab at it…

John Robert Carman writes:

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhart, NJGOP Executive Director, Therese Winegar and GOP State Director, Ron Filan. I shared with them the 5 Point Plan the New Jersey Constitutional Republicans could help initiate with NJGOP to lead Republicans, “On to Victory” in New Jersey.

The 5-Point Plan consists of Point 1: Restoration- The historical circumstances that existed in the 1850’s leading to Civil War are uncannily like our present situation in NJ, and the nation. As Lincoln restored the initial principles of the Declaration of Independence being, the equality of all mankind before the law; natural rights (life, liberty & the environment from which to pursuit happiness); protecting the right of each person to own and keep property and the legitimacy of government by consent of the people.

Lincoln incorporated the necessity of preserving the Constitution in protecting the principles of the Declaration of Independence and thereby, assuring the preservation of our Union which is precisely what is needed in our fractured state and nation today. In restoring these initial Republican principles, we return to the solid foundation of our founding documents and incorporate these ideals and values into every sphere of public policy. Republican voters and those who want to vote Republican are looking for a distinct contrast from the Democrats in philosophy and ideology. A return to initial Republican principles will clearly demonstrate the difference and strengthen our Party.

Point 2: Education-The Key to Republican Resurgence in NJ! This is NJCR’s forte and encompasses many areas of study that positively starts with history; knowing the founding documents and the spirit of their intent. Educating citizens on constitutional republican government, limited government and the proper role of representative government. Educating citizens on the initial values of the Republican Party; equality under law; liberty and justice for all, due process, and individual accountability and responsibility. Educating our citizens on the necessity of civics and the forgotten , yet indispensable role the citizens plays in forming fair and just public policy. Educating citizens on the Laws of Nature and Natures’ God which are perpetual and remain constant throughout time and place. Educating also includes the negative impact progressivism and marxism and their significant role in marginalizing our constitutional republic leading to the great dilemma and division in our state and nation today. NJCR looks to participate with NJGOP in offering educational presentations throughout the state with County GOP organizations and Young Republican organizations that equip our citizens with the knowledge and encouragement they will need to enthusiastically nurture Republican voters and assure Republican representation at the local, state and national stages.

Point 3: Preservation: The Republican Party is the last, best hope for the preservation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution protecting those principles. Republicans are the only entity standing between a tyrannical mobocracy and the natural rights of individual liberty and justice the Constitution assures. The Democrats are determined to eliminate the principles of the DOI and the Constitution. Republicans must proclaim the message that we are the sole defenders of our Constitution and the only Party with the desire, ability and facility to protect it.

Point 4: Participation: Self Governance. Having people actively engaged with public policy and making their voices heard in the legislative process. Establishing relationships with their elected representatives, holding them accountable to securing the rights of all citizens they represent, not just those who vote for them, calling them, meeting them, writing them, emailing them. Mobilizing blast calls and immediate calls to action when potential legislation is brought to the State House floor for a vote. Encouraging a consistent dialogue with representatives and our responsibility as leaders of the Republican Party in equipping citizens to be successful in effectively participating in Self-Governance.

Point 5: Unification: Initially the Republican Party was made up of several parties and entities, the Whigs, the Know Nothings, Free Soilers, Union Democrats and Radical Republicans. It was a constant struggle for Lincoln to maintain the unity amongst these factions to abolish slavery; preserve the Union and win the Civil War. Today we must Incorporate all the factions that share our initial values which NJGOP has begun with Grassroots21 initiatives along with the necessity of incorporating fiscal and social conservatives; 2nd Amendment Defenders; Tea Partiers; Right to Lifers; Constitutionalist; MAGA’s; Independents; Unaffiliated, and Blue Dog Democrats all into one unified Republican Party. Give candidates that may come from these factions an opportunity to battle it out in primaries and give them all a sense of ownership within the Party and the belief they can win as Republicans. Go into urban areas and other Democratic strongholds with the initial principles of our Republican Party, promoting new, consistent and lasting relationships within the Black and Latino communities. Meet with Republicans and conservatives within these communities and empower them with all the tools, education and support they would need to reach their communities. This 5 Point Plan can work but only with the participation of thousands of like minded citizens determined to restore Republican principles and values; teaching truth and justice; preserving our constitution and our constitutional republic; participating in public policy making and unifying freedom and liberty motivated citizens all determined to reinstate our sovereignty, We the Peoples sovereignty within government in New Jersey and our nation.  

Join NJGOP and the New Jersey Constitutional Republicans today and may we march “On to Victory.”

Does this message get the job done? Is it motivational, concise, and easy to understand? Can you envision this as the basis for campaign mail, social media, broadcast, cable, and radio ads? In any case, it is a start, so be thankful for that.

Why NJ Republicans are falling behind other states.

How come Republicans do better there than here?  That’s a frequently asked question… and is just as frequently noted.

New Jersey Republicans have lost Republican legislators throughout the Christie years.  Whether we hold the Governor’s office or not, we lose.  Why?

Could it have something to do with our message and who it’s aimed at?

As a comparison, let’s look at neighboring Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania went blue before New Jersey did… but went red in 2016 – providing the electoral margin that gave Donald Trump the presidency. 

In Pennsylvania, both parties play to their base.  As a result – according to a recent Philadelphia Inquirer analysis – blue areas are getting bluer and red areas redder.  What that means is that even when the top of the ticket loses – as it did in 2014 and 2018 – Republicans in the Legislature hold their majorities in BOTH chambers of the Legislature.  Take a look at the map of Republican representation in Pennsylvania’s Legislature in 2008.  Red is Republican and Blue is Democrat…

Now here is Republican representation in Pennsylvania’s Legislature ten years later – in 2018:

In contrast, both parties play to the Democrats’ base in New Jersey.  As a result, the situation is quite different for the GOP in New Jersey… “in retreat” would be a kind way of putting it. 

According to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study, 70.6 percent of Americans self-identify as “Christian” – with 25.4 percent belonging to  Evangelical Protestant denominations, 14.7 percent Mainline Protestant, and 20.8 percent Roman Catholic.  With most Evangelical denominations, there’s over a 40 percent spread in favor of Republicans when it comes to voting habits.  So it follows that it would make sense to at least keep in touch with these voters and turn as many out to vote as possible.  And that’s exactly what happens in Pennsylvania.

But not in New Jersey.   

Transgender people only make up about 0.6 percent of the U.S. population—and of that already slim minority, just two percent of respondents to the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey said they were Republican.  Too often, this is who the GOP targets its message towards in New Jersey.

Don’t believe us?  Then read this statement from the Bob Hugin for United States Senate campaign:  “Bob Hugin strongly supports equality and opportunity for the LGBTQ community and will be a leader on these issues as senator.  If President Trump wants to roll back equality and opportunity for the LGTBQ community, Bob Hugin won't hesitate to stand up to the president.”

Can anyone point to a similar campaign statement made on behalf of the Pro-Life community?  Or the Evangelical community?  Or traditional values Christians of any kind?  All of these groups are far more inclined to vote Republican and are far greater in numbers than 0.6 percent.  But instead of making the most of what would come to them naturally, the GOP in New Jersey too often finds itself trying to expand that 2 percent of 0.6 percent… and hoping it will become a wave.

How else can you explain the fact that New Jersey was the only state delegation in America to send a transgendered person to the 2016 Republican National Convention?  And this is NEW JERSEY, where the party establishment selects carefully chosen insiders to run as delegates to the Republican National Convention.  In this case however, the candidate didn’t even need to run and instead was selected as a special, add-on delegate. 

How many Evangelical pastors got to go to the 2016 Republican National Convention as part of the New Jersey delegation?  How about some real diversity?

Hey, if a transgendered person can swallow the RNC platform, she or he is more than welcome in our big tent… but don’t throw out everyone else just to make it comfortable for her.  That doesn’t get you a big tent, it gets you the sack… you lose elections.

The transgendered person who got to go to the 2016 National Convention is a well-known activist for LGBTQ causes and is active with the LGBTQ Victory Institute Candidate & Campaign Training program for 2019.  The Victory Institute is in the process of training dozens of liberal candidates to take on traditional Republicans throughout the country.  In a recent news story, this LGBTQ activist/ RNC delegate had this to say about traditional Republicans:

“As a Republican, I’m disappointed.  I’m disappointed at how a minor offshoot of the Republican party—one that's very bent on religious freedom—is really directing our current administration to take away the liberty, freedom, and equality that millions of Americans who just happened to be LGBTQ currently enjoy.”

Traditional Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and Evangelicals are not “minor offshoots” of the Republican Party.  It’s the majority of America.  It’s a majority that enjoys its religious freedom and holds it dear.  It is a majority that does not want to see its daughters made to shower with anatomical males.  It is a majority that doesn’t like the creep of criminalization occurring in other countries when supposedly free people fail to use the “correct” pronoun to describe someone.

Save Jersey’s Matt Rooney recently wrote a well-received call to arms for New Jersey Republicans to rediscover social issues.  As we have seen, the embedded social liberalism and ongoing contempt for Christian conservatives by well-placed Republican operatives in New Jersey will make progress towards Rooney’s goal difficult but not impossible.  There is a lot of work to do.

If the NJGOP is to survive then the “spinning” must stop

Putting the best face on a defeat is the oldest spin in politics.  The practice is ancient…

Rather than spend time trying to convince people that defeat is really victory, learn from history and discard what failed and embrace a new message.  After Watergate, Republicans embraced the message of Reagan conservatism and came roaring back at the 1980 elections – taking both the White House and the Senate.  After Democrat Bill Clinton defeated the “kinder-gentler” GOP brand of George H.W. Bush, Republicans adopted the conservative Contract with America – ending 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House of Representatives and capturing the Senate.  The populist “Tea Party” message of 2010 saw Republicans gain 63 seats to take back control of the House.  In 2014, that message completed the takeover of Congress, gaining 9 Senate seats and another 13 House seats.  And in 2016, a populist Republican took the White House in an upset that caught the professional political class of both parties by surprise. 

Nationally, and at the state and local levels, Republicans need to embrace the setbacks of 2018 and learn from them.  These lessons are clear: 

(1) Money doesn’t replace message. 

(2) Technology is a means to convey a message, not a replacement for having a message. 

(3) In the era of Trump, trying to out-liberal the Democrats is a fool’s errand. 

(4) Turnout is key and that means registering every person who would likely vote Republican and then motivating them to vote.

(5) Your message should maximize your vote without turning off your base.  Better still, find a message that excites your base while adding to it.

At present, the man with the ideas – the man leading the charge to put New Jersey back on the right economic footing – the man standing in the way of the more crazier notions of Governor Murphy’s Democratic Socialism, is in fact not a Republican at all, but a Democrat.  Senate President Steve Sweeney is calling out the Governor, challenging him to debate their contrasting ideas. 

Republicans should be challenging Governor Murphy to debates, leading with ideas and a clear message that contrasts with Murphy’s Wall Street-style social activism.  And if they can’t manage to come up with ideas of their own, then they should at least be prepared to add their united voice in support of the man who has taken on the task of challenging Murphy’s crazier instincts.

Politically, New Jersey Republicans need a message, with fully fleshed out ideas and solutions.  There are people already at work on this.  The Garden State Initiative – run by state government veteran Regina Egea – is producing a solid product of facts and stats that could back up a message… if the political will is there.  It’s up to the folks who run campaigns and the party’s leadership to take the next step.

Blue what? The only NJ Dem legislator elected to Congress was endorsed by the NRA!

There’s a lot to be said for not having a record. 

For a start, you can lie about who you are and what you will do when you get elected.  You can even target your lies to different audiences – like pretending you have a war record and appealing to suburban voters with your anti-tax broadcast advertising, while using your grassroots to find and target liberals with a message especially for them.  That’s how the Democrats did it. 

Republicans… they did it ass backwards.  They invested millions to tell their grassroots to go to hell and then broadcast an explicitly liberal message to those cultural leftists who hate the word “Republican” the most.  And they did it in the midst of the most divisive national election since 2010 – on par with 1994.  They invested even more millions in turning out the very people who loath them – all the while doing their utmost to convince their base that they think of them the same way they think of dog excrement.  See, in this way you lose everybody! 

New Jersey Republicans desperately needed a unified message to take to war in 2018.  After Donald Trump and the GOP leadership in Congress screwed them by passing a tax package that arguably raised property taxes in the state with the worst property tax problem in the nation – somebody should have got everyone in a room to figure out a message.  Hey, it’s a small state so if you don’t want to come off like a cacophony, you’d better all be singing the same tune.

Instead, half argued that screwing with the state’s property tax deduction was a net positive, half said it was a net negative – and the Democrats, they just loved it!  For once, they got to be the party defending the beleaguered property taxpayers of New Jersey.  What passes for the media in New Jersey backed them up on it.  And more importantly, so did the instincts of the average property taxpayer.  Donald Trump or no Donald Trump, when it comes to trusting the promises politicians make about property taxes, they don’t.  Period.  Somebody should have remembered that.

After handing the property tax issue to the Democrats – the issue that has consistently tested as the top concern of New Jersey voters for at least the last decade – it is amazing the NJGOP did as well as it did on November 6th.  A large part of the electorate already hated Donald Trump (and therefore, the Republican brand) and wanted to show it – but by miscalculation, the remainder were granted permission to hate the GOP too… over property taxes!  Gagged and gagged again.

But it wouldn’t have worked so well if the Democrats hadn’t been such clean slates.  Just think of it.  All those Democrats in the Legislature with all those perfect liberal voting records… and the only guy who is acceptable to the electorate to move up and go to Congress is the state’s most conservative Democrat legislator… the one who is endorsed by the NRA.  The one who voted against same-sex marriage.  Heck, Jeff Van Drew is more Pro-Life than many Republicans and has opposed both RGGI and increasing the minimum wage!  But he moved up, and all the rest stayed behind. 

Meanwhile, DC residents Andy Kim and Tom Malinowski simply move into the state, take out six month leases on rental properties, run and win.  And the silly fools who spent years as Democrat committee members, in local governments, running for Freeholder and then for Assembly… they just suck ass.  You can’t get elected because your liberal records won’t let you.

Where did Mikie Sherrill come from?  The “Navy pilot – Prosecutor – Mom” fell out of the sky and landed in Congress.  In the new politics of congressional elections, she’s one of the Houyhnhnm.  Back in the trenches, the time-serving yahoos can only snort and envy her advancement. 

Yesterday, Rutgers put out a new poll showing that – once again – taxes top the state’s issues grid (with a sizeable number volunteering “property” taxes as their big concern).  The Eagleton poll noted that people are generally happy with the state’s economy and, as it is part of a generally buoyant national economy, that shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it does appear Democrat Governor Murphy is taking more credit than the state Republican leaders.  One “research professor” drew attention to “a new phenomenon” of voters not having quite formed an opinion of Phil Murphy, after nearly a year in office.  It’s like they don’t know him and it’s taking some time. (Maybe they will now… after yesterday’s snow job?)

A phenomenon is it?  Why is anyone surprised, given the state of political news coverage in New Jersey?  Just ask anyone on press row… oh, that’s right, it’s not there anymore.  If it’s a national election like we just had, the coverage will be driven by national outlets.  If not… good luck.  And that is something our campaign gurus are going to need to consider when planning what used to be called “earned media” campaigns. 

Meanwhile, back at madness central, a couple of juvenile delinquent Democrat Assemblywomen invited “pro-death penalty for American military members” activist Jane Fonda to place a feather in her patouee and lead a conga line from the Speaker’s office to the Governor’s den.  Not a word yet from Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill about the appropriateness of Fonda’s appearance – or from Andy Kim or Tom Malinowski, for that matter.  But hey Assemblywomen, keep it up.  If that’s the fashion, keep it up and you’ll soon find yourself in… Congress?  NOT!

New Jersey GOP: Don’t be afraid to be Republicans.

By Rubashov

A weekend before the NJGOP held its Leadership Summit in Atlantic City, New Jersey, two contributors to this website attended a gathering of conservative academics and writers and journalists, hosted by an organization founded by the late William F. Buckley Jr.  The 500 present where in Philadelphia to enjoy a nice dinner and listen to a lecture by a writer named Rod Dreher.

Rod Dreher is the senior editor of the national magazine and website, The American Conservative.  This is the publication that predicted the fall of the Bush dynasty and the rise of Donald Trump.  They wrote about the populist shift in GOP politics when most Washington-based journalists were confidently predicting that Paul Ryan was the next big thing.

Dreher wrote a book last year that set the academic world talking.  It was debated in all those places that thoughtful Republicans go to figure out what the world is, and how they – and what they believe – fit into it.  Conservative journalists and think tanks debated the vision Dreher presented – and the book was a popular success, a “New York Times Bestseller”, in fact.

The book is called The Benedict Option (A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation).  It calls for Christian conservatives to reassess their relationships with the outside world – with institutions like the Republican Party and corporate America. 

Once upon a time, conservatives gave their votes to “pro-business” corporatists and in exchange received their “protection” on policies impacting traditional values.  The battle over same-sex marriage ended all that, exposing the business community as cheerleaders for the materialistic “sex and shopping” culture that sustains their short-term profits.  

In response to this and other betrayals, Dreher suggests that believers prepare themselves for a hard time, for a period not unlike that suffered by eastern Christianity during the Communist occupation of their nations and cultures.  The idea is to hold oneself apart, become stronger in belief and in practice, and build new institutions outside the hubbub and the madness.

David Brooks of the New York Times wrote that The Benedict Option was the most important and discussed book in a decade.  Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Convention, called the book prophetic and something every Christian should read.  Many have.  And they are starting to look at things differently, and beginning to reassess.

It's not only conservative Christians who are recoiling from a betrayal by the Establishment of which they once thought themselves a part.  Working class Americans of all ethnicities, creeds, and genders have given up on a Democratic Party obsessed with global capitalism and a Labor movement that threw them over for an immigration agenda that bloats the gray economy and threatens their jobs.  In his book, The Unwinding, An Inner History of the New America (2013), George Packer extended this loss of connection and idea of betrayal to the broader American middle class.  Meanwhile, libertarians are aghast at the growing regulatory police state and endless “war” economy.  While the election of Donald Trump has left many old-time, business-centric Republicans wondering who is who and what is what. 

Since Rod Dreher's lecture, there have been two regional meetings to discuss the practical implications of The Benedict Option on a state by state, party by party basis.  In each case, an individual reassessment is being made.  One political party organization that appears disconnected to its natural electorate is the Republican Party in New Jersey.  Indeed, it is such to the point of it being said not to possess an electorate at all, but rather a collection of voters who still notionally respond to the word “Republican”.

In arriving at this assessment, the discussion focused on what is a political party and how does it devolve the further it gets from its center.  In other words, everyone knows what it means to be a Republican and this reflects the generalizations held about the party nationally or globally.  But the further away you get from the center the greater the opportunity is for that message or "brand" to be corrupted, and its meaning lost. 

So what is the Republican Party – once we get down to the state level or county level – in a place like New Jersey?

(1) Is it the sum of the beliefs and aspirations of its members, as expressed every four years in a party platform?

(2) Or is it the network of profitable business interests of those who occupy leadership positions within the party?

This isn't a gibe at the leadership of the New Jersey GOP but rather a basic philosophical question.  Those engaged in this discussion are strongly influenced by Edmund Burke, who wrote:  "The principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged."

Burke considered politics to be a branch of ethics.  This separated him from Machiavelli and the modern political tradition which holds that "power" is supreme.

In light of this, the question above is posed.

So, will the NJGOP be guided by morality and ethics – and a written set of principles – or will it merely be a vehicle for men seeking power and the financial opportunities that flow from it?

Once upon a time, a certain Assemblyman – as Chairman of the NJGOP – came in for some very rough criticism because he would not formally endorse (or allow the Republican State Committee to endorse) the platform of the Republican National Committee, which had been debated and democratically approved in the summer of 2008.  

He was criticized for the part he played in leaving the New Jersey Republican Party without a set of written principles, but after he was removed as State Chairman by Governor Chris Christie, there was a new platform, adopted in the summer of 2012, debated and democratically approved as was the one before.  Sure enough, the NJGOP didn't adopt it either.  A new chairman, installed by Governor Christie, ignored the new set of party principles as had been the old.

And now there's been another platform, debated and voted on in the summer of 2016, by delegates from all across America.  And it too, has suffered the same fate as the others.  It has not been endorsed by the NJGOP – leaving the Republican Party in New Jersey without a set principles, a road map by which to judge its success or failure. 

Why?  Any poll will show you that most registered Republicans in New Jersey uniformly support the platform of the Republican Party.  So what makes it so difficult for the members of the New Jersey Republican State Committee to simply say, yes, we are Republicans and we support the democratically approved principles of our party as set down in the Republican Party Platform of 2016?

Well, in most cases, those state committee members are selected by Republican County chairmen in counties that have what is called a "party line".  This is s thumb on the scale at elections that enables a county machine to note who the "official" candidates of the party are. 

It is a system not unlike that practiced in less democratic nations and is thoroughly disreputable.  If New Jersey was a third world country organizing its first elections and it proposed such a thing, the United Nations would be bound to declare those elections rigged and undemocratic.  But New Jersey is part of the West and was established before the founding of the U.N.  So the political parties here are fortunate in that they do not fall under the scrutiny of international law. 

Most New Jersey Republicans are unaware that their state and local party organizations do not operate under a set of principles – or indeed any moral or ethical guide at all.  99 percent have no idea that the national Republican Party platform isn't used as a guide when recruiting potential Republican nominees for public office.

You see, most registered Republicans in New Jersey assume that there is one long chain of command leading from the White House of Donald Trump all the way down to the county committee level.  Republican voters believe that when the county party says that so and so is the "official" party candidate, they are hearing the word of the Republican National Committee.

Of course, this is not true.  That’s why there is so much confusion when state and local Republican leaders in New Jersey fail to match the rhetoric coming out of Washington, DC.  There is no direct line from the White House to the office of the local party boss.  And without a set of principles – a written standard by which to judge good from bad, success from failure – local party organizations are left with nothing but the will and wishes of a controlling party boss or cadre.

The employment and economic interests of many state and local Republican leaders tends to complicate things further.  Many county chairmen function as lobbyists or hold business connections and loyalties that are very much at variance with those principles of the Republican Party and the aspirations of ordinary Republicans.  This leads some party organizations to operate as for-profit mutual benefit societies or in some cases, sole proprietorships.  While some operate as entrepreneurs, others are more like placemen – granted patronage jobs or vendors contracts or some gift of status with which to do business. 

This is a surprise to many ordinary Republican voters in New Jersey, who still believe that their local party stands for the Republican platform.  In reality, when they vote Republican, they are not voting for who they think they are, but rather they are voting for the candidates put forward by what could be described as  independent operators, with agendas often at odds with the Republican Party platform. 

A review of the candidacies put forward by New Jersey Republicans in the last decade clearly shows that the Republican Party platform plays no role in the selection process.  What that means for average Republican voters is that instead of being a members of a party of ideas, of values, of right and wrong -- they are merely facilitators of what are often independent operators, who at times conduct themselves in ways that are more along the lines of an entrepreneur than an ideologue. 

A person’s vote is a very valuable thing.  Voters generally don’t treat it so, but it is.

Recently, Princeton University concluded a study that confirmed what many already feared – America is not a democracy.  How can we be?  Our precious votes are artificially funneled into two silos: Democratic or Republican.  If you want to look past those two, the media, academic, legal, and political powers of the Establishment won’t provide you with much.  “Pick one,” they tell us. 

We pledge our collective votes to one of two political parties with the understanding that we are going to get something in return.  That even if they try and fail, at the very least, they are going to stay somewhat true to what they say they are.  After all, we are voting for a national “brand” and we expect the candidates we vote for to reflect that.  We do not want to buy a new Ford only to learn that in New Jersey, a “Ford” is an aging Datsun.

If average voters think they are voting for a national Ford but instead get a local Datsun, then there really isn’t anything in it for the average Republican voter.  All they are doing is giving away their collective votes so that some local boss can harvest them to use to make money.  They think they are voting for people who believe in the platform of the Republican Party – of that thing they read about every four years and that largely reflects their values.  But it turns out to be just an illusion.  Someone has captured the Republican "brand" and monetized it. 

So voters turn-off, tune-out, and fail to turn-out to vote.

Voters are told how important it is to vote… by the guys who get jobs and contracts and status by monetizing other people’s collective votes. As for the average voter… maybe he or she loses a day’s wages by getting hauled up for jury duty (a delightful by-product of registering to vote).

And if you question how a new Ford is really an old Datsun… well then they call you names.  The true-believer is told he or she is some kind of freak for believing in the party platform.  What is wrong with you for thinking it was on-the-level?  Why would you ever believe that we actually believed in what we said we believed in?  Are you some kind of arsehole?

At the NJGOP Leadership Summit in Atlantic City, it was evident that very few could articulate what the Republican Party stood for.  The talk was all about the new technology available to communicate a message, rather than what that message is.  People who get paid to win campaigns in New Jersey were there to explain tactics and polling but not how to define and sell what we are burdened with… that word “Republican.”

The leadership of the NJGOP is now faced with the task of reconnecting a party with its voters.  To convince the one percent who profit from politics – and who control the levers of power – to allow a space for the 99 percent who simply want to vote for people they believe represent the values and principles of the Republican Party.

This will require patience and understanding – and will be made more difficult by the attitudes of some who use polling to determine political positions, rather than as a means to test arguments with which to convince.  The Democrats are in a position of hegemony because they invited in their true believers, gave them a seat at the table, and reaped financial benefits and grassroots activism by doing so.  They refused to follow public opinion. Choosing instead to make it. 

The career of Garden State Equality’s Steven Goldstein should be studied by every aspiring Republican activist.  At the start of his long march, when confronted with disheartening and frankly abysmal polling data, he did not jettison his principles, he shifted the conversation.  He used polling – not as a revelation to tell him what to believe – but as a tool for convincing others.

Remember that no more than 1 percent of those who vote are there to make money off the system.  99 percent show up to vote because they believe Republican means Republican principles and ideas and policies and the platform.  They are not in on the deal.  They get no cut.  So let's build institutions that these people can trust and that – more importantly – earn their trust.

So... which will it be?  A party based on ethics and morality – with a set of principles by which to judge its success or failure?  Or every man for himself, the pursuit of power, the worship of greed?  It is a time for choosing. 

The Republican Party in New Jersey can choose to open itself up to ideas and nail its colors to the mast and say "this is who we are and this is what we stand for!"  Ideas have brought the national Republican Party far – so why are they resisted in New Jersey?  Instead of avoiding issues, embrace them, use them, figure out ways in which to explain them and do so artfully to win the debate. 

For New Jersey Republicans, it is time to remember who you are.

A warning to those GOPers who attended the GSE ball.

Democrat operative Jay Lassiter wrote a column for InsiderNJ in which he gloated over the number of Republicans who appeared at the “Equality Ball” – a fundraiser for Garden State Equality, a political action committee and lobbying organization.  Yes, we agree, it was remarkable.

Republicans don’t need a special event to interact with those fellow humans who have been marketed, sliced and diced, and packaged into what is now dubbed “the LGBT community.”  There are some of us who live in communities – actual towns, real places – in which there is an “equality ball” going on every day – 365 days a year. 

The seed of bigotry is the segregation of human beings into “identities” and then being made to orientate yourself to addressing those different identities instead of the common humanity.  Of course, this is the model that global capitalism and the cultural “New Left” (NOT!) uses.  The marketers of Madison Avenue like placing people into silos – or identity groups – as much as do the tax-avoidance rip-off artists of the entertainment industry.

But it wasn’t enough for marketers of products to segregate us into identity groups – now identity organizations emerge to speak for those groups.  They presume to tell those segregated into the identity how to think and what to do in order to remain “loyal” and part of the group.  Think independently and you risk being labeled a “traitor” to the group.  Of course, the first and foremost duty of group identity is always the same… to give the self-appointed folks who speak for your group some of your money.

The purpose of Garden State Equality is the organization itself.  It can never be satisfied.  One “goal” must always be replaced by another, lest the urgency flag, the money dry up, and Christian Fuscarino not be paid.  Of course, this requires hate objects… and this is where YOU come in, dear Republicans.

GSE is no great thinking shop.  There are no subtleties – only black and white – and Republicans, “that’s them over there, wearing the black hats.”  The easiest way to make money is to cry “Trump”!  To insist that “R” is for “Reptile.”

So why would you treat a GSE fundraiser any differently than you would a Phil Murphy for Governor fundraiser?

The record of Garden State Equality is clear:  It is a Democrat Party PAC and a bulwark of Democrat hegemony in New Jersey.  And it’s a bullying kind of PAC – quite willing to threaten if it doesn’t get its way when it wants it.  Remember GSE’s meltdown in 2010, after they lost a vote on same-sex marriage:

“Smarting over the state Senate's refusal to pass marriage equality and disillusioned at the moment with the Democratic Party majority, Garden State Equality’s 85-member Board of Directors unanimously decided against giving financial contributions to political parties and their affiliated committees.  

Under the new policy, Garden State Equality will make financial contributions only to individual candidates and to non-party organizations that further equality for the LGBT community, according to a release issued this morning by the organization…

Garden State Equality estimates that since 2005 they have given $500,000 to Democratic Party candidates, while giving only minimally to Republicans.”

(PolitickerNJ.com, February 8, 2010)

No Republican genuflected before Garden State Equality more than former Senator Jennifer Beck.  It was to no avail.  When she really needed them to return the favor, they stabbed her in the back and supported Democrat Vin Gopal.  She succeeded in suppressing her Republican base but got nothing in return for doing so.  GSE considered Beck’s defeat one of their singular achievements of 2017.

At last year’s “Equality Ball” (2017 GSE Gala) in May, Senator Beck was in attendance with Republican gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno, sucking up to people who would shortly celebrate their defeats.  To what purpose?  And when Beck and Guadagno lost, GSE wasn’t even delicate about it, releasing blood-thirsty statements cheering their loss. 

According to Jay Lassiter, GSE bagged a quarter-million dollars at their fundraiser, enough to cause plenty of havoc for Republicans politically – but there is a larger concern too.  So-called LGBT issues, some of them mere artifice, not only dominate but have pushed out other legislative business.  On the Legislature’s last session day, as they faced a government shut-down, the legislation being debated and voted on included no less than five transgender bills – but not a single piece of legislation addressing property tax reduction, or job creation, or New Jersey’s growing poverty.  Everything is thrown aside for GSE’s fundraising agenda.

The New Jersey Legislature even caved into pressure to use government to fund Garden State Equality's lobbying and political efforts, through a GSE license plate scheme.  In effect, the Democrats created a program of taxpayer-funded lobbying and political campaign activity -- but only for one side.  And that “side” is increasing rigid and authoritarian in their outlook towards those who hold different opinions, whether for philosophical or religious reasons.

Read the statement below.  It could have been written in the 1930's by a guy named Ernst Rohm. 

"The wrong side of history"???

That was said of Churchill and of all those who counseled resistance to that modern and "inexorable" movement of the last century. 

Did GSE's Fuscarino lift that directly from Mrs. Charles Lindbergh's book, The Wave of the Future, A Confession of Faith?

GSE's Fuscarino suggests that there can be no discussion, no disagreement, that the Golden Ass has replaced the old God and we are now dominated by a cultural paradigm that is both Post-Christian and Post-Western.  Aside from being profoundly juvenile to expect a world in which everyone holds the same opinion, it is starkly authoritarian.  Not content with that, GSE's Fuscarino plays the LGBT storm trooper and goes a step further by threatening those who even consider voting their conscience.

And some New Jersey Republicans are funding this???

Why not take a cue from those liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices who joined their conservative colleagues in siding yesterday with a Colorado baker who refused to be bullied into “celebrating” something that was not in his heart to celebrate?  The justices did not like the disrespect shown by Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission towards dissenting points of view – specifically dissenting points of view based on religious beliefs.  Freedom won.

Funny.  Freedom used to be a cherished Republican ideal.  So why are Republicans helping to fund an authoritarian, anti-freedom, anti-Republican political action committee scam that will never be satisfied so long as it has “activists” to make money off it?

Ohio just voted to end gerrymandering. NJ can too.

How does a party that can win a statewide election by 20 points hold so few seats in the New Jersey Legislature?  The answer is gerrymandering, drawing district boundaries that favor one political party over another or, as is often the case, so that only one party can win. 

New Jersey Republicans could be competitive in at last ten more legislative districts if the district lines were drawn fairly.  Oh, and the guy who did the last bit of gerrymandering for the Democrats -- Bill Castner -- has just been rewarded with a job by Governor Phil Murphy as the state's new "gun czar."  Well, if he adjudicates on firearms the way he did on boundaries, there goes the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

But the good news is that Ohio just voted down gerrymandering.  The people did it.  They got tired of the Bill Castner-types and did something about it.

This is a huge victory in the fight to end gerrymandering, stop political polarization, and give power back to the voters. Ohio is a center point of American politics, and one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. If the people can organize and pass a statewide law in Ohio, it can be done in New Jersey.

Thousands of volunteers from the Fair Districts = Fair Elections coalition collected more than 200,000 signatures, which pressured the legislature to put gerrymandering on the ballot. Groups like Represent.Us got involved and its members joined the fight, hosting 23 phone banks to contact voters, joining forums, and reaching more than 100,000 people with a video about the problem of gerrymandering.

This is just the first of five statewide gerrymandering campaigns that could pass this year. Here's a snapshot of the other four:

• In Michigan, thousands of volunteers in the Voters Not Politicians campaign gathered more than 425,000 signatures in less than four months to put a gerrymandering reform measure on the ballot this November. 

• In Missouri, Represent.Us members joined volunteers and organizers in the Clean Missouri coalition to put gerrymandering reform on the ballot. Last Thursday, they submitted more than 345,000 signatures for a measure that will fix gerrymandering, ban lobbyist gifts to politicians, and increase transparency in state government.

In Colorado, voters will have the opportunity to vote on a measure that would have a transparent and independent commission draw congressional and legislative lines, thanks to the hard bipartisan work of Fair Districts Colorado and People Not Politicians. The plan won unanimous support in the state Senate and House, and it will appear on the November ballot.

• In Utah, Better Boundaries submitted nearly 190,000 signatures in support of a ballot initiative to create a non-partisan redistricting commission to draw legislative, congressional and school board district lines. 

If you want to do something about gerrymandering, contact this website and we will put you in touch with the people who are working to make it happen:

Jersey Conservative

Represent.Us is a good place to start.  You can check them out here:

                                                            https://represent.us/

How the Democrats turnout their people to vote.

2013 should have been a blow-out for the Democrats.  Republican Governor Chris Christie romped to victory by an impressive twenty-point margin.  And yet, the Democrats were able to hold on to their legislative majorities and Republicans failed to pick up a single seat in either the Senate or Assembly. 

The following year -- this time in Pennsylvania -- Republicans pulled off a similar feat, capturing 12 legislative seats from the Democrats while the Democrat candidate for Governor was coasting to a ten-point win.  How did they do it?

For some insight into how the Democrats held the Legislature in 2013 and to what Republicans should be doing this year with the possibility of a 2013 in reverse, we need only look to Legislative District 38 and how the Democrats held this seat in the wake of the 2013 Christie landslide.  In a February 2014 article written for Campaigns & Elections magazine, an associate with the political consulting firm, The Campaign Group, explained how they prevented SRM and ARV from capitalizing on the Christie landslide.

The Campaign Group is a Philadelphia-based media firm that has run advertising campaigns for Commerce Bank of New Jersey, Cooper University Hospital, Comcast, Rob Andrews for Congress, and John Adler for Congress.  The article sets the scene:

"In 2011, incumbent state Sen. Bob Gordon eked out the narrowest victory of any state senator, and 2013 promised to be even more competitive, particularly after Christie singled out Gordon for criticism. Voters in each New Jersey legislative district elect one state senator and two assembly members district wide, and both Democrats running for state Assembly in this district were relatively untested: Paramus Borough Council President Joe Lagana and first-term incumbent Assemblyman Tim Eustace, the first openly-gay person elected to an open seat in New Jersey. So it was clear that all three races would be hotly-contested."

The article goes on to helpfully explain that the Democrats  "were rightly concerned the lackluster campaign of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Barbara Buono could lead to decreased Democratic turnout that would sink their candidates."  So they resolved to do something about it by going back to their base:

"They convened focus groups in LD38 of Democrats who were not certain to vote in November’s election. If we could find out what would motivate them to turn out, despite the lack of a competitive gubernatorial campaign, we’d have a real shot at altering the turnout dynamic."

They launched an effort "independent of what the candidates were doing."  The field campaign connected with more than 11,000 voters and generated 803 vote-by-mail applications.  The article continues:

"Field Strategies identified a list of 2,300 households with voters believed to contain only rock-ribbed Democrats. These voters didn’t need to see our ads criticizing the Republican candidates, because there was no way there would vote for a Republican. But many of these voters were not particularly likely to vote in the November elections, so we wanted to build on the existing GOTV messages and use our TV buy to motivate them to get off their behinds and vote."

The trend in New Jersey over the last two decades has been to target fewer and fewer "likely" voters.  You've all heard those references to 4 of 4 voters and 3 of 4, and so on.  What these  Democrats did was to reach out to their "unlikely" voters and persuade them to "change their habits" and come out to vote.  It is what the Republican legislative campaign did in 2014 to produce a pick-up of 12 seats that year in the face of a gubernatorial defeat.

All this happened in 2013 and 2014.  Pennsylvania Republicans used it again in 2016 to pad that "blue" state's Republican legislative majorities -- giving them a 34 to 16 Republican majority in the State Senate, and a 121 to 82 Republican majority in the State House of Representatives.  In contrast, New Jersey Republicans ignored their conservative base in 2015 -- and lost legislative seats.

This year marks yet another in which the lessons of 2013 have not been applied.  Movement conservatives were not called upon until very late in the campaign and at this point, with less than two weeks to election day, have still not been fully mobilized.  In contrast, in 2013 the Democrats had all their base's issues groups activated and with marching orders to begin their voter turnout operation nine weeks prior to election day. 

In Pennsylvania, conservative grassroots activists are part of the party's bloodstream and issues groups form a sharp-pointed "irregular" militia working in general concert with the GOP "regulars."  This has been resisted in New Jersey and, sadly, the prospects for 2017 appear headed for a repeat of 2013 and 2015 -- except with the added sadness that the gubernatorial campaign may be blamed and no lessons learned.

But fight on while the fight is still going.  There is time enough still.