Time to end the GOP campaign against Ed Durr’s consultant.

By Rubashov

Last November, Republican Senate candidate Ed Durr defeated incumbent Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-LD03). A short distance away, Assemblywoman Jean Stanfield was defeating incumbent Senator Dawn Marie Addiego (D-LD08).

First elected Burlington County Sheriff in 2001, Stanfield was re-elected five times as Sheriff before being elected to the Assembly in 2019. And in what should have been the big upset of election night 2021, Jean Stanfield defeated the Democrat incumbent by a margin of 1,721 votes.

But it wasn’t the BIG upset that night. That’s because Gloucester County truck driver Ed Durr was defeating an even more formidable opponent – the Senate President – by 2,199 votes. And Durr’s victory was a surprise nobody saw coming. It propelled him into instant national attention. He was all over the national news, being interviewed by FOX, and feted by national Republicans who hailed him as a harbinger of the future.

Both candidates overcame huge spending disadvantages. Jean Stanfield’s final campaign contributions & expenditures report (filed on November 19, 2021) shows she spent $330,813.81 on her campaign. Democrat Addiego’s report (filed on November 22, 2021) shows she spent $879,553.82. And this doesn’t account for all the outside expenditures spent for and against each of these candidates.

Ed Durr’s final report (filed on November 22, 2021) shows him having spent just $15,601.60. This he split with his two Assembly running mates (they filed jointly), both of whom won. Senate President Sweeney’s report (filed on November 20, 2021), which he also filed with his two Assembly running mates, shows expenditures of $1,686,648.20. A separate, Sweeney-only campaign account, reported spending an additional $866,861.26 (report filed on November 20,2021). Of course, as Senate President, Sweeney spread his money around quite liberally, assisting other Democrats. Still, it wouldn’t have been difficult to outspend Durr.

Durr’s defeat of Sweeney represents a turnabout. It was a rare instance when a grassroots Republican guerilla campaign defeated a powerful Democrat. Usually, it is the Democrats who do grassroots guerilla campaigns so well. Look at their 2018 rout of New Jersey’s Republican congressional delegation. The Democrats fielded the most unlikely candidates – courtesy of their grassroots – while guerilla operatives like Saily Avelenda and Winn Khuong helped soften up Republican incumbents so they were ready to fall before the campaign even began. In the case of Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen, they literally drove him from office.

Most Republican political consultants don’t do guerilla because they are not set up to make money that way. Guerilla is too time intensive and doesn’t lend itself to profitable product/ service standardization.

Consultant Steve Kush ran Ed Durr’s campaign. Kush is a longtime practitioner of guerilla campaigning, relying on his opponent’s high name ID to drive up his negatives – using what should be a positive, against him. Kush is quick to spot an opportunity and exploit a weakness. He uses tactics that mirror those prescribed by Colonel John Boyd, the American military strategist whose methods informed the victory in Operation Desert Storm (1990-91).

The big thing about Kush is he can make a campaign operational on a shoestring and has proven he can win when massively outspent. No other political consultant currently working in New Jersey can match what he has accomplished and, given that many (if not most) of the GOP’s legislative candidates in 2025 will be facing a funding disadvantage, you would think New Jersey Republicans might recognize that Steve Kush has something to offer.

Unfortunately, Kush has faced the same sort of organizational prejudice and jealousy that Colonel Boyd faced from the Pentagon. Establishment consultants have a network of allies within the state party organization that both protect them when they underperform and undermine any threat to their profitable hegemony. That’s why Kush found himself cut out of last weekend’s 2022 NJGOP Leadership Summit. At a time when New Jersey Republicans need his skill set, the establishment silenced him.

Well, not entirely. The Republican Leaders of both the Senate and Assembly paid public compliments to Steve Kush at the panel they hosted on Friday – as did Senator Ed Durr himself. They get it and intend to utilize this valued asset.

This has only heightened the jealousy and threat some insider consultants see in Steve Kush. They and their networks have begun a very personal campaign against Kush. For example, Save Jersey editor Matt Rooney posted an unusually personal attack on Kush yesterday. It was most unlike Rooney, who tends towards behaving like a gentleman. He is certainly more so than this humble scribe, who, if one looks honestly in the mirror, must admit to seeing a thoroughgoing bastard staring back.

Matt Rooney has been covering the foibles of one Ian Smith, the owner of a gym who gained fame for the stand he took against Governor Phil Murphy’s COVID restrictions and now a Republican candidate for Congress in CD03. Fifteen years ago, Smith was involved in a drunk driving incident that resulted in someone’s death. According to Rooney, he’s now been arrested again for a DWI.

Rooney is something of an expert on the subject. According to his law firm, Matt Rooney represents people like Ian Smith – professionally. In August 2019, Rooney “was voted a top DWI attorney practicing in South Jersey by his peers,” according to the firm’s website. Perhaps Smith will retain him?

Of course, Matt Rooney is a favorite of the GOP establishment in New Jersey. He has been given access to broadcast directly from the last several NJGOP Summits and was a featured panelist and speaker at last weekend’s summit – which places him in a club that has barred its doors to Steve Kush. Political egos being what they are (and male egos at that), Rooney must be aware of the jealousy and spite Kush’s win last November has stirred up in some insider circles. Nothing so motivates a politico quite like jealousy turned to hate. And hate is the energy drink of politics.

There are those who hope that Steve Kush’s pugnacious quote in defense of his candidate (“I would trust Ian Smith to drive my mother to her next doctor’s appointment.”) will somehow erase his role in the great upset victory by Ed Durr over Steve Sweeney. Of course, it won’t, but fools can hope.

For our part, we don’t think we would trust either Ian Smith or his punk rocker opponent, Bob Healey, to drive anyone anywhere. In all honesty, the least worrisome driver in that race would have to be the Democrat incumbent, Andy Kim, who appears to have developed a degree of mature, sober judgment early in life.

According to David Wildstein of NJ Globe, “Healey spent eight years as the lead singer for The Ghouls, a streetpunk rock band well-known in the Philadelphia area, and as the CEO of Punk Rock promotional company.” We wonder if this is his band, featured here, in a documentary from 2007. If so, we know its body of work.

The Ghouls - "Kill Doll"

CD: Stand Alone (2007)

Born of a wolf and a mortal bitch in heat

I'm not a man but I'm more than you can be

I hunt at night and humans are my prey

You silly humans, my little kill dolls!

I am a savage and I'm here to make you bleed

I prey on fear and violence is my feed

Bloodlust rules my every action now

Through my violence, you are a kill doll!

Man by day!

Don't push too far, the beast is in my eyes

Beast by night!

You'll push too far and no one will survive

You can't resist me, don't try to take a stand

Cause by day I go from lycanthrope to man

I'll rend you all like the cattle that you are

You don't know it, your all just kill dolls!

I have my instinct that were bred into my blood

It's like I told you I am no man's son

A flash of silver is the only chance you've got

Kill or be killed, you'll be a kill doll!

Man by day!

Beast by night!

You call society a civilized place

But every human hides fear behind their face

Fear of violence or fear of the unknown

Fear to make each man a kill doll!

I may be savage and embittered by rage

But still I'm better than any human raised

At least with me what you see is what you get

I hide nothing, you're all my kill dolls!

Man by day!

Beast by night!

Man by day!

Beast by night!

Man by day!

Beast by night!

Bramnick has a message. Will NJ Republicans follow?

Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick recently released this most excellent video.  Bramnick starts by detailing what Republicans are against…

But then, more importantly, Bramnick lays out three solid policy positions that points New Jersey Republicans in the direction of what we should be for…

(1) Cap State Spending at 2% (just like local government spending is capped).

(2) Cut the State Income Tax by 10% (make NJ more competitive w. other states).

(3) Full Deduction of Property Taxes on the State Income Tax (a move that takes the property tax issue away from Democrats like Andy Kim, Mikie Sherrill, and Josh Gottheimer).

In the video, Bramnick is engaging, folksy, and compelling.  So finally, here is the core of something to move the Republican Party forward.  So why isn’t everyone banging the same drum? 

Two days after Bramnick’s video went up on Youtube, the NJGOP – the State Republican Party – blasted out its weekly newsletter via email.  There was some very good stuff in there.  Unfortunately, the Assembly Republican Leader’s video was not part of the newsletter.  An oversight that should be corrected at the earliest opportunity. 

On Thursday, the Garden State Initiative – a free-market, pro-business think tank – held a meeting about the state of New Jersey’s economy and how it can be improved.  All the experts present agreed that the business climate went south after the Democrats gained control over the Legislature, nearly two decades ago.

That said, the most prominent plan for recovery featured at the gathering was the one put forward by Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat and so a leader in the party responsible for the downturn in the first place.  As with legislation protecting the Bill of Rights (specifically the 2nd Amendment) and culturally traditionalist social legislation (like the Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Protection Act), the Senate President will always be handicapped in how much he can accomplish by his need to appease the far-Left of his party’s caucus.  In the end, Sweeney will go as far as Leftist Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg allows him to go – and is anyone under the illusion that this Marxist-lite fellow-traveler is pro-business or pro-taxpayer?

In a column published on his Save Jersey news website, Matt Rooney brilliantly dissected the Trenton Democrats last week…  

We hear a lot about the “working class” from Trenton, but each and every policy and budget are designed to put the screws to taxpayers in favor of keeping these rich guys and their power structures chugging right along.

What I’m saying is that Democrats’ lofty rhetoric doesn’t match their reality. On either side of this fight. New Jersey’s true form of government is a blend of socialism and oligarchy (with a sprinkle of kleptocracy for good measure).

So why aren’t pro-business and pro-taxpayer forces pushing the Republican Plan put forward by Bramnick and making its three points the basis of not only the recovery of our party’s fortunes, but those of the state’s taxpayers?  Why aren’t they pulling together behind the Bramnick plan, then building on it, to tackle the obvious divide between the haves (those municipalities who bathe in money, courtesy of the Abbott decision) and the have nots (those who pay the highest property taxes in America)?   

As New Jersey 101.5’s Dennis Malloy recently noted, the public frustration over property taxes and government in the Garden State is stifling:  “Being the state with the highest property taxes in the nation used to be the number one issue in almost any campaign for public office in New Jersey. Lately, (crickets)! Why? …most people have given up hope that it will ever be normal or fair or affordable to most people. There is no one on the horizon with the guts to be honest about it and promise to fix it…” 

And yet, in the midst of this frustration, there are thousands of brave souls who are spending their time and energy – both in and outside social media – to address the oppression of their neighbors and fellow taxpayers.  Too often, they find themselves on their own, without the assistance or direction from the Republican Party, the business community, or even established figures within the state’s conservative movement. 

Take the grassroots effort to Recall Governor Phil Murphy, as an example.  This effort is in the process of training hundreds of volunteers in the basics of one-on-one political outreach that could be harvested in future GOTV operations.  But is anyone providing them with any real assistance?  Listen to this appeal from one of the most effective recall leaders, Bill Hayden of Sussex County:

https://www.facebook.com/raidenhayden/videos/10214053859525724/?notif_id=1557702128406942&notif_t=live_video

In May 1940, the allied armies of France, Great Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands faced the threat posed by a newly re-armed Germany.  One of the great myths about the Fall of France is that the Germans had more tanks.  They did not.  In numbers, weaponry, and armor-protection, the German tanks were outclassed by those of the French Army and its allies.  So why did the Germans so easily over-power the superior tanks of the French?

The French used their tanks piecemeal and fought actions individually.  Many were not even equipped with radios.  The Germans fought coordinated actions, in which not only individual tanks within a unit fought in support of each other, but entire units worked in concert with other units to achieve a particular goal.  It wasn’t hardware that won the battle, but tactics – how the hardware was used. 

The three major units of New Jersey’s Republican Party – the State Committee (NJGOP), the Senate Republican Majority (SRM), and the Assembly Republican Victory (ARV) – do not work in concert or present a unified message or vision.  From there is gets worse.  Each county, each candidate, each club marches to its own beat.  And the party is barely on speaking terms with the movement conservatives who make up its base and constitute its most loyal voters.  Working together could amplify a message and make it punch through to distracted voters.  But instead of amplification, we have a cacophony of murmurs, each from its own silo.   

Jon Bramnick has offered a simple, three-point way forward.  Everyone should amplify it.  That would make a start at working in concert.

At Thursday’s meeting, Garden State Initiative President Regina Egea said voters should ask every politician how they intend to lower the cost of living and the cost of doing business.  The Bramnick Plan provides the answers.