How GOP insiders caused Senator Ed Durr’s primary to happen.

By Rubashov

When Ed Durr beat Steve Sweeney – the longest serving Senate President in New Jersey’s history – it was international news. Newspapers overseas carried photos of the truck-driver who spent a few hundred bucks to beat the powerful Senate President who spent millions. Durr was featured on Fox News and praised by Tucker Carlson.
 
So, how did Senator Ed Durr end up in a primary with an opponent funded by the GOP establishment? An opponent whose campaign is run by establishment consultant Chris Russell, a moderate insider who is 2025 gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli’s top campaign advisor. Russell is the same political consultant brought in by Senate Minority Leader Steve Oroho to run the Space-Fantasia-Inganamort team in LD24.
 
Over a year ago, Senator Durr’s LD03 was identified as the number one target the Democrats would be coming for in 2023. The Senate Republican leadership and SRM were told that if Republicans had a chance at gaining a majority, they needed to hold all the 16 seats (at the time) they had. To do this, special provision would need to be made to protect Ed Durr, who was the most vulnerable Republican incumbent.
 
SRM’s top consultant at the time, and a nationally recognized talent in the field of political campaigning, looked at the data and made this clear assessment of Durr’s chances for re-election:
 
Look, Ed Durr didn’t fit the prototype of someone straight out of central casting. But you know what? His message connected with voters…and while he was outspent WILDLY by the Democrats, it turns out he had enough money…and he worked harder than Steve Sweeney. And guess what, he won. 
 
As I am out recruiting candidates for office next year, I am much more focused on candidates that connect with voters, will put in the effort to raise money and will work hard than any particular box of gender, color or the like.  
 
I am about winning, plain and simple…and those three qualities are what makes winning happen.
 
SRM’s generalissimo went on to note: 
 
These historic victories were driven by voters angry at the status quo… In Senator Durr’s district, 17% of the Republican vote came from people who don’t usually show up the polls! 17% of the Republican vote came from newly registered voters…people who were registered but had never showed up before…or people who only vote in presidential elections – these are all voters who never show up…but 17% of the Republican vote in District 3 came from Republicans who usually sit out elections like the one we just had – that’s unheard of!
 
The polling was good, the seat located in a populist region of the state in which the GOP was growing, and Durr was well known and his numbers solid. What he was weak on – owing to the underfunded nature of his upset win – was money. So, the SRM team pushed to have someone assigned to Senator Durr to help him start fundraising early. This is what any political campaign professional would have counseled anywhere in America. It is what you do.
 
But this is New Jersey, where things are generally not what they seem. That idea was repeatedly shot down by Senate leadership – Durr’s Senate colleagues – including Senators Oroho and Bramnick. Senate Minority Leader Oroho sounded bizarrely Darwinian in his insistence that Senator Durr be left to figure it out on his own.
 
Senator Oroho and top aide Jeff Spatola seemed angry that Durr had defeated Sweeney and offered contemptuous assessments of both the Senator and his remarkable victory. Again, and again and again, attempts to prepare Senator Durr for an expected 2023 assault by the Democrats were thwarted. He was the NJ Senate Republicans’ rock star – known nationally in conservative circles – but attempts to take Durr to Washington for a fundraising roundtable were nixed, as was a planned fundraiser hosted by a major conservative legal group.
 
A superPAC, planned to raise money to help incumbents like Durr, was killed in its infancy. Its inaugural event was essentially cancelled by Spatola, after a significant expenditure.
 
While suggestions to hire a fundraiser to work with Senator Durr were repeatedly rejected, as early as May 26th, there were internal memos circulating by Senate Republican leadership that SRM would need to go into triage mode, with the argument that an underfunded Durr would be too much of a strain on SRM’s finances:
 
“…we need to win six seats to get a net 5 because saving this seat [LD03] is way over what we can raise for all seats.”
 
That was on March 26, 2022! They looked to be giving up and seemed to be offering Durr up to the Democrats on a silver platter. So, Senator Durr, lacking the fundraising component the Senate GOP and SRM recognized that he needed, was allowed to roll into an election year in a vulnerable financial position. This all but ensured the Republican civil war that the Democrats were hoping for.
 
In conversation, Senator Oroho nourished the pipe dream that a GOP majority might be gained by the South Jersey Norcross wing of the Democratic Party joining the GOP en masse. Oroho spoke openly of his “lovely relationship” with Democrat Steve Sweeney. Along with his aide, Spatola, they appeared supportive of Sweeney’s gubernatorial ambitions.
 
Now Senator Durr is locked in a battle for re-election run by a consultant who trousers money from SRM and its candidates. The GOP establishment seems determined to prevent the Ed Durr miracle from happening again. If they succeed in destroying Ed Durr, will that 17% of the Republican vote from people who don’t usually show up at the polls that came out in 2021 to vote against the Democrats and all they stand for, come out again? Will they come out in 2025? And why would they? 

A "Lovely Relationship"?

Salant got it wrong: NJ Republicans didn’t reject pro-Trump candidates…

(1) Who were the explicitly anti-Trump candidates?

(2) Generally, too many anti-establishment candidates ran.

By Sussex Watchdog

NJ.com writer Jonathan Salant is widely considered to be extraordinarily biased against Republicans and progressive reformers by both Democrat and especially Republican campaign operatives. Even the moderates think he sucks (and we have that in writing). Establishment Democrats count on him to robotically repeat their line but everyone else has little use for him.

So, you can imagine the bemusement that came with Salant’s political prognostications on Sunday morning. Sure, everyone can have an opinion, but Salant’s understanding of the GOP borders on superstition. You can imagine him beginning the effort by placing a mouse in his pocket and a garland of garlic around his neck.

Post-primary, the NJGOP establishment is still in its cups, yet to recover from a series of shocks, near-losses, and outright losses – all at the hands of vastly outspent rightwingers. Even the line didn’t hold up in places like Bergen and Morris Counties.

Nowadays, nobody runs openly as a “moderate”. Not in the GOP, anyway. Not even in the New Jersey GOP. So, every Republican candidate in every contested primary is trying to convince Republican voters that he or she is the conservative in that race. It makes for a lot of confusion.

Salant was trying to make the point that anti-Trump Republicans defeated pro-Trump Republicans or, as he put it, “only in the 5th District did the apparent pro-Trump candidate emerge victorious.” But that’s not being honest because none of the Republican candidates was overtly anti-Trump, not even in the way that Seth Grossman is (and he’s actually pro-Trump) and certainly not in the intellectually honest way that conservative columnist Paul Mulshine is. Ask yourself: Who is the equivalent of Paul Mulshine in the New Jersey Republican establishment today?

Criticism of the former President is muted, and the phrase “anti-Trump” is found on campaign literature as often as a self-description of “moderate” is, which is never. But despite all that many Republican voters, motivated by dissatisfaction, do figure out who is who and they appear to be getting better at it.

During the height of the Tea Party movement, Joe Kyrillos, an establishment State Senator running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator defeated three Tea Party conservatives 163,817 to 19,238 and 17,161 and 12,823 respectively. Kyrillos got 77 percent of the vote. In conservative Sussex County – without a line – Kyrillos won the primary with 45 percent of the vote (Sussex County’s Bader Qarmout came in second with 24 percent).

In last Tuesday’s CD07 Republican primary, establishment candidate Tom Kean Jr. defeated six opponents who were running to the right of him. He did so on a vote of 24,106 to 12,481 and 8,102 and 2,907 and 2,576 and 2,176 and 414. That is 45 percent of the vote. The anti-establishment vote in CD07 now mirrors that of Sussex County a decade ago. And on Tuesday in Sussex County, Kean was defeated with 33 percent to 37 percent for Pastor Phil Rizzo. And that was with the support of the Sussex County political establishment.

In 2006, as the establishment candidate, Kean won the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Sussex County 4,809 to 2,414 – defeating a Steve Lonegan-backed candidate 66 percent to 34 percent. Now the relative strengths of the establishment and rightwing have been reversed.

Things have gotten a lot more crunchy, but maybe not in the way that people once defined it. Until quite recently, conservatives liked to talk about the movement’s three-legged policy stool of guns, babies, and taxes. More recently, especially since 2016, it was a four-legged stool of guns (the Second Amendment), babies (Pro-Life), taxes, and illegal immigration. That’s all in flux now.

The good news is that what it means to be a “social conservative” is changing and broadening. The bad news for some will be what those changes mean. Some talk of the rise of “bar stool” conservatism that is a reaction not to social changes, but to the bullying by movements associated with those changes.

Take same-sex marriage, for example. Many of the new “social conservatives” support it, just as they support basic civil rights protections for people regardless of their sexual preferences or identity. That said, these new conservatives (very often recent Democrats or with no party identification) loathe the religion-like proselytization by the LGBTQ+ movement, their demands that we fly their flag and celebrate their deal (and the name-calling if we don’t), and once in power their attempts to mandate their movement and indoctrinate children in schools and employees in the workplace.

A lot of “bar-stool” conservatives are former liberals (many still identify as liberals) – it is just that they still think they have the right to judge for themselves what a man is or a woman is, still believe they should be allowed to suggest that the science of chromosomes trumps the religion of faith-based feelings. They don’t like being threatened, they don’t care if they are “cancelled”, they have chosen to stand up to the bullying.

These new social conservatives have expanded the ranks but not the movement – because they are not “movement” people. They don’t want to be told. Not by a drag queen… or a religious leader. Nevertheless, they have potential for bringing together a loose majority.

Social conservatives – once a movement coasting south – have been provided a new urgency, a new momentum, by the overreach of the flag wavers, curriculum mongers, and pronoun Nazis’. But prognosticators like Jonathan Salant would be wrong to believe it’s the same movement it was just a few years ago. Here is an interesting discussion between two younger writers on the subject – one who was just published in the New York Times.

The NEW Culture War After the Religious Right | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Premiered Jun 8, 2022 Krystal and Saagar have Marshall Kosloff interview National Review columnist Nate Hochman about the evolving culture war on the right due to secularization and the waning of the religious right.

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.”

Last weekend’s NJGOP Summit was a lost opportunity.

By Rubashov

For many establishment Democrats, their party is their religion. They have this in common with ordinary folk who identify with the term “Democrat” and place it at the center of their lives. Political identity has taken the place of religion. The unquestioned certainty that these Democrats once reserved for, say, the virgin birth, they now give to the idea that a man can become a woman merely by thinking it so.

These Democrats recite their positions on issues like abortion and guns with the rote certainty of 1950s era children reciting their catechism. But there it ends. The line is drawn at the woke religious “social issues” embraced by party elites and repeated by everyone else. Practical issues, like health care and a livable wage, are not treated like holy writ but rather as points of opinion. For example, the idea of illegal immigration is holy writ. What it does to suppress wages and lard profits is always a matter of opinion.

Like the Church of old, Democrats ask adherents to forego thoughts of earthly needs like eating and keeping warm, and instead keep focused on the great “progress” made. As the high priests of the Democrat Party daily remind us: Who needs a job when you have ass?

Establishment Republicans, on the other hand, are almost always heretics. Always in denial of their ideological roots, always disputing the need for a platform at all, always regretting that it exists. Seeing the virtue of belief, of ideals, as an incumbrance. Far from being “true” believers, the GOP establishment are not really believers at all. They demand a “big tent” of hot air in which to diffuse and disperse the tenets of Republican principle.

When you have expanded in consideration of so much, what is left bears no resemblance to what you started with. Whether this is the goal of the “big tent” preachers, who replace political leadership for profitable followership, it is always the outcome. They want success because success is profitable and leads to power. To have power they need to sell a candidate who will be a mirror to all who look upon him. Unfortunately, this means that the candidate, when he arrives and assumes power, having sacrificed all principles, will use it only to satisfy the will for more power. And a candidate who believes in nothing other than his own will to power is fast on his way to becoming a sociopath.

The “big tent” preachers were much in evidence at the weekend’s 2022 NJGOP Leadership Summit. Instead of figuring out what language to use to successfully argue Republican principles and achieve victories that move the cause forward, they argue that the cause be abandoned wholesale and embrace what some algorithm tells us is the fashion of the day. The promise of hollow victories by hollow men.

The “big tent” preachers seem to forget that the only two statewide Republican victories in this century were achieved by Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment Republican Chris Christie who defeated a filthy-rich incumbent Democrat Governor in 2009 and went on to be re-elected with more than 60 (yes, SIXTY – 6-0) percent of the vote in a General Election. That’s a lot of meat on that win.

We have been here before. This was the old lie put about by the Christine Todd Whitman wing of the Republican Party. The mantra that “no social conservative” could ever win in New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie blew that argument all to hell… twice!

And again, we heard the bizarre claim that last November’s gubernatorial defeat “was the best election day in 30 years for New Jersey Republicans.” 30 years?

Some of us were around for those election nights. For us who were, there are a lot of them we’d take over November 2, 2021.

Comparing similar years, let’s look at the gubernatorial election years that have occurred since 1991 (30 years ago):

28 years ago… November 1993.
New Jersey Republicans defeat an incumbent Democrat Governor and win both chambers of the Legislature with large majorities. Republicans not only control counties like Burlington and Somerset – but Bergen and Passaic too. Heck, there was a Republican County Executive running Mercer County and, a year later, a Republican County Executive in Essex County too. Oh, and just for good measure, Republican Bret Schundler was elected to a full-term as Mayor of Jersey City.

Yeah, think most sane GOP folk would take that over November 2, 2021.

24 years ago… November 1997.
New Jersey Republicans re-elect an incumbent Governor and win both chambers of the Legislature. Republicans not only control counties like Burlington and Somerset – but Bergen and Passaic too.

20 years ago… November 2001.
New Jersey Republicans win 20 seats in the Senate – to share control of the State Senate and 36 seats in the Assembly. Currently, Republicans hold 16 seats in the Senate and 34 seats in the Assembly.

16 years ago… November 2005.
Republicans have 18 Senators and 31 Assembly members.

12 years ago… November 2009.
New Jersey Republicans defeat an incumbent Democrat Governor. They have 17 Senators and 33 Assembly members. Republicans control counties like Burlington and Somerset.

8 years ago… November 2013.
New Jersey re-elects a Republican Governor with more than 60 percent of the vote. Republicans have 16 Senators and 32 Assembly members. Republicans control counties like Burlington and Somerset.

4 years ago… November 2017.
Republicans are defeated in the gubernatorial race and elect 15 to the Senate and 26 to the Assembly. Burlington County falls to the Democrats in 2018 and Somerset County follows in 2019. In 2018, we lost every Republican member of Congress – except one – in New Jersey.

November 2, 2021.
Republicans are defeated in the gubernatorial race and elect 16 to the Senate and 34 to the Assembly.

Clearly, last November’s election represents a strong improvement over the result four years earlier, building on an uptick that began in 2019 and continued into 2020, but it is certainly not better than actually winning the Governor’s office. And while the organizers of the NGOP Summit presumably recognize this, they went out of their way not to invite the architect of last year's outstanding upset victory in District 3, where an underfunded Republican named Ed Durr defeated the massively funded incumbent Senate President.

While we recognize that such events are sales-marketing tools for vendors and political consultants, the NJGOP shouldn’t play favorites and feature the same insider consultants while gagging the one consultant who we all could have learned something from. A tragic lost opportunity for those in attendance.

The NJGOP Summit won't be featuring NJ Globe's "Consultant of the Year".

A tragic lost opportunity.

NJGOP: Will Bob Hugin cause a civil war for Jack Ciattarelli?

By Rubashov

First, a hearty welcome to our new readers in the Washington Metro area.

Later today, former U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin will become the new Leader of New Jersey’s Republican Party. Ideologically, Hugin is very different from the last two men at the helm of the NJGOP. Outgoing Chairman Mike Lavery is a behind-the-scenes guy who shares a similar issue grid with the Chairman he replaced, Doug Steinhardt, an unashamed conservative on issues like the Right-to-Life, the Second Amendment, illegal immigration, taxes, and traditional values.

Of course, Hugin spent $36 million on a campaign to convince voters that he wasn’t a conservative. Nevertheless, he had more than enough connections with President Trump for the Democrats to define him. His campaign provided insiders with six-figure jobs, made some consultants rich, but was otherwise a disaster. While suppressing the GOP base, Hugin drove up swing Democrat turnout in several congressional districts that Hugin won – and the Republican Congressman or congressional candidate lost.

Last December, Hugin ran for Chairman of the NJGOP and came up short. Since then, the former Big Pharma executive has busied himself with changing the face of the GOP. Since his 2018 campaign, Hugin appears to have more deeply embraced identity politics.

For example, an independent expenditure committee controlled by Hugin called Women for a Stronger New Jersey spent around $30,000 on direct mail, text-messaging, robo-calls, and social media in an attempt to defeat a conservative State Committeewoman in Mercer County and replace her with what would have been the first transgender State Committeewoman to represent the GOP. The effort ultimately failed, but one can only ask why such resources – scarce in the best of times – would be wasted on such a silly primary, for such a silly cause. Surely, with so few legislators and counties in the GOP column, $30,000 would be better used to defeat Democrats.

Women for a Stronger New Jersey is run by Bob Hugin’s 2018 U.S. Senate campaign manager, who also benefits as a vendor to the committee. Hugin’s spouse is a member of the three-member board that runs the committee, according to its webpage. And as if anyone needed clarification as to the ideology of the candidates the committee is looking to promote, the Women for a Stronger New Jersey website is very clear on this:

“We're working to grow the number of women serving in elected office at the state and local level by building a diverse network of moderate Republican and Independent women throughout the state and expanding the pool of women considering public office.”

That’s right, conservative Republican women need not apply. But independents – as in non-Republicans – are okay. That’s kind of a sucky formula, isn’t it?

Earlier this year, when the state’s senior Pro-Life Senator decided to run for re-election, Women for a Stronger New Jersey was there wasting resources and urging a primary. And there was a primary – not for the Senate, but for the Assembly – with another enormous waste of resources. In total, Republicans have pissed away about $2 million on avoidable primaries – and that’s not counting the gubernatorial race. Insider vendors and consultants trouser the proceeds and benefit, but the party doesn’t. Because money doesn’t come easy.

Women for a Stronger New Jersey is not the only committee Bob Hugin has set-up that seems drawn to killing its Republican brethren. Jersey Real is a federal independent expenditure SuperPAC that has spent hundreds of thousands in Republican congressional primaries in seats that we later failed to pick-up. The Treasurer of Jersey Real happens to be that same candidate who was hoping to become the first transgendered Republican State Committeewoman. Small world.

Jersey Real is already active fomenting primaries in two congressional districts for next year: CD05 and CD03. Jersey Real’s choice in CD05 worked on Hugin’s 2018 campaign. It doesn’t appear to matter to anyone that the Democrat incumbent is sitting on $9 million. Nobody has asked, let alone answered, the question about how Republicans spending a million or more dollars bashing each other is going to help that arithmetic. Hey, the consultants and vendors will trouser a lot of cash – but the poor GOP donors shouldn’t expect a return on their investment.

One high-ranking party boss in South Jersey said that Bob Hugin told him the NJGOP wants “new” looking candidates… youth, women, “minorities”, anything but old white guys. What’s going on in your head doesn’t matter… issues, policies, ideas, solutions, ethics, integrity, honesty… these things don’t matter. It is all about how you look and how they can market you. Sad, especially because they almost always lose anyway.

After the scandal of Watergate, steps were taken to make our election process more democratic. In the time since, the Courts have destroyed those reforms, ruling that money is speech. Today, the average voter feels shouted down by a few very rich oligarchs who count for a very few votes but whose money allows them to scream very loudly and shout down millions of voters.

This disparity led a Princeton University study (Gilens & Page, 2014) to conclude: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Voters believe in the ideal of democracy but increasingly understand they do not have it.

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

In an opinion column, published in yesterday’s New Jersey Globe, Fairleigh Dickinson’s Peter Woolley wrote: “Jack (Ciattarelli) barely mustered half of the Republican primary vote though running against two candidates who were, to put it most charitably, marginal.”  It’s actually worse than that, because most Republican voters weren’t excited enough or mad enough to vote at all. 
 
Bob, you have been chosen to lead the NJGOP by the 2021 gubernatorial nominee.  His name is Jack Ciattarelli.  He is job one.  Along with every legislator and legislative candidate and all the county offices and local elected offices.  The party has candidates who face do or die THIS November. 
 
Don’t get ahead of yourself worrying about how to put your stamp on the 2022 congressional primaries so that the GOP establishment nominates a bunch of lefties nobody cares about.  If you are going to do that, you might as well take Alan Steinberg’s advice and just embrace critical race theory and then – for all your money – prepare to be the state’s third party.
 
Finally, you need to accept that this is a grungier, more blue-collar party now.  A candidate can get by perfectly well just by repeating the word “Trump”.  Of course, that is not a policy or a solution.  But neither is the first transgendered (fill in the blank).  More than branding, the GOP needs thinking.  Come up with solutions to the problems voters face and then tell the story of how you are going to do it, so that they believe at least you’ll try.          

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

Eric Hoffer

Cruz joins with Sussex Dems to oppose broadband in Sussex-Warren.

By Sussex Watchdog

If you lived through the pandemic in Sussex or Warren County you know how important Internet connectivity is. If your Internet service wasn’t reliable, you couldn’t work from home, or learn from home, or even order food from home. And it’s not just for the pandemic – expanding broadband in Northwest New Jersey so that there’s reliable access to the Internet is crucial for the region’s economic development – now, and in the future.

Elected officials from BOTH political parties understand the need for greater broadband access in the region and reliable Internet connectivity. That’s why they place their ideological differences aside to broadly work together on what should be an issue of mutual agreement.

So, on Friday, when Governor Phil Murphy and Congressman Josh Gottheimer visited Lafayette to announce $190 million in American Rescue Plan funding that includes broadband expansion in Northwest New Jersey, they were joined by Republicans who have worked side-by-side with them to achieve this. Only an asshole would oppose reliable Internet access for Sussex and Warren Counties.

Enter Dan Cruz, a former Democrat, who is the teachers union’s answer to the problems facing Northwest New Jersey. It’s not enough that many teachers opposed returning to the classroom – apparently Cruz opposes students having the Internet access they need to learn from home as well.

Cruz took to social media to go on a rampage against Republicans who have put their partisan feelings aside to help get Sussex and Warren Counties the 21st Century Internet service we need. Cruz attacked Senator Steve Oroho and, by extension, Assemblyman Hal Wirths, County Commissioner Director Dawn Fantasia, and the Republican mayors of Blairstown, Hardwick, Belvidere, Sussex Borough, Frelinghuysen, and others. All of whom showed up in support of expanding broadband access for rural New Jersey and to support state legislation to create a Broadband Access Study Commission.

Apparently, Cruz saw red when Governor Murphy said, “Along with our congressional delegation and our Legislature, we are working to ensure that those living and working in New Jersey have access to reliable high-speed broadband services.” Cruz profoundly disagreed with that statement and with the one made by Congressman Gottheimer:

“For the sake of our families, economy, schools, and health care, we must continue fighting for communities across Warren and Sussex Counties to help boost their broadband connectivity… Now, every county and town in Sussex and Warren County will be clawing back federal dollars that they can use to improve connectivity. We also need to get the dollars sent to the State of New Jersey for rural broadband to right here in Sussex and Warren. With partners on both sides of the aisle and at every level of government, I believe we can get this done.”

NJBPU President Joseph L. Fiordaliso, who was also at the announcement, said: “Ensuring the most hard-to-reach areas of New Jersey have access to high speed Internet is an absolute necessity, especially in light of the last year. It is crucial that we close the digital divide, so our schoolchildren and businesses have the same educational and economic advantages regardless of where they are located.”

What responsible leader would oppose working together to achieve a bi-partisan outcome that materially helps the people of Sussex and Warren Counties?

Is Cruz nuts, stupid, or just a liar? Are we really supposed to believe that Cruz would rather have an Internet desert in Northwest New Jersey if it means working with the Democrats who run Trenton (the Murphy administration) and Washington (the Biden administration)? He’s too educated to be that stupid – so it’s down to being a nut or a liar.

But it gets worse.

It is bad enough when a political wannabe is on the make and will do anything, say anything, to try to score – but when the Executive Director of the Sussex Democrats cheers him on and shops around such a stupid attack, that is truly remarkable. Especially as the Executive Director in question has just trousered a fat patronage job – courtesy of the very same Governor Murphy.

Speaking for the Republicans, who are a minority in the Legislature, Senator Steve Oroho said: “High-speed internet is an absolute necessity in our world today, yet there are too many homes and communities in New Jersey that lack the broadband service many of us take for granted. The last year with so many employees and students working from home through the pandemic, it underscored the need of being wired for reliable internet connectivity. The creation of the Broadband Access Study Commission will examine the logistics of developing community broadband networks in order to deliver high-speed internet access, especially to underserved communities like many in rural areas. From a competitive standpoint, closing the digital divide is a must.”

Unfortunately, Dan Cruz and the Sussex County Democrats would rather play politics than get anything done. Being spiteful losers might make them feel good, but it doesn’t address the problem, which is a very real one – all across America.

Here is an educational video, provided by the Wall Street Journal, for the edification of Dan Cruz and the Sussex Democrats.  These idiots should watch it.  Maybe they’ll learn something?  But don’t hold your breath.

 

“The more inept you are, the smarter you think you are.”

Tom Stafford

Has the NJBIA become a voice of woke capitalism?

Remember when Republicans were the party of business and Democrats the party of the working class? While the GOP still loyally votes on behalf of the interests of business, the days of business rewarding that loyalty with its support appear to be long gone.

Today’s corporate class votes Democrat because they (1) know the Democrats will do nothing to threaten their economic position in society, and (2) they get to publicly assure themselves that they are "good people" by doing so. Yes, for them the modern Democrat Party is a religious experience – but one that doesn’t require sacrifice.

Government intrudes on business so much these days that instead of organizing resistance to those intrusions, many businesses have made politics their partner. Government is, after all, run by politicians – so corporations hire lobbyists, fund candidates, and more importantly adopt political and social policies that signal the virtues they want the world to see. And for some, it’s sort of like the pious mob boss who makes a great show of paying for the new roof on the church, so that possible critics look the other way when his real work comes to light.

Woke capitalism is crony capitalism with a social justice cover.

Here is a succinct but very much on-point explanation by Kajal Iyer, who boils down a New York Times editorial by Ross Douthat, called “The Rise of Woke Capital.”

Ms. Iyer outlines how corporations are embracing a woke identity to couch their “malpractices” and market their products. These corporations have disrupted the traditional balance between Left and Right in America, between business and labor – its yin and yang.

Woke corporations are like hip middle aged husbands who have successfully found a young mistress, content in the continued loyalty and forbearance of the dutiful wife at home. Guess which political party is “the wife at home”?

Take the New Jersey Business & Industry Association (NJBIA) and its political action committee, New Jobs PAC, which calls itself “The Voice of Business”. When the NJBIA and the Chamber of Commerce rolled out their “Plan for an Affordable New Jersey” in July, who handled the messaging?

If you answered “the Clinton grease machine” you would be correct.

Yep, MWW, the firm that is so close to Bill and Hillary they even found a job for disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner when he was too controversial to be hired elsewhere. The biography for the firm’s founder notes that he is “known for his political contributions and fundraising for the Democratic Party” and he’s served as a Deputy Finance Chair of the DNC.

So how pro “leave me alone and let me create jobs” kind of business is this firm and what kind of messaging are you going to get out of them? The answer can be had just by going through the media section of the NJBIA website, which offers lectures on climate change and diversity as well as a host of other left-wing incantations. The rest is a course in “politics/government is your wingman”. Do what they want, pay them what they want, support who and what they tell you to support, and they will allow you to do business.

For the non-woke businessperson who just wants to make a living and create jobs, the message is one of subservience. Pay the Danegeld or the Vikings will pillage your business.

On the other hand, if you are a big pharmaceutical firm mired in controversy over the fallout from one of your products… being uber-LGBTQ can change the focus and make you one of the “good guys”. Yep, too bad about the cancer… or the opioids.

Is this the only voice for business in New Jersey?

Is it time for Republicans to quit playing the loyal “wife at home” and ask for a divorce? Why take the blame for all that corporations do, only to watch them hire the Left to provide a Leftist message that helps Leftist politicians to run against you? Wouldn’t it just be better to leave the Democrats and their crony capitalist backers in the muck and run on a message of reform and clean government?

Does anyone really believe that the “corruption tax” (so labeled in the Soprano State) has gone away? Or would the average voter say that crony capitalism has made it stronger than ever?

If only the Star-Ledger had the moral mettle of the Atlantic City Press.

Once upon a time in America… newspapers provided a safe space for the exchange of ideas.  They kept the drama in check, maintained a rational balance, and never let their emotions get the better of them.

You need only read an editorial written by the Star-Ledger’s Julie O’Connor to know that those days are long gone.  Today’s media is all wrapped up in the moment and very, very emotional about it.  There is no civil exchange of ideas, just the daily line that the Establishment media is right… and the average working man and woman is wrong.  And if you disagree with them, they call you a “racist”. 

Once upon a time in America… newspapers didn’t tip their hand as to whose side they were on.  You couldn’t tell if they were leaning Democrat or Republican – and they tried not to give it away until their endorsement a few days before an election.  Now there’s no hiding who they support and what they are.  As the Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran wrote last year:  “Voters will be standing in the booth Tuesday, and our core mission is helping them decide which lever to pull.”

With a “core mission” like that, it sounds like the Star-Ledger needs to register itself as a political action committee.

Of course, there are still a few – very few – old style newspapers.  About the same time the Star-Ledger was publishing its “core mission”, the Atlantic City Press wrote: “Telling readers how to vote, however, is contrary to the mission of newspapers and other media, which is to extend the public’s experience and perspectives.  Newsgathering organizations give the public eyes, ears and memory beyond the capability of an individual.  People want them to be reliable and credible.  When the media start making judgments, their audiences wonder if they’re altering their content to support that judgment too.”

Once upon a time in America… colleges and universities were safe spaces for the exchange of ideas.  Freedom of thought and of speech was respected – even when disagreed with. 

Now look at them.  They threaten those they disagree with and – if they show up anyway – they get violent.  Who would have believed that students would one day get violent over the idea of being exposed to a different point of view?  The parallel to another time, and other students, is an exact one.  And that ended in book burning.

Recently a Sussex County Democrat wrote:   "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."  He went on to explain that Fox News should be banned because, in his view, it was “propaganda”.  The idea that this Democrat is aligned with an institution of higher learning – in this case the Sussex County Community College – is chilling. 

The safe space for civil discourse, the safe space for the exchange of ideas, is fast disappearing.  And when society’s “betters” behave irresponsibly – equating words with violence – what do we expect from the “unhinged” elements of society?  Who is teaching society how to hold a civil, rational discussion with someone with whom they disagree?

Instead, by equating words with violence, the editors, reporters, faculty, and administrators are telling society that they engage in violence (with words) and so it is okay for others to engage in violence (on their terms).

The problem with writers like Julie O’Connor, Tom Moran, Matt Arco, and Matt Friedman is their lack of humility and lack of intellectual curiosity.  Their moral certainty has closed the book on considering any viewpoint but their own.  They are good… everybody else is evil.  That makes for a pretty darn predictable writing style.  Pretty darn boring. 

There has been a lot of social change in America.  O’Connor-Moran-Arco-Freidman and the like are in a rush to make everyone conform to those changes.  They believe it to be a moral imperative that any diversity of opinion be labeled and then stamped out.  But they are acting out at a very dangerous time in the world. 

Democracy defeated the older models of totalitarianism because it produced both freedom and prosperity.  Totalitarianism failed to produce either freedom or prosperity.  Now there is a new model of totalitarianism – Chinese fascism – that is quite good at lifting people out of poverty and making them prosperous.  Prosperous… but not free. 

If we lose our safe spaces for civil, rational discussion.  If we lose the ability to exchange ideas.  If we convince our people that they must be “protected” from the freedoms in Bill of Rights – from being exposed to speech they disagree with, from the right to self-defense.  What will we be left with?  Will we embrace the Chinese model if it ensures prosperity and protects us from the “threat” of freedom?

We have been warned before about the inorganic imposition of new cultural ideas on society.  We have been warned about what happens when you are not patient, by that old-fashioned liberal, Mrs. Lillian Smith.  A Southern writer, she was a pioneer in the battle to end segregation. We recommend her book, The Winner Names the Age.  In it, you will find this passage she wrote 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.”

SCCC Trustees need to explain where they stand on the Bill of Rights

By Rubashov

Remember the attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo?  They published something that, in this case, militant Islamists found offensive.  The militants demanded they get their way and, when they didn’t, they killed 12 people.  The trustees at Charlie Hebdo stood up for free speech and against threats – and 12 people were martyred for it. 

At the very start of our American experiment, Benjamin Franklin said:  “You have a Republic, if you can keep it.”  The battles to preserve our Bill of Rights are fought in the pages of newspapers and on the Internet and on the lips of people, no less than on the battlefields of war.     

As in the case of Charlie Hebdo, some people have demanded that an image they deem “offensive” be removed and the “perpetrator” – in this case, it was merely “re-tweeted” – be punished.  Now they are equating what they call “hate speech” with acts of actual violence.

By the way, when is a crime of violence – any crime of violence – not hateful?

When is a sexual assault not hateful?  When is assault and battery a cheerful crime? When is murder done without malice?  When is the rape and murder of a child not hate?

Officially, the rape and the murder of a child is not an act of hate.  “It is about what was going on in your mind at the time of the crime,” they explain.  In other words, the crime is in the thought, not the act.  So now we have “thought crime”.  The actual rape and murder isn’t the bad part – what makes it really bad, what elevates it to a “hate crime,” is the thought.      

Go to the United States Justice Department’s compendium of “hate crimes” for 2001 and you will find that the attacks on September 11, 2001, are not counted as “hate crimes”.  Yeah, sure, those boys who flew those airliners into the Twin Towers did it out of benign affection for America.

The fact that the official compendium of “hate crimes” for 2001 is short 2,977 victims is a testament as to how deep the rot of political correctness has gone.

In politically correct parlance, hate is what they say it is. 

And who are “they”?  Anyone who sets themselves up as a “victim” or a “victims’ group” or a spokesperson for such.  In short… any old mob.

The Democrats asked Leslie Huhn, a supporter of Governor Phil Murphy and the former Chair of the Sussex County Democrat Committee, to dig up some dirt on Jerry Scanlan, the Chairman of the Sussex County Republicans and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sussex County Community College (SCCC).  Murphy was concerned that his illegal Sanctuary scheme was getting bad press across the state – with a big part of the pushback coming from Sussex County.

On July 22, 2019, Leslie Huhn started “following” the Twitter page operated by Jerry Scanlan.  Huhn was looking for something to be offended by and she found it.  A mob was organized to storm the SCCC Board of Trustees meeting scheduled for later that same week.  Among its members was an outspoken, self-identified “anarchist”.  Sweet.

Initially, Scanlan drew attention to the timing of the Democrats’ carefully planned oppo-attack (which it clearly was).  Then the Sussex County GOP stepped in and took control of the Twitter account from Scanlan.  Scanlan issued an apology and said that the re-tweets were part of long twitter “trains” which he had not paid close attention to, but took responsibility for in his apology. 

In more “liberal” times, that would have been enough.  But this is not how today’s Left works. 

The way it works today is that a mob is formed, the mob calls for someone’s head, that person is taken out and publicly lynched by his colleagues, the head is ceremoniously removed and thrown to the mob, the mob beats it about and tattoos the forehead with words like the ubiquitous “racist” or the fast-becoming “Islamophobe,” and then, having been sexually satiated, the mob departs… until the next time.

There is no time allowed for rational discussion, legal due process, or civil deliberation.  The mob wants its head and there are always cowards who will give it someone’s head.  The cowards’ wish is only that it not be them.

Instead of succumbing to the mob.  Instead of participating in an act of extra-judicial punishment.  Perhaps this is a teachable moment?  

The mob fears rational discussion.  Maybe it is simply beyond people whose vocabulary is limited to a very few epithets?  But the Board of Trustees of the Sussex County Community College should not place itself at the disposal of a mob.  As an institution of higher learning, it should use this moment to broaden the discussion.  It should use this moment to teach the Bill of Rights, which are our greatest cultural, political, and legal inheritance. 

This is no longer about Jerry Scanlan.  He admitted he was in error and he apologized.  The calls for further punishment (and for physical violence against him) are superfluous.  They will not make him more in error or give further weight to his admission that he was in error. 

Curiously, these calls for further punishment (and violence against his person), come at a time when the Democrat Party is on record as supporting the decriminalization of actual criminal activity, the end of mandatory sentencing for actual crimes of violence, and the extension of rights (such a voting) to actual violent criminals.  The Democrats don’t wish to make anyone safer.  They just want to police your thoughts so that nobody is allowed to oppose what they say.

The Trustees of the SCCC have an opportunity to bring reason and knowledge to the table.  Let the Bill of Rights be their guide.  The SCCC can use this opportunity to teach.  And isn’t that what an institution of learning should do anyway?   

The NJGOP is broadening its base under Steinhardt

In last week’s column comparing the state fiscal rescue plan put forward by Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-03) with the tax-cut plan backed by Republican Assembly Leader Jon Bramnick (R-21), we wrote :  “This situation might be different if New Jersey Republicans had taken the time to build a base of small dollar donors and activists.  But as fundraiser Ali Steinstra noted at the March NJGOP Leadership Summit, broad-based Republican fundraising can only be accomplished by appeals to the party’s conservative base.   

The GOP establishment in New Jersey is barely on speaking terms with its base, so the ground has not been prepared.  We have no equivalent to what the NJEA and the Norcross super PACs will throw against us, so pissing on a hornet’s nest probably isn’t a good idea.  At this moment in time, it is more likely to motivate the kind of turnout that will cost us another four or more seats in November.

Assembly Leader Bramnick has a sensible, Republican plan that addresses the problem of spending and taxation.  It avoids drawing fire from well-organized, well-funded interest groups.  Those on the ballot this year have a choice to make.”

Apparently we had failed to notice that under the leadership of Chairman Doug Steinhardt, the Republican State Committee (NJGOP) has been pioneering new methods of grassroots fundraising, including the use of “investor reports” to set goals and inspire donors.  The idea of investor reports was summed up by Chairman Steinhardt:  “You don’t invest in a business without a prospectus or something else that lets you know it’s a good investment. We created these with the same idea in mind. It’s been very successful.”

 Some highlights of the NJGOP’s success:
- There were just 68 active donors when Chairman Steinhardt took over.
- As of March 30th, there were more than 1800 active donors. 
- Of these 79% were small dollar donors (under $200).
- There has been a 29% increase in new donors in 2019.
- 2019 had the best first quarter fundraising since 2015 (accomplished without a Governor in office and after the set-backs of 2018).
- The NJGOP team of 3 full and 2 part time employees have logged 20,000 miles to grass roots events as of April 30 vs 25,000 in all of 2018.

Chairman Steinhardt noted that that the NJGOP was “reconnecting with Republicans and it’s showing.”  Kudos to the Chairman and his team.

Sussex video shows how easy it is to punk the media.

The day after the Andy Boden for Sheriff campaign attempted to shake down the local Republican Party, a doctored video was distributed purporting to show their opponent in a compromising #MeToo situation.  The Boden campaign had specifically referenced said video in its shake down attempt.  They claimed that the video had been obtained by off-duty corrections officers (men with badges and guns) in an unofficial political surveillance operation.

The doctored video was released to more than 150 media outlets, using a fake Facebook account, under the name of someone who does not exist.  The Boden campaign refused to comment to the media.  Candidate Boden likewise refused to comment.   

In published stories, the media admitted that it could not locate any person associated with the fake Facebook account.  48 hours after the doctored video was posted, the fake Facebook account disappeared.

Nevertheless, several media outlets not only published the doctored video, but published a long, rambling press release – issued on a fake Facebook account by an entity that does not exist – treating it as a factual statement.  And they did so despite the fact that they could not locate any actual person who would vouch for its authorship.

Despite clear evidence of alteration and it lack of provenance, these media outlets failed to test the technological accuracy of the doctored video.  Surprisingly, they behaved as if they operated sometime in the 1950’s – before technological changes, particularly in digital technology, had turned the old phrase “seeing is believing” on its head.  For instance, does anyone really believe that Tom Hanks is shaking the hand of President Kennedy in this video?

In September of last year, Bloomberg reported on the threat to authenticity posed by “deep fake video technology” and warned media outlets that “fake videos and audio keep getting better, faster and easier to make, increasing the mind-blowing technology’s potential for harm if put in the wrong hands.”  The story suggested that all video should be closely examined and vetted by technological professionals before being cited as a source. 

The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is clear: 

-       Ethical journalists take responsibility for their work.  Verify information before releasing it.

-       Remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy.

-       Identify sources clearly.  The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources.

-       Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information.

-       Never deliberately distort facts or context, including visual information.

-       Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort.  Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness.

-       Realize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves… Weigh the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information.

-       Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do.

-       Expose unethical conduct in journalism.

-       Abide by the same high standards they expect of others.

Those media that reported on this, handled it like a #MeToo situation.  In fact, there was no complaint by anyone claiming to be a victim.  Instead, the complaint came from the illicit surveillance operation.

Sources claim that the corrections officers who conducted the operation took what they had to the home of a former elected official/computer expert, and that he “cleaned it up” or “enhanced” it.  The backstory here is that the corrections officers are angry with the incumbent Sheriff because the county jail is being downsized, which has placed some of their jobs in jeopardy.  Off course, this downsizing is a consequence of Bail Reform passed as a ballot question in November 2014.  With a dwindling jail population, the Sheriff cannot justify maintaining high levels of staffing and the consequent cost to property taxpayers in Sussex County.  Estimates of the cost to refurbish the jail for other purposes run upwards of $60 million and the Freeholder Board is in no place to raise taxes or debt to accommodate such costs.  The doctored video is seen as a desperate move by a few, very disgruntled, corrections officers.

That said, the role played by the media outlets tricked into distributing this video – and their willingness to be punked by a fake Facebook account – is a matter for concern, especially as it will only get easier to fake videos in the future.  Perhaps this is a case for the Ethics Committee of the SPJ?  Stay tuned…

Pro-Sanctuary Democrats try to take down GOP Sheriff.

Earlier this year, within days of the Sussex County Freeholder Board signaling its intention to rebuff the Murphy administration’s plans to turn Sussex County into a Sanctuary State, the allies of Governor Murphy were out to replace Sheriff Mike Strada, the current conservative Republican, with someone who would block the Freeholders’ plans to place the Sanctuary State question on the ballot and ask the voters to opt out.

They found just the pawn they needed in Corrections Officer Andy Boden, who had been placed on leave after a psychological examination found him unfit for duty.  The Democrats knew that Sheriff Strada had run afoul of the Corrections Officers’ union – which endorsed Leftist Democrat Phil Murphy for Governor in 2017 – after cutting spending at the county jail.  The Sheriff’s cuts – amounting to nearly $2 million – helped to hold the line on county property taxes this year.

Sources claim that after reviewing some of Boden’s Facebook posts, his Democrat handlers suggested to him that he remove such crazy “selfies” as the one below, which shows the candidate on a bear rug, in a state of undress.  Hey, we try to be open-minded about such things, so we won’t comment further.

Earlier this month, after the Freeholder Board took the historic vote to place the Sanctuary State question on the November ballot – giving the Sheriff the power to ignore the Murphy administration’s directives – the Leftist Pro-Sanctuary forces really went nuts.  Andy Boden’s campaign attempted to shake down the Republican Party Chairman and targeted Sheriff Strada’s family with threats.

And just as they did with President Donald Trump, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Assemblyman Parker Space… they came up with false accusations designed not so much to win a political campaign as to cause personal damage to the Sheriff, his wife, and children.  And all because he opposes the Democrat Governor’s plans to make Sussex County join his pro-Sanctuary State, pro-illegal immigration, bandwagon.

Remember how these same forces tried to smear Donald Trump in 2016… Parker Space in 2017… and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.  Once again, conservatives need to fight back.

A.O.C. and Cory Booker would get A+’s from AFP

Did you catch AFP’s latest score card?  The one where every far-left Democrat in the state got rewarded with an “A” or “A+” because they supported AFP’s crazy ideas about going soft on crime in America? 

It’s official.  Americans for Prosperity has left the building.  AFP has walked away from American conservatism and has become a hodgepodge of fashion statements pumped out of the bunghole of Koch Petroleum. 

Relentlessly anti-working man/woman and anti-Trump, AFP now seeks to join the most far-left Democrat Socialists to reward criminal behavior, empower convicts at the ballot box, and roll back the clock on the Reagan-era tough-on-crime prescriptions that have driven down the crime rate across America.  AFP wants to ignore the facts, when the facts are clear:

AFP wants to screw up what’s worked and turn that ship around.  In a few years or so, we can all look forward to a return to the crime rates of the past that AFP now appears to forget.  Once upon a time, before Rudy Giuliani, when they made movies like “Death Wish” to dramatize the terror that stalked American streets. 

Strap yourself in boys and girls… for the Great Re-Learning!

The people who run Koch Petroleum operate AFP as a lobbying unit of their globalist business empire.  Once-upon-a-time the Koch operation included the Libertarian Party.  One of the Koch brothers even ran for Vice President – against the ticket of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush – on a platform that included the legalization of all forms of drug use and prostitution, as well as removing the legal protections for children, making them no different from consenting adults. 

The Kochs tried to take over the Republican Party… to remake it in their own image.  Failing that, they opposed the candidacy of President Donald Trump and continue to do so.  Now they are doing what so many “woke” corporations have done, adopting a fashion-statement issue in order to curry favor with the liberal establishment, to shield their corporate excesses from scrutiny.  They are hoping that people see the “good” they are doing in promoting a pro-criminal agenda and lay-off them when their petroleum centered business gets itself in trouble again.

So now you know why so many far-left Democrat Socialists have picked-up scores of “A” and “A+” from Americans for Prosperity’s latest score card.

Next week in Trenton: Marijuana and other shady stuff

Legalizing marijuana – including so-called “edibles” in the shapes of chocolate bars, peanut butter cups, cookies, and candies (in other words, attractive to young children) – is number one on the agenda of some Trenton Democrats.  The Senate Democrat leadership is pushing marijuana – in the midst of an opioid epidemic, no less – but an opposition of principled Democrats and Republicans, led by Senator Ron Rice (D-Newark) has formed and they are pushing back. 

Senator Rice, who was on the front lines defending America as a Marine in Vietnam and defending innocents as a police officer on the streets of Newark, now he has taken the point again and this victory, when it comes, will have been gained by his courage and leadership.  God bless Senator Ron Rice.

Now a new study supports Senator Rice and the bi-partisan coalition that has formed around him.  The study is by the leading psychiatric journal of the English-speaking world, The Lancet Psychiatry, a renowned peer-reviewed journal that is part of The Lancet, the world's most important medical journal.  You can access the study here:

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(19)30048-3/fulltext

Here's the takeaway…

Daily cannabis use was associated with increased odds of psychotic disorder compared with never users (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3·2, 95% CI 2·2–4·1), increasing to nearly five-times increased odds for daily use of high-potency types of cannabis (4·8, 2·5–6·3).  

It's worth noting that what the authors call "high-potency cannabis" is flower marijuana (aka buds) with more than 10% THC. Most cannabis sold in legal U.S. dispensaries is about 20-25% THC. In other words, by American standards, the cutoff was actually quite low. Using that daily led to a fivefold increase in the risk of psychosis.

The other takeaway…

If high-potency cannabis were no longer available, 12% of cases of first-episode psychosis could be prevented... rising to 30% in London.

In other words, marijuana appears to be producing a measurable increase in the number of psychosis cases in Europe - 1/3 of all cases in London (where use patterns are most similar to the United States) are due to cannabis use. If that's correct, than legalization and the increased use it produces is even more of a public health disaster than we thought.

Maybe the most important comment on the study came from Dr. Adrian James, who is the Registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British equivalent of the American Psychiatric Association:

“This is a good quality study and the results need to be taken seriously. Cannabis carries severe health risks and users have a higher chance of developing psychosis."

www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-daily-cannabis-use-potency-and-psychosis/

The Assembly will have a voting session on Monday, March 25, 2019.  Legalizing marijuana – including child-unfriendly “edibles” – is top on the agenda.  There will be individual Democrat and Republican caucus meetings at 11:00 AM.  The Assembly voting session will begin at 1:00 PM.  Citizens are urged to attend and observe this session.  The Senate is meeting the same day.  We will send out the Senate schedule over the weekend.  Here is the legislation up for consideration by the Assembly:

Hugin should think before hurting the GOP any further

Bob Hugin’s campaign for the United States Senate was a disaster.  Everyone associated with it should be embarrassed, should wear the scarlet letter “L” as an external sign of their shame and contrition.

But there will be no contrition because these are people too proud to admit that their “vision” was flawed, that they outspent an extraordinarily flawed incumbent three to one and still lost badly.  Hugin lost to Bob Menendez, a Democrat incumbent so flawed that one in three Democrat primary voters rejected him.

What’s worse is that the Hugin campaign was deliberately designed to suppress traditional Republican turnout while enormous amounts were spent to create a surge amongst “soft” Democrats and Democrat leaners who had soured on Menendez.  The result of this strategy is best summed up when veterans of the Hugin campaign brag that they “won six Congressional districts.” Too bad that in five of those six districts, the Republican candidate for Congress lost, including two incumbents.  

As recently as 2016, all six of those districts had been represented by a Republican.  Now, just one remains.

Writing in the New Jersey Globe today, David Wildstein notes the re-emergence of Bob Hugin, addressing a meeting of Mercer County Republicans, placing his stamp of approval on the state’s first transgender candidate for the Legislature.  Here we go again. Let’s not learn the lesson that $40 million wasn’t enough to convince voters that Republicans are more reliable social liberals than Democrats, instead… try, try again.

The candidate Hugin spoke on behalf of is Jennifer Williams.  She is running for Assembly in the 15th Legislative District, a district that Republicans have almost no chance of picking up in 2019.  But because Jennifer Williams is the first transgendered candidate of either party to run for the Legislature, she will become a focal point of the 2019 campaign cycle.  Williams worked on Hugin’s campaign, so perhaps Hugin will provide her with the resources to make her campaign even more of a focal point.

The trouble is, 2019 will be a low turnout election, and Republicans are not fighting a statewide campaign but instead, are fighting to hold on to a few remaining Republican enclaves.  Is this the time to be highlighting “a different kind of Republican” or is it time to drag everyone who is likely to vote Republican to the polls? And as for non-traditional Republican voters, are these more likely to be LGBTQ voters or poor working class Roman Catholics?  Yes, there are choices to be made and making one choice often negates the other. So which is the surer bet?

Unfortunately, from all the hype, all we know about Jennifer Williams is that she is what some call a “transwoman”.  That is likely to be of little use in motivating traditional Republican turnout and – in the era of Donald Trump – unlikely to motivate enough LGBTQ voters to make up for what you lose.  The hoopla resulting from this “first” will most certainly bleed beyond the borders of the 15th District, turning off and giving up as it goes.  So that Republicans could neither gain the 15th or the boost necessary to save endangered seats.

For the good of her party, Jennifer Williams should play down the significance of her “gender” and instead focus on a message that aggressively defines the Trenton Democrats as what they are.  But can Williams even use the term, “Trenton Democrats”, as a negative in Legislative District 15? Williams claims to be a “conservative”, well this would be the time for her to craft a message that illustrates what that means.

Candidate Williams has secured the endorsement of the GOP establishment in Mercer and Hunterdon Counties.  We suspect that there will not be much competition for such a thankless task. We wish her well but hope that she does not become the “face” of this year’s Republican legislative campaign in New Jersey, and we hope Bob Hugin doesn’t make it his mission to make it so.

The NJ model of state government: High taxes and lousy services.

If you ever wondered why it feels like you pay so much and get so little back… that’s by design.  Welcome to the Blue State Model of government, as practiced by Governor Phil “the rapist coddler” Murphy and his Democrats.

As the attached article by Steven Malanga, senior editor of City Journal and the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, makes clear – it’s not just high taxes, it’s lousy services too:

Last April, shortly after New Jersey governor Phil Murphy proposed a budget with hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes, his Texas counterpart, Greg Abbott, published an op-ed in the Garden State’s largest newspaper, inviting businesses and residents to consider moving south. “I’d like to throw a lifeline to businesses and families throughout New Jersey who are looking for greater economic opportunity and relief from high taxes. Come to Texas and be a part of our economic success story,” wrote Abbott. “Combine our low taxes and reasonable regulatory environment with our access to global markets and our robust infrastructure, and it’s easy to see why the Texas economy continues to flourish.”

Shortly afterward, Murphy responded in the Dallas Morning News, explaining that his budget sought to move Jersey in a “stronger and fairer” direction, after years of putting “the wealthy and big corporations ahead of ordinary people.” He didn’t explain how his state—with the nation’s third-highest corporate income tax and its worst business climate—had put “corporations ahead” of ordinary people. Nor did Murphy clarify how Jersey, where the top 1 percent of households pays 38 percent of the income taxes, favored “the wealthy.” Instead, the governor touted what he considered Jersey’s strengths—among them, lots of “investment” in things like education—as a reason for firms and residents to stay put.

Murphy’s stance was typical of officials in high-tax states, who’ve long argued that businesses and families care about more than just taxes. They also want quality government service, on this view—and are willing to pay extra for it. In late 2017, when the Trump administration proposed nixing the federal exemption for state and local taxes, defenders of the policy, mostly from high-tax Democratic states, said that ending it would hurt them by making local taxes more expensive to residents.

But this decades-old argument about the payoff from high taxes is increasingly at odds with reality. In polls asking whether residents and businesses want to leave a state, the most discontented respondents come from heavily Democratic and high-tax states. Many who say that they plan to leave say that taxes are indeed a factor. But lurking in the data are other reasons, including mounting discontent with what residents actually get for their tax dollars. Independent studies show that on the core tasks that people think government should do—building roads and bridges, running airports and transit systems, or otherwise spending tax dollars well—high-tax states rank low, despite enormous financial resources. States that tax a lot also tend to regulate heavily, and that has emerged as another underlying cost that this high-tax, high-spending model imposes on citizens and businesses. Of course, not all Democratic-leaning states are high-tax, heavily regulated environments, and not all Republican-leaning states deliver great services at low prices. But, Republican or Democratic, low-tax states are less likely to overcharge residents for government failure because they don’t automatically view government as the answer to public problems.

“In New Jersey, we are moving in a new direction,” Murphy wrote in his Dallas Morning News piece. An unfamiliar reader might assume that the state was catching up after years of low taxes and underinvestment. But Jersey has been one of the nation’s most heavily taxed states for decades—and its financial woes date back more than 20 years. The question that Murphy and other big-government advocates ignore: What happened to all the money?

Continue reading… https://www.city-journal.org/democrat-states-midterms?sfns=mo

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.

Save Jersey’s Matt Rooney: It’s time to re-engage on social issues

Matt Rooney, editor of the conservative political blog Save Jersey went on the record yesterday and issued a strong argument for New Jersey Republicans to re-engage on social issues.  Rooney didn’t equivocate:

If I’ve heard it once, Save Jerseyans, I’ve heard it a 1,000-times:

Republicans can’t win in blue (or even purple territory) running as “social” conservatives.

It’s not just Republicans who’ve surrendered the so-called “culture wars” to the insurgent Left. The West’s original conservative institution — the Catholic Church (of which I am a member, albeit a disgruntled one) — can’t even muster the institutional strength to excommunicate New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Catholic-in-name-only, for enthusiastically legalizing abortion up until the moment of birth. That’s not a late term abortion, folks; it’s early murder.

Infanticide. And they think TRUMP is the Nazi?!? Excuse me?

By the way: polling shows the American public overwhelmingly in opposition to the NY law. Meanwhile, Catholics actually commemorate the feast of Holy Innocents every December 28th recalling the massacre of Jewish children by King Herod. It’s going to feel like a rather hallow gesture next year in light of the current leadership’s latest moral failure.

The Church leadership in America and Europe isn’t just cowardly. That’s true to a degree but an over-simplified judgment all the same. Bishops made the same poor political calculation as Republican politicians to their great detriment: “we can’t win young, educated women in blue states unless we stick 100% to economics and taxes.”  

How’s that working out?

I wrote about this phenomenon last January (2018) after Phil Murphy’s landslide here in New Jersey but before the midterm massacre. My conclusion (which is self-evident from the latest results): Republicans are losing suburban voters who could care less about high taxes. They should care! Democrats are unambiguously worse for the economy. Consider, for example, how the U.S. as a whole just created 300k+ jobs under President Trump in the same month that New Jersey LOST thousands of jobs under Phil Murphy. Our worst-in-America property taxes are the stuff of legend. Now New Jersey is poised to tax rain. RAIN! Yet educated suburbanites in Burlington, Somerset, Morris and Bergen counties are trending hard-left.

Most Leftist voters don’t mind high taxes. They’re willing to PAY for their values.

Which values, you ask? Hard to say. A better question is what motivates the new Left, or what they’re against: kids in cages, affronts to “reproductive rights,” and politically incorrect tweets.

Adjudicating who gets to pee in which bathroom (with which set of anatomy) is a bigger priority for these voters than questions of war, peace and prosperity.

Said another way, the Democrats are their “moral” party. Much the same as Nixon successfully harnessed the sentiments of the “silent majority” in ’68.

So yeah, doubling-down on a economics-only “reasonableness” argument will continue to fall on deaf ears. We know this. The proof is in the pudding.

If the Right ever wants to compete with the Left again in places like New Jersey which are at the tipping point of becoming one-party states like California, Republicans and their natural allies need to immediately abandon debunked “conventional wisdom” and reengage the culture wars with renewed energy.

Learn from past mistakes, speak from the heart, and push back HARD against the Left’s vile excesses and overreaches.

Yes, they’re overreaching. Believe it and have confidence in it. I just saw a mainstream poll where roughly 80% of Americans opposed late term abortions akin to what’s happening up north. As a young-ish attorney living in a blue county (Camden), I know plenty of intelligent, moderate, under 40 professional women who  hate Donald Trump, and typically vote for Democrats, but who also aren’t exactly enamored with the Democrats. We can find common ground on the fiscal issues as-is, yet we can’t get them through the door without first crafting and delivering a coherent, compelling argument concerning why we deserve their support on the “other” issues.

They want to know we CARE about people as much as mathematics.

You may find that worldview frustrating, but the problem is also nothing new. Any great leader in the vanguard of a popular movement knows the head and the heart require equal treatment in the public discourse.

The good news? I’ve talked to countless educated younger voters on matters ranging from the NY abortion law to New Jersey’s wacky gender neutral birth certificate law.

Guess what? They think the Left’s positions on these issues are BONKERS and, in the case of the NY law, utterly revolting.

There are other topics, too, like school choice, illegal alien driver’s licenses, free college tuition for illegals, chemical treatments to delay puberty in suspected transgender children, the rights of disabled Americans and the sexualization of school textbooks where Republicans can and should reclaim some ground with these voters in battleground jurisdictions.

But Gretzky was right: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Fire away, GOP, or forever hold your peace in Blue America.

MATT ROONEY is a practicing New Jersey attorney, regular panelist on Chasing News with Bill Spadea, and the founder and blogger-in-chief of Save Jersey.  You can check out his blog here: https://savejersey.com/

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.

Despite the dangers, many NJ political leaders intend to cash in on Pot.

Former Governor Jim Florio is leading the charge on legalizing the sale of marijuana “edibles” – THC laced chocolate, peanut butter cups, and cookies – that could easily get into the hands of children and are impossible to monitor by police.  He is the lead partner of a politically-connected law firm whose reach extends throughout the state and as deep as local governments.  He also controls a powerful lobbying operation.  But Florio isn’t the only politician preparing to cash in on the next opioid epidemic.  Longtime politicos around the state – both Democrats and Republicans – are making arrangements to become pot barons and to use their political muscle to make it happen.

An enormous, money-infused public relations operation has convinced many average citizens that pot is safe.  But is it?

Before they take their next vote, we urge legislators and average voters alike to read an eye-opening report from an award-winning author and former New York Times reporter.  It reveals the link between teenage marijuana use and mental illness, and a hidden epidemic of violence caused by the drug—facts the media have ignored as the United States rushes to legalize pot.

Recreational marijuana is now legal in nine states.  A majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal for medical use.  Venture capitalist, speculators, entrepreneurs, and investors argue that pot can help everyone from veterans to cancer sufferers.

But legalization has been built on myths– that marijuana arrests fill prisons; that most doctors want to use cannabis as medicine; that it can somehow stem the opiate epidemic; that it is not just harmless but beneficial for mental health. In this meticulously reported book, Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter, explodes those myths:

• Almost no one is in prison for marijuana;

• A tiny fraction of doctors write most authorizations for medical marijuana, mostly for people who have already used;

• Marijuana use is linked to opiate and cocaine use. Since 2008, the US and Canada have seen soaring marijuana use and an opiate epidemic. Britain has falling marijuana use and no epidemic;

• Most of all, THC—the chemical in marijuana responsible for the drug’s high—can cause psychotic episodes. After decades of studies, scientists no longer seriously debate if marijuana causes psychosis.

Psychosis brings violence, and cannabis-linked violence is spreading. In the four states that first legalized (in 2014-15), there have been sharp increases in murders and aggravated assaults since legalization.  Combined, the four states saw a 35 percent increase in murders and a 25 percent increase in assaults – far outpacing national statistics when adjusted for changes in population.  In Uruguay, which allowed retail sales in July 2017, murders have soared.

Berenson’s reporting ranges from the London institute that is home to the scientists who helped prove the cannabis-psychosis link to the Colorado prison where a man now serves a thirty-year sentence after eating a THC-laced candy bar and killing his wife. He sticks to the facts, and they are devastating.

With America already gripped by one drug epidemic – the pharmaceutical industry induced opioid epidemic – this book should make legislators and average voters think and perhaps reconsider whether marijuana use is worth the risk.  But  money does talk…

Meanwhile, get a copy of the book.  Read it for yourself and start pushing back on the Madison Avenue deluge of b.s. from the pot barons and their lobbyists…

www.amazon.com/Tell-Your-Children-Marijuana-Violence/dp/1982103663