Why did Nick DeGregorio refuse to take questions from conservative leaders?
/By Rubashov
Some people seem to have been talked into thinking they’re entitled. That they don’t need to answer questions because they have the inside track.
Enter Nick DeGregorio. Nick is a young man in a hurry to make his mark in the world. There’s nothing wrong with this. Personal ambition is a necessary feature to political office.
But personal ambition is a poor reason for holding office. Simply “getting ahead” or “moving up the ladder” is an empty motion. A candidate needs to ask himself – and needs to be asked – to define his intentions. Why do you want to hold office and what will you do with it if you get there?
Nick got involved in politics as an acolyte of fellow Marine, Bob Hugin. Nick’s campaign is using the same punchline Hugin used in his failed 2018 bid for the United States Senate: Vote for me, I’m a Marine. It’s easy to see why, they both hired the same political insider to guide them.
Asking for someone’s vote based on your military service isn’t a bad approach, just a shallow one. Hey, running for Congress isn’t the same as running for Post Commander of the local VFW. There’s a bit more to it than your method of service. And using this approach, shouldn’t we all be voting for Mikie Sherrill?
Nick has every right to run, but as we learned from Bob Hugin’s 2018 campaign, being a Marine doesn’t make you a conservative. Hugin launched his campaign by trashing much of what traditional conservatives hold dear (before reminding them that he was, indeed, a Marine).
In contrast, Nick is taking the silent approach. On his campaign website, we are treated to many paragraphs about what he did in the military, but there’s nothing there about what he’d do in Congress. No issues page. No policies.
In fairness, Nick does notice some of the problems facing voters today. His website devotes a single paragraph to those details:
“Taxes are out of control. Businesses and jobs are fleeing, taking our neighbors with them. Our classrooms—once safe places for our children to learn to think for themselves—are now devolving into testing grounds for radical political ideology. And behind it all are the career politicians and insiders, who are too busy serving themselves in Washington to care about the mess they have created for the rest of us here at home.”
No ideas or solutions. No platform or policy page on his campaign website.
Nick sounds the way he does because behind Nick are those career political “insiders” that his website claims “are too busy serving themselves… to care about the mess they have created for the rest of us.” Nick’s campaign has identified the problem… and the problem is Nick’s campaign.
But Nick shouldn’t be singled out. His campaign is not unique. Most political campaigns today begin by hiring a “career insider” to fashion prose about how other “career insiders” represent a threat to the way of life of average voters. And we’re not arguing they don’t, we’re just pointing out the hypocrisy of the exercise.
There are some “career insiders” who appreciate policy and some who don’t. Those who don’t generally push the “I’m just here to win” mantra. That’s because policy is hard work. Specifically, taking a policy and turning it into a winning message is hard work. Much easier to maintain a policy-free-zone and tell voters what they want to hear, spinning and zipping until you cross the finish line. But that is no way to build a party. A party is constructed of planks and platforms – which is just another way of saying issues and policies.
And so, it was notable when Nick DeGregorio turned down an invitation to share his views with a panel of statewide conservative leaders that included Mayor Steve Lonegan; Marie Tasy (New Jersey Right to Life); Alex Roubian (2nd Amendment Society); Rev. Greg Quinlan (Center for Garden State Families); John Robert Carman (NJ Constitutional Republicans); and Josh Aikens (AriseNJ). Every other candidate for the GOP nomination in the 5th District participated, as did every candidate in the neighboring 7th District – including elected officials like Senator Tom Kean Jr. and Assemblyman Erik Peterson. Perhaps Nick hasn’t fully formed views on issues like taxation and abortion and the Second Amendment? More likely, it’s because the “career insider” running Nick’s campaign wants to get though the primary using little more than the word “Marine” so that he can define Nick in a way that will appeal to some mythological entity known as the “soft Democrat”.
Of course, this is an act of deception. It is the opposite of leadership.
It takes personal courage to serve in wartime. It takes moral courage to adopt policy positions and believe in them enough to want to sell them. And just as personal courage moves the ball forward in war, moral courage moves us forward as a nation.
Ronald Reagan is mentioned on Nick’s campaign website: “Together, we can – and will – win the battle of ideas and ensure, as President Reagan said, that America remains a shining city upon a hill for generations to come.” How can one not mention ideas when discussing Ronald Reagan? Even on a website without ideas.
Ronald Reagan was no Marine. But Ronald Reagan had ideas and convictions that he fought for. He had the moral courage it took to move America forward. No “career insider” ever got him to hide his light under a basket. And forget wimpy appeals to “soft” Democrats – Reagan converted a generation of Reagan Democrats to his way of thinking. He won and moved the policy ball forward. We need more candidates with Reagan's kind of courage.
President Reagan on how to deliver a message.
