Has the NJGOP gone “Toxic”?

Jersey Conservative is now read by thought leaders in key 2024 primary states.

By Rubashov

A telephoned threat to a local Republican leader has folks wondering.
 
The NJGOP under Chairman Bob Hugin employs a stable of legacy consultants and operatives. These folks are employed regardless of merit. Whether they win or lose doesn’t matter. And apparently, they are immune from criticism for even the most bizarre behavior.
 
On July 10th, correspondence was circulated to GOP leaders as well as the Trenton-based blogs. It brought to their attention the story of a local Republican municipal chairman who was hosting a fundraiser for Republican legislative candidates at his family restaurant.  
 
The local Republicans involved with the event reached out to the NJGOP to “coordinate efforts with the NJGOP to hold a vote-by-mail training session at the event.” As the event approached they were anxious to receive a reply.
 
Eventually, the owner of the family restaurant – the Republican municipal chairman hosting the event – did receive a telephone call. The call was made on behalf of the NJGOP but came from an operative affiliated with political consultant Chris Russell and the Ciattarelli for Governor campaign.
 
The caller left a recorded message for the restaurant owner/ local Republican municipal chairman.  We have confirmed with the relevant parties that the call is genuine, and that the caller has admitted to leaving the message. 

Harsh. 

Will the County Lines prevail? (and keep the GOP a less-diverse party)

By Rubashov

The GOP establishment in New Jersey likes to talk about “diversity” but in reality their idea of diversity is a package of the same cultural and economic attitudes wrapped in a different skin color or gender or sexuality. The same tired old wine, but in new bottles.

Real diversity isn’t based on surface differences but on different perspectives -- especially on economic realities. A Trenton lobbyist with dark skin isn’t very different from one with light skin. A female corporate executive is much the same as her male counterpoint or, for that matter, a transgendered corporate executive.

In a notable exchange during the last gubernatorial campaign, Jack Ciattarelli and Phil Murphy went back and forth about the goings on at their respective kitchen tables – forgetting that their kitchen tables have more in common with each other than they do with the average kitchen table in New Jersey.

In its by-laws, the NJGOP recognizes the perspectives of just a handful of groupings, noting that the following “may be invited upon invitation of the State Committee and participate in discussions, but shall not have the right to vote… the President of the New Jersey Federation of Republican Women, Inc.; the Chairman of the Finance Committee; the Chairman of the Black Republicans; the Chairman of the Republican Hispanic Assembly; the Chairman of the Republican Heritage Groups; Chairman of the College Republicans; Chairman of the Teen-Age Republicans; Chairman of the Senior Republicans; State Chairman of the Republican Lawyers Association of New Jersey; Chairman of the New Jersey Republican Asian Assembly.”

Designations by gender, race, ethnicity, and age aside; the chairmen representing these individual groupings could all share the same economic perspective – the same “kitchen table” if you will – shared by Jack and Phil. The only employment designation is that of lawyers – hardly representative of an average perspective anywhere in the world.

Nationally, there is a huge populist upheaval within the electorate, with groups detaching from former loyalties and up for grabs. Is the NJGOP ready to knock on their doors and sit down with them to share the vantage from their kitchen tables?

Some of the NJGOP’s designations just don’t make sense. A “Republican Asian Assembly” makes about as much sense as a Western Hemisphere Assembly would for a political party in India – lumping in U.S. expats with those of Brazil, Chile, Haiti, and Canada. Try figuring out what that “kitchen table’ would look like?

Blue-collar trade union workers have an economic perspective the NJGOP should consider with the same importance they give to lawyers. Working mothers have a unique economic perspective (and there are a lot of them, so if you are going to pander…). Parents of school children have an education policy perspective that fueled last year’s upsets in Virginia. Those concerned with medical freedom have a health and civil rights policy perspective. Wouldn’t it be more practical for the NJGOP to have standing organizations to represent groups that are motivated by these issues of the day?

Missing from the current debate over firearms is the divide by economic class – with wealthy suburbanites wanting to get rid of something they don’t need for personal protection because their communities are safe and well-policed. But if you are in a less than safe neighborhood, with rising violent crime and a demoralized police force, perhaps partially “defunded”, with a police response time that would ensure your untimely death if it came to it, then the perspective from your kitchen table might be a bit different. Wouldn’t it serve the NJGOP to have them represented as a group that could “participate in discussions”?

The county party “line” gets in the way of this. The “line” is designed to replicate what exists. Illegal everywhere else in the world, in New Jersey it is a failsafe to ensure permanent establishment hegemony. It prevents experimentation and diversity. It ultimately makes for a grey, dull, boring, and out-of-touch party. Of course, we could be proven wrong… and we are hoping to be proven wrong.

NJ Spotlight News reports on the Lawsuit against the Party Line.

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.”

Pro-abortion Bob Hugin takes sides in CD05. NJGOP backs DeGregorio.

By Rubashov

The NJGOP of Chairman Bob Hugin stepped into the GOP congressional primary in CD05 today. NJGOP executive director Tom Szymanski used the venue of Fox News no less to throw the NJGOP’s weight behind unfounded allegations that 2020 Republican nominee Frank Pallotta is the beneficiary of mailings from the campaign of Democrat Congressman Josh Gottheimer that attack Pallotta.

In a statement to Fox News, the NJGOP executive director said:

“The fact that Josh Gottheimer feels the need to spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, to try putting his thumb on the scale of the opposing party’s primary speaks volumes about how desperate he is given his track record of loyally supporting Joe Biden’s anti-energy and inflationary spending policies… No amount of meddling or money spent will save Gottheimer from the voters this November.”

Pallotta’s opponent in the GOP primary – newcomer Nick DeGregorio – has been pushing a line that suggests collusion between Republican Pallotta and Democrat Gottheimer but has offered no evidence.

Nick DeGregorio and NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin share the same consultant, Checkmate Strategies’ Chris Russell. Tom Szymanski managed a congressional race in New York for Checkmate and Russell.

Both DeGregorio and Hugin come from the Pro-abortion wing of the Republican Party.

Hugin and DeGregorio share political consultants. The NJGOP's Szymanski worked for the same consultant.

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

By Rubashov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ghouls - "Kill Doll"

CD: Stand Alone (2007)

Born of a wolf and a mortal bitch in heat

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

I hunt at night and humans are my prey

You silly humans, my little kill dolls!

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

I prey on fear and violence is my feed

Bloodlust rules my every action now

Through my violence, you are a kill doll!

Man by day!

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

Beast by night!

You'll push too far and no one will survive

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

Cause by day I go from lycanthrope to man

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

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

I have my instinct that were bred into my blood

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

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

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

Man by day!

Beast by night!

You call society a civilized place

But every human hides fear behind their face

Fear of violence or fear of the unknown

Fear to make each man a kill doll!

I may be savage and embittered by rage

But still I'm better than any human raised

At least with me what you see is what you get

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

Man by day!

Beast by night!

Man by day!

Beast by night!

Man by day!

Beast by night!

National Republicans argue that CRT makes places like NJ winnable

By Rubashov

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

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

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

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

Will it be 1980 all over again?

Reagan’s 11th Commandment and the hypocrisy of the political class

By Steve Lonegan

A group of political grifters (such as Anthony Scaramucci and George Conway) and career liberals (including Bill Weld and Christine Todd Whitman) put out a letter condemning the RNC for censuring two GOP members of the congressional commission investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Two former New Jersey Congressmen (Rodney Frelinghuysen and Leonard Lance) signed that letter. Their letter ignores the fact that the January 6th riot capped off a year of political riots and violence, which kicked-off a wave of street crime that continues to this day.

Instead of looking at the totality of what happened in America and figuring out why it happened, the Democrat-controlled commission and its Republican cheerleaders want to narrow their focus for political purposes. They want to ignore the hundreds of incidents that happened, that killed and harmed many, and cost billions – to focus on just one. The reasons are transparently political and most fair-minded people know this.

The letter attacking the RNC contains this piece of vile hypocrisy: “There can be no justifying the horrific attack that day, and we condemn the Committee for excusing the actions of men and women who battered police officers, ransacked our nation’s capital…”

Didn’t we watch countless members of the media and the political class justify a year of politically inspired arson and violence visited on America’s cities during 2020? Didn’t we hear the excuses as the police were denounced, attacked, battered, and murdered? How many businesses, places of employment, were ransacked and burnt to the ground?

To top it off, didn’t a chamber of the New Jersey Legislature pass a resolution praising the organization behind those riots and the torching of America’s cities? What did Congressmen Frelinghuysen and Lance do then? Did they send a letter condemning the Legislature for being apologists for violence and anti-police hatred? No, they sat on their hands – in silent consent.

It’s so predictable but always amusing when a liberal Republican pulls out the mythological 11th commandment of Ronald Reagan. It’s the only time liberal Republicans reference the Great Communicator and conservative icon. New Jersey’s liberal NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin pulled this maneuver out of mothballs to deflect from his vote against the National Republican Party’s resolution censuring of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for failing to investigate the year of political violence that struck America’s cities, and instead shilling for the Democrat Party in their abuse of prosecutorial power for political gain.

Hugin used the often-misplaced 11th commandment attribution as an excuse for initially dodging questions on how he voted on the censure. In fact, it was not Ronald Reagan’s at all. It was attributed by Reagan to California Republican State Chairman Gaylord Parkinson. A Wikipedia entry notes:

The goal was to prevent a repetition of the liberal Republican assault on Barry Goldwater, attacks which contributed to Goldwater's defeat in the 1964 presidential election. East Coast Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller labeled Goldwater an "extremist" for his conservative positions and declared him unfit to hold office. Fellow Republican candidate for Governor George Christopher and California's liberal Republicans were leveling similar attacks on Reagan. Hoping to prevent a split in the Republican Party, Parkinson used the phrase as common ground. Party liberals eventually followed Parkinson's advice.

Christopher would lose to Reagan in the Republican primary, and Reagan would go on to defeat incumbent Governor Pat Brown, the father of future California Governor Jerry Brown.

Reagan followed this "commandment" during the first five primaries during the 1976 Republican primary against incumbent Gerald Ford, all of which he lost. He abandoned this approach in the North Carolina Primary and beat Ford 52–46, regaining momentum and winning a majority of delegates chosen after that date.

In 1976, after losing the New Hampshire primary and trailing Gerald Ford, the Reagan campaign moved to North Carolina. It was in NC that Reagan met with Senator Jesse Helms and my good friend and mentor Arthur Finkelstein, may they rest in peace. Reagan had been nice to Ford up to that point, but Helms and Arthur told him it was time to go on the attack. Ronald Reagan took this advice, abandoning any 11th Commandment nonsense and ripping apart Ford for the selling the Panama Canal. Reagan won North Carolina and would go on to win Texas (with 100 delegates), shocking the liberal Republican establishment. It was too late in the primary for Reagan to recover from his earlier losses but he became a force that would change the face of the Republican Party, despite the best efforts of the liberal wing of the party to stop him.

At the 1976 convention the nomination went to Gerald Ford who later that night invited Ronald Reagan to speak. Reagan delivered one of the greatest speeches in convention history. I believe that on that evening many delegates on the floor realized they had nominated the wrong guy.

Apparently, the youngsters who work for Bob Hugin are not aware of the history behind the so-called 11th Commandment. Since Reagan’s presidency the tables have turned, and the 11th Commandment has been more often used by liberal Republicans who don’t want to be held accountable for their actions.

The actions of the NJGOP over the last month should be a wake-up call for conservatives of all stripes to face the obvious fact: The liberal Rockefeller wing is back and Bob Hugin is its leader. Hugin is hostile to the views of the vast majority of registered Republican voters in this state. And if you don’t believe me, do a poll.

- Mayor Steve Lonegan is the Father of the Conservative Movement in New Jersey.

Ronald Reagan addresses the Republican National Convention in 1976. Talks platform and freedom and unity, outreach, & victory.

It is worth watching.

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

George Orwell

Is the NJGOP’s Bob Hugin a “Reagan Republican”?

By Rubashov

A few hours after a Jersey Conservative column by Steve Lonegan asked the question, NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin confirmed he had opposed an effort by supporters of former President Donald Trump to pass a motion censuring the efforts of two GOP congress members serving on the commission investigating the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. Hugin had dodged answering for several days, until Lonegan, the Father of the Conservative Movement in New Jersey, posed the question in these pages on Monday afternoon.

In explaining his opposition, Hugin issued a statement that was quoted yesterday in the New Jersey Globe: “As a Ronald Reagan Republican who believes in his 11th Commandment, I believe we should be laser focused on beating Democrats and holding Joe Biden accountable, and so I voted against the resolution.”

Hugin continued: “That being said, while I believe those who broke the law on January 6th should be held accountable, the Commission set up by Pelosi does no such thing because it is being weaponized as a partisan, political tool and a sham attempt to distract from the many abysmal failures of Joe Biden and the Democrats.”

In other words, Hugin opposes an effort by Pro-Trump Republicans to criticize Anti-Trump Republicans who are criticizing Pro-Trump Republicans. Hugin believes the vehicle for this criticism is a partisan “tool” and a Democrat “sham”, but he wants to refrain from criticizing the Republicans involved in it. Why? Hugin claims he is doing this because he doesn’t want to criticize other Republicans.

That is a rather convoluted statement dreamed up by the staff at the NJGOP. In contrast, National Committeeman Bill Palatucci was direct in his opposition to the motion to censure: “Terrible action by the RNC but too few of us in the room to object and stop it. The Resolution we should have considered would commend Mike Pence for standing up for the Constitution and saving the Republic.”

You might disagree with Bill Palatucci, but that kind of honesty is refreshing. You can’t ask for more from someone than an on-the-level statement like that.

What struck us odd was Chairman Hugin’s claim to being a “Ronald Reagan Republican”. Words have meaning when they are not being used as slogans to pacify and obscure. Behind words, there are policies that inform their meaning.

Ronald Reagan, the author of a book that takes a Pro-Life position on abortion, is well remembered for the Pro-Life plank he insisted be part of the RNC platform. Generations of New Jersey Republicans have opposed the Reagan abortion plank, and Bob Hugin’s position appears to be in that vein. As a candidate for the United States Senate in 2018, Hugin was clear about his anti-Reagan position. A Bergen Record/ NorthJersey.com story from October 22, 2018, reported Hugin’s position:

Abortion rights: "I am pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, and strongly support equal pay for equal work. Politicians would rather point fingers. I will be different." — campaign ad, nomination speech

The same article provided U.S. Senate candidate Bob Hugin’s position on the Second Amendment:

Gun rights: "I’m a big believer in the Constitution and the protection of our civil constitutional rights. But I think New Jersey has strong anti-gun laws, or strong gun-control laws, which I think I’m supportive of. I believe teachers and children should be our priority, and safety is our No. 1 issue ... I believe in sportsman’s rights, rights to own the gun. I think you have to look at the specifics of legislation to make sure it’s appropriate, but I’d always side with teachers and children as my first priority.” — interview with USA TODAY Network New Jersey

In contrast, here is Ronald Reagan speaking on the subject…

President Ronald Reagan discusses the Second Amendment and gun control with members of the NRA.

So as a candidate for the United States Senate, on at least those two big issues, Bob Hugin was decidedly not a “Ronald Reagan Republican”. In fairness, Hugin might have changed his positions since 2018. If so, he needs to make them clear.

What remains clear is that the staff at the NJGOP, under Hugin’s chairmanship, have allowed a hostile atmosphere to develop towards the new legislative leadership of the State Senate and Assembly. This is mainly due to them being sore over who was brought in to quarterback the effort to gain a legislative majority in 2023. Instead of going with the Hugin-Ciattarelli team of operatives, a team with roots in Governor Chris Christie’s statewide victories and with President Trump was brought in.

The fact that this new legislative leadership is strongly both Pro-Life and Pro-Second Amendment – genuine “Ronald Reagan Republicans” – should not be lost on Chairman Hugin and the staff at the NJGOP. If Ronald Reagan’s referenced “11th Commandment” means anything to the NJGOP, it demands their focused cooperation on serving the needs of the legislative leaders and their team who are charged with the task of scraping together a majority in 2023.

The Republican Party’s existential struggle in New Jersey shouldn’t come down to institutional jealousy over which political consultant is getting the buy. That would be too sad. Too ridiculous. With elements of both tragedy and farce.

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

NJGOP: A balanced approach or a cult of personality?

By Rubashov

There’s a reason why cults habitually target the young. The young look for easy answers and for heroes to lead them. Youth is most open to certainty.

Hard experience makes people into skeptics, cynics even, and leads to the understanding that even heroic figures are a mixed bag. That nobody should be worshipped. With experience we learn that principles, as opposed to personalities, are the standard by which we should measure the words and actions of men.

We’ve been observing an interesting phenomenon since gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli’s defeat last November. Despite Ciattarelli’s insistence that he wants to be the candidate in continuum through to 2025, the young people who administer the Republican Party in New Jersey appear to have found a new “rock star” upon which to focus their enthusiasms… NJGOP Chairman Bob Hugin.

Bob Hugin owes his job to Jack Ciattarelli. It was Ciattarelli who appointed the socially liberal Hugin in June 2021, after Ciattarelli captured the Republican nomination for Governor with a plurality of the vote. Hugin closely matched Ciattarelli’s social liberalism on issues like illegal immigration, the Second Amendment, and abortion.

Hugin ran a heavily self-funded campaign for the United States Senate in 2018, which he began by embracing socially liberal positions on issues like abortion. He lost that campaign but went on to create or help to create a number of funding platforms (PACs or SuperPACs and such) which are designed to or function to “remake” the New Jersey Republican Party into a more “woke” political institution.

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.

Ideologically, Bob Hugin could not be more different from the last two men at the helm of the NJGOP. Chairman Mike Lavery – the man Hugin replaced and who defeated Hugin in a head-to-head vote by the State Committee just half-a-year earlier – was an unashamed conservative. Chairman Doug Steinhardt, who Lavery replaced, championed issues like the Right-to-Life, the Second Amendment, an end to rewarding illegal immigration, tax cuts, and traditional values.

The presence of someone with the “woke” prejudices of a Bob Hugin might be a problem for the Right-of-Center voters who dominate the New Jersey Republican Party, if the Chairman of the NJGOP was the only leadership figure in the party. Fortunately, that is not the case, and so the party should be able to avoid an open schism.

The way it works is this. In the absence of a Republican Governor, THREE figures constitute the leadership of the New Jersey Republican Party. They include the ELECTED Republican Leader of the State Senate and the ELECTED Republican Leader of the State Assembly – in addition to the appointed (and confirmed by 42 State Committee members) Chairman of the NJGOP.

The Republican Leaders who head their respective legislative caucuses are both solid conservatives – particularly social conservatives – whose records share the values of Republican voters on issues like Right-to-Life, the Second Amendment, illegal immigration, and Medical Freedom. So, there is balance in the leadership of the Republican Party in New Jersey.

But you wouldn’t know this from the NJGOP website. The young folks who run it appear to be in full cult-of-personality mode. Under “leadership” there is just one photograph, one godhead – Bob Hugin. The two other members of what should, properly, be a triumvirate, have been erased – Orwell style.

https://www.njgop.org/leadership/

In fact, when you click on the “State Senate” and “State Assembly”, there is no mention of either Legislative leader. In fact, the legislators listed reflect those from before the November 2021 election. It is a thorough, comprehensive dismissal of the NJGOP’s ELECTED leadership as irrelevant. Such is the thought processes of these young cult-makers.

https://www.njgop.org/leadership/state-senate/

https://www.njgop.org/leadership/state-assembly/

Going back to the “leadership” page – the one featuring Bob Hugin alone – there is displayed a revealing window into the minds of those who administer the NJGOP. Instead of placing the photos and offices of the ELECTED Republican leaders of the two legislative chambers, the logos of four Washington, DC-based organizations are listed: the RNC (Republican National Committee), the NRSC (Republican National Senatorial Committee), the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee), and the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC).

There are established Trenton-based GOP political consultants connected with each of these entities, from which they extract millions. So, are these young folks telling us how they see the world, who they intend to answer to? Or is it simply aspirational? Is this how they would like it to be? Is this what they are working towards – cutting out the conservatives, making a cult-figure out of the liberal, but really – in the end – it’s about the consultants who they have worked for in the past and who they will work for in the future?

The group that is particularly intriguing is the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC). Here is what they say their mission is, from the group’s website:

The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) is the largest organization of Republican state leaders in the country and only national committee whose mission is to recruit, train, and elect Republicans to multiple down-ballot, state-level offices. Thanks to our growing network of grassroots supporters in all 50 states, we help deliver wins for Republican state legislators, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, agriculture officials, and state judges across the country.

It sounds like the RSLC is in direct competition with the Senate Republican Majority (SRM) and the Assembly Republican Victory (ARV) committees run by the two Republican legislative leaders for the benefit of their respective caucuses. And why aren’t SRM and ARV listed on that leadership page?

The RSLC logo on the NJGOP “leadership” page takes you directly to a page where you can donate. Why aren’t the SRM and ARV pages listed? Why is there no link to donate to them?

Well, maybe they don’t employ the right consultants? The RSLC certainly does.

What is needed here is a balanced approach. Nobody is suggesting that Bob Hugin’s photograph shouldn’t be there – just that, alongside the more liberal NJGOP Chairman, should go those of the more conservative legislative leaders. Sure, the GOP is a “big-tent” party, but it is a conservative party too, and the NGOP should reflect that.

Nobody is suggesting that the logo of the RSLC shouldn’t be there. But so should the logos of SRM and ARV – two NEW JERSEY based committees – and links so that people visiting the NJGOP page can donate to the important work that these committees do.

Finally, nobody is blaming Bob Hugin for the NJGOP website. He didn’t design it, he doesn’t administer it, we doubt if he wrote a word of its content. But personnel does equal policy, as Ronald Reagan said. In our opinion, he needs to be firm with the young crew he leads and let them know that it isn’t about him alone but about the entire party. Its entire leadership, working together.

The NJGOP should reflect the New Jersey Republican Party’s entire voting composition, both its conservative majority and “big tent” wings, working to elect more Republicans. That would be the balanced approach.

As there can be no recruitment or voter registration drives without a message -- an annunciation of principles -- here is a short video that expresses the oft forgotten, more often ignored, "first principles" of the Republican Party.

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

George Orwell

Is a shakedown behind the NJGOP’s double-standard on data access?

By Rubashov

Officially, the NJGOP is being very stingy on allowing access to its controversial data center, which it uses on license from the Republican National Committee (RNC) with the understanding that it is made appropriately available to party organizations and candidates throughout the state. In practice, however, NJGOP field operatives (part of its “Victory” program) are handing out access to pretty much anyone they “recruit” to become part of their field operation.

This is a very low bar. Recruitment consists of saying that you will agree to participate in one of the following training programs: Poll Worker, Voter Registration & Voter Contact, and Challenger. Access is being offered to potential “trainees” without them being vetted or even a basic voter registration check done.

While this loose program is the case at the grassroots level, access to the data center is being withheld from the legislative leadership of the Republican Senate and Assembly Caucuses. According to the NJGOP’s executive director, discussions are “ongoing.” One possible reason for this has been offered by several sources in a position to know.

Just as former Senate President Steve Sweeney was replaced on the Legislative Redistricting Commission by the Chairman of the Democratic State Committee (NJDSC), sources claim that the Chairman of the Republican State Committee (NJGOP) is angling to do the same to former Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean Jr. This would enable the NJGOP Chairman to play a more direct and active role in the negotiation process.

What would that mean?

It is no secret that the NJGOP Chairman is very “woke” on social issues and very establishment on economic issues – in other words, at odds with both the social conservative traditions of Ronald Reagan and the populist economic policies of Donald Trump. When the current NJGOP Chairman was selected last June by 2021 GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli, it made some sense because he closely matched Ciattarelli’s social liberalism on issues like illegal immigration, the Second Amendment, and abortion.

Since Ciattarelli’s defeat and announcement that he is a candidate for the 2025 GOP gubernatorial nomination, sources believe the NJGOP Chairman’s continued tenure serves as a vanguard for Ciattarelli – to tamp down potential gubernatorial opposition and clear a path through the 2025 primary. The idea is to make it appear as if the 2025 nomination – nearly four years away and undecided – has already been decided, with Ciattarelli the nominee in continuum.

Of course, this is neither honest nor democratic.

The form of the NJGOP’s field (aka “Victory”) program is something in the nature of a public make-work program. Poll worker training in February? If national averages hold you will lose upwards of 9 percent of them by November, simply to moving house.

From what we can make of it, this “Victory” program is most focused on those counties that need it least – all those successful places where Republicans have no problem winning. They come unbidden to places that don’t need them and instead of spending their time beefing up a few swing municipalities in a few swing legislative districts – so that we might have a legislative chamber or two in the Republican column – the “Victory” team appears drawn to those places that already produce… victories.

It seems a pointless way to spend resources. And that might be because it is designed to be. Instead of measuring success by the number of seats won, the old-fashioned way (seats = control = the ability to pass or block legislation), the “Victory” team measure their success by individual actions. Like the number of calls made, or the number of doors knocked – not the message delivered, not the result, just the action. Very Soviet in its inspiration.

So hold on to your hats, because this program is coming to every district and county and town where Republicans have already won. It’s as if you opened a store and now it’s successful – and along comes the NJGOP, who wants to make you “an equal partner” in your business. Meanwhile, there are other stores that could use partners – equal or otherwise – that have a chance to be as successful as your store, but no interest is shown.

Weird way to do business.

As there can be no recruitment or voter registration drives without a message -- an annunciation of principles -- here is a short video that expresses the oft forgotten, more often ignored, "first principles" of the Republican Party.

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

George Orwell

NJGOP: Controlling the narrative by controlling the data

By Rubashov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George Orwell

Murphy extremists are fighting to keep control of School Boards

By Rubashov

On Monday, Governor Phil Murphy’s state Democrat machine put out a press release attacking the concept of parents and property taxpayers having a voice in education by running for local school board. Calling it a “troubling trend among candidates running for school boards all over New Jersey” the Chairwoman of the NJ LGBTQ Democrats, Lauren Albrecht, issued the following statement:

“What we’re seeing is a very small but very loud group of individuals who are running for seats on Boards of Education all over New Jersey in a campaign coordinated by, and funded by an extremist and Evangelical agenda, with the singular goal of pushing animosity aimed at LGBTQ+ students and the LGBTQ+ community in general. These candidates, and their backers, have one goal: to fill school boards with fringe extremists whose sole aim is to destroy the progress that’s been made for the LGBTQ community in our state.”

“An extremist and Evangelical agenda”? Is Ms. Albrecht preaching hatred towards specific religious groups? And why does her organization not embrace the “+” in LGBTQ+? Her statement specifically accuses this “extremist and Evangelical agenda” of “the singular goal of pushing animosity aimed at LGBTQ+ students and the LGBTQ+ community in general.” But her group lacks the “+” so, why is that?

Could it be that part of that “+” is “K” for Kink? Is it that Ms. Albrecht understands sado-masochism as a life-style choice, at least for the moment, makes even politically fashionable suburbanites pause? Ms. Albrecht needs to explain just which part of “+” her organization is so uncomfortable with.

This attack by Governor Murphy’s NJ LGBTQ Democrats could be in response to the success of a group, formed by Pastor Phil Rizzo last year, which successfully fulfilled its mission under the leadership of Lafayette school board president Josh Aikens this year. The group, AriseNJ, has recruited more than 400 candidates statewide – representing both major parties, some belonging to no party or third parties – who are bracketed and running together in over 100 school districts.

AriseNJ helps people to run for school board who believe in parental and taxpayer control over education, who embrace the Bill of Rights, and who oppose Trenton authoritarianism in the form of unfunded mandates and curriculum diktats. That is not “extremist” but rather the very idea of democracy for which the Democratic Party is named.

As Ms. Albrecht knows, the Democrat Party has non-profit groups set-up to train and run candidates for school board. They understand the existential importance of this level of government. Unfortunately, the Republican Party does not.

Contrary to Ms. Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats’ assertion that the parents and property taxpayers who now want a say in their children’s education are “well-funded” – the NJGOP is not helping them at all. Quite the opposite.

The Chairman of the NJGOP, Bob Hugin, appears to favor funding a very different agenda. 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. $30,000 would be better used to defeat Democrats – or to fund parents and property taxpayers who want a say in their children’s education.

Lauren Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats are pushing for an agenda that interferes with the traditional role of parents – teaching their children how to negotiate their sexuality in the world – and with the traditional role of consumers – the right to choose which product they pay for. Property taxpayers are consumers. They pay for a product. They shouldn’t be forced to pay for a product they don’t like. Not without a way of exercising their right to petition the governing body. No consumer should. Democrats once understood that. Liberals – true liberals – still do.

But liberals are few and far between in the Democrat Party of today. Even Leftists – honest Leftists who don’t buy into the security state or the permanent war machine or bailouts that help Wall Street infinitely more than Main Street or executive orders that throw you out of a job but don’t make sure you have a means to pay for health care – Leftists like that don’t inhabit the Democrat Party. Instead you have Wall Street operators like Phil Murphy and government authoritarians like… also Phil Murphy. That’s your Democrat Party today, which is why they need Trump so much as a hate object to unite them.

Apparently without considering the institutions that founded education in America, Albrecht writes: “These candidates no more belong on Boards of Education than religion belongs in our public schools.”

So, is that the position of the New Jersey Democrats under Phil Murphy? If you believe in God or some form of higher consciousness or even possess a spiritually informed conscience of your own, you have no place on a school board? Do they really believe that education belongs only to those who make money from it? To greed alone? To the education establishment, the fat-paid administrators, the insider vendors (like Garden State Equality), and to all those politically-connected who trouser the green from the grease machine? Everybody else shut-up and just keep paying?

Even more disturbing, given recent moves by the National School Boards Association and the Biden administration to criminalize speech at school board meetings, is this weird threat from Lauren Albrecht and the NJ LGBTQ Democrats:

“It’s time for our community and allies to identify and expose these extremist candidates (and their backers) who are exploiting this fraught moment for their own brazen political gain with little regard for the support, safety, and academic achievement of New Jersey public school students. It’s time to send a clear message at the polls that again, hate has no home in New Jersey.”

Lauren Albrecht proves Hank Bukowski right again: “The best at hate are those who preach love.”

Here Tucker Carlson exposes the Biden agenda for restricting the right of parents and property taxpayers to petition the governing school boards that tax them:

Will the Biden administration criminalize speech at school board meetings and use the Patriot Act against those who petition a governing body?

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
George Orwell

Big Pharma lobbyist LeRoy Jones defends Big Pharma’s Bob Hugin.

By Rubashov

In a remarkable intervention, the State Democrat Party Chairman came to the aid of his GOP counterpart, after the Republican was criticized for what the Democrat characterized as “attempting to introduce some level of diversity in candidate selection to (the state Republican) party.” On Friday afternoon, Democrat Chairman LeRoy Jones issued a press release defending State Republican Chairman Bob Hugin.

The two do share a degree of commonality. Jones is a Trenton lobbyist who counts Big Pharma among his clients (as well as Dominion Voting Systems). Hugin is a former Big Pharma executive. And, of course, both are members of the Trenton political Establishment.

It should be pointed out that, as a matter of fact, both oppose any real diversity in candidate selection – beyond that of a candidate’s surface appearance. No matter the outer husk of a candidate, you can be sure that both look to select so-called “party loyalists” – candidates who will be obedient to the needs of the Trenton Establishment. This is different than candidates who follow their party’s platform, or who have an ideological or policy benchmark.

If it were otherwise, Jones and Hugin would do away with the “county line” – a truly undemocratic institution, unique to New Jersey, that would be disqualified by the United Nations from use in an election anywhere in the civilized world. Jones’ party also wouldn’t spend enormous sums trying to stamp out reformist elements whenever they pop up.

Jones’ vision of “diversity” means that you can have candidates with a great many shades of skin coloring, or sexual interests, or gender identifications – so long as at their center there is the same corruption – the same, uniform, rot. That is how many different “identities” are managed in a way to ensure the same results: The same insiders making more money. The same taxpayers paying.

Nevertheless, it was a remarkable intervention by one member of the Trenton Establishment, on behalf of another. Jones’ press release reads, in part:

The latest NJ GOP turmoil comes from a highly critical blog post in the influential JerseyConservative.com, which attacks Ciattarelli and Hugin for attempting to introduce some level of diversity in candidate selection to their party. The post reads in part:

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.

“It’s sad to see the Republican Party unable to reckon with a concept as simple as representing and respecting the diversity that makes our state unique, dynamic and powerful,” said NJDSC Chair LeRoy J. Jones, Jr. “If this is what Jack Ciattarelli’s Republican Party is fighting amongst itself about, how can it be counted on to address the issues of systemic racism and inequality that exist in our state and our nation? The answer is that it can’t, and the only party interested in advancing the cause of racial, social and economic justice is the Democratic Party..."

First, the Jersey Conservative post did not attack GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli. It did question the waste of GOP resources – by Bob Hugin and others – in the active pursuit of pointless primary battles. One reason for these primary battles – suggested by Hugin when he targeted an incumbent Mercer County State Committee woman and in the passage quoted by Jones, above – was the pursuit of “diversity.”

Let us, for today, leave aside the fact that LeRoy Jones is partnered in his lobbying business with a longtime member of the Republican Establishment. Jones and this Establishment Republican make money together. Lots of money. This Republican is very close to the Republican operative who recruited Bob Hugin. Some operatives benefit directly from these primary fights within the GOP – generally in the form of monetary commissions, vendor mark-ups, and direct consultancy fees. Others benefit through professional contracts and such.

Viewed in context, could this remarkable intervention just be a case of the State Democrat Chairman doing a favor for his Republican business partner? And if so, how should the average Democrat feel about that?

Second, Jersey Conservative in no way represents the “Republican Party” organization in New Jersey. So, this is hardly a case of “fighting amongst itself”. Jersey Conservative takes a skeptical view of the Trenton Establishment. We are contrarian by nature. And while open to pretty much anyone who wishes to publish, it mainly exists to raise uncomfortable questions – to challenge Establishment opinion – much in the same way that someone like Sue Altman does within New Jersey’s Democrat/ liberal circles. Granted, we have yet to be physically assaulted and manhandled the way Altman was, at the direction of her party. Perhaps Chairman Jones might wish to comment on this, to assure us that diversity of opinion within his own party will, in the future, be tolerated?

Finally, the Jersey Conservative post was an appeal for less marketing (celebrity-style branding) and more results-oriented thinking. The post’s punchline reads: “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.”

“Diversity” is a species of marketing. It is craven and opportunistic in the way that only something obsessed with the outer husk of a thing can be. “Diversity” is the last line of defense for many villains, among them, the very worst – as LeRoy Jones well knows, being a lobbyist for Big Pharma. Look at all the investments in “diversity” made by all those pharmaceutical companies caught killing kids through opioids. “Diversity” is a means to get people to look away from, for example, the fact that for decades you suppressed evidence that your product was giving women uterine cancer: “Don’t worry about that, we’re LGBTQ+ friendly… we are underwriting the PRIDE parade!” It is scumbag behavior.

Don’t believe us? Well, perhaps LeRoy Jones should ask those on the honest Left. There are some in his own party’s reform wing…

LeRoy Jones’ concept of “diversity” looks to be a very narrow one. He concerns himself with surface appearances and “identity” but ignores deeper values – such as religious beliefs, philosophical and political ideas, and economic class – along with human considerations like ethics, morals, honesty, and integrity.

That’s why Jones’ party doesn’t mind running and advancing the careers of convicted criminals. It has no ethics committee. His party has an LGBT caucus – but none representing Roman Catholics, the state’s largest “minority” group. It has a Standing Committee on Affirmative Action, but none on Universal Health Care (even through the pandemic), or the Bill of Rights, or Fair Trade, or (here’s a novelty) Peace (as opposed to Endless War).

Jones claims that “diversity… makes New Jersey “unique” and “dynamic”. It certainly cannot be called dynamic – more like economically stagnant. And as for diversity making it unique, who is he kidding? Diversity is (for the moment at least) everywhere.

Globalism has created new waves of migration that, in the natural course of things will turn “diversity” into a global “melting pot”. What Jones’ idea of “diversity” offers is a coercive segregation of the mind – because only segregation can preserve “diversity”. If you convince people they are different, then you can get them to stay apart from people who they have been taught to perceive as opposed to them. In this way they will maintain “diversity” by segregating themselves. It’s quite unnatural.

Jones’ “diversity” reminds us of those last-gasp European “ethnics” from the 1970s, who – around the time of the Bicentennial – successfully pushed to have ethnic ancestry placed as a question on the U. S. Census for 1980. That’s why we have figures today on the relative numbers of people with Irish or Italian or Polish ancestry in a given state or census tract. For the briefest moment it got people thinking in terms like “Armenian-American” before it all fell apart and evolved into “White”. In fact, even by the time of the 1980 census it had become an act of mere self-identification, the vast majority of Americans by then being of mixed ethnic ancestry. Ultimately, Jones’ “diversity” will be a similar fool’s errand.

Jones suggests there is “systemic racism and inequality” that exists in New Jersey and the nation. There he goes again with those husks – and of course, he would, being more liable than most for the systemic effects of the Establishment of which he is a big part. As a lobbyist, Jones must be aware that just about every reformer on earth points to his profession as the most visible cause of the corruption at the heart of our system of government. The reformers at Represent.US clearly finger Jones and company as the movers and shakers behind the systemic bad shit happening:

The system, of which LeRoy Jones is a part and by which he trousers large gobs of money, 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.”  Maybe we should call it systemic Jonesism?
 
As for inequality, well, here at long last progressives like Brandon McKoy actually have something “white” they can legitimately blame society’s problems on: White-Collar Government.  The bad news for LeRoy Jones is that his party (and Hugin’s) is a major reason we have White-Collar Government.
 
In White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making, Duke University Professor Nick Carnes cites studies showing that while a majority of Americans work in blue-collar employment, only 2 percent of Congress were blue-collar workers before being elected and only 3 percent of State Legislators are employed as blue-collar workers.  Carnes and others hold that this disparity reflects the economic decisions and priorities of legislative bodies in America.  So, there’s your inequality – staring back at LeRoy Jones when he looks in the mirror to shave every morning.
 
This lack of blue-collar “diversity” shouldn't surprise anyone looking at the Legislature's agenda.  And it shows why Democrat political leaders in Trenton don't give a damn about New Jersey having the highest property taxes in America.
 
LeRoy Jones – Trenton lobbyist and Democrat State Chairman – argues that “the only party interested in advancing the cause of racial, social and economic justice is the Democratic Party”.  That’s a strange formulation, because justice – being blindfolded – isn’t supposed to be about race or social status or economic class.  If you murder someone or rape a child, that stuff is not supposed to matter.  You get what is coming to you, regardless.  Maybe not in LeRoy Jones’ world, but that’s the ideal.
 
As for his Democrat Party and “justice”, LeRoy Jones could advance the cause if he could get his boss, Governor Phil Murphy, to cooperate with the families of the more than 8,000 residents of nursing and veterans’ homes who died as a result of Murphy’s Executive Order #103.  Have an investigation, get them answers, and don’t make the same mistakes again. 
 
Justice would also be served by addressing the inequality of the state’s school funding formula – which forces poor families in rural and suburban New Jersey to subsidize the property taxes of rich people in wealthy towns like Hoboken and Jersey City.  The poor subsidizing the rich.  Where’s the justice in that?
 
And, in the interest of justice, maybe LeRoy Jones should recognize – and ask his party to recognize – the growing police response times in urban areas, caused by the Defund the Police movement.  Jones and his party should recognize that a single mom has no place to hide with her children if some street thug decides to break in and take their lives.  The police, who were already overstretched, cannot get to her in time.  So, when she applies for a firearm permit, create a process that works, in the interest of justice, so that she can defend her life and her children – so they don’t need to die.  Either that, or have your party pay for a guard and station him outside her front door… forever.  That would work too.
 
We welcome a continuing dialogue with Chairman Jones.  If you wish to write a response to this or anything else, we will happily publish it.  Thank you for taking the time to address us through your press release on Friday.  Please do so again.  
 
 

“If it were 1860, the Democrats would be bragging about their first transgendered slave-owner.”

Jimmy Dore

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

Why is McCann paying for Jack Zisa to LIE to Republicans?

By Rubashov

Shame on John McCann.  He paid for a BCRO email last evening that linked President Donald Trump’s name to his without the permission of either the President or the Trump campaign.
 
If John McCann wants the President’s endorsement, he should ask for it, obtain it, and then publish the document.  Just putting the President’s name next to yours and calling it the “Trump-McCann Team” is dishonest, to say the least.  Don’t do that until you can produce a document showing the President’s support.
 
In March, BCRO Chairman Jack Zisa endorsed John McCann and handed him the county organization’s “line” without a vote of the elected members of the BCRO.  This was a shockingly corrupt and authoritarian act by Zisa.  It should have been addressed by the Chairman of the NJGOP, Doug Steinhardt.
 
Unfortunately, Steinhardt is an all-but-declared candidate for Governor, and Zisa is hosting an event for him in July.  Nevertheless, this latest act by Zisa – if left unaddressed – has broad implications for the presidential campaign.  Will other candidates, even more controversial than McCann, be permitted to link their names with that of the President, on the advice of some local GOP leader? 
 
What happens if a local GOP leader links the President’s name with a candidate and he turns out to be a KKK member?  Or on the sex offenders list?  Doesn’t the President’s campaign get to vet the candidate first?  Doesn’t a local candidate need permission before throwing Trump’s name around?
 
It all spells trouble to us.  Trouble for the President.  Trouble for the Party.  It’s up to the State NJGOP to do something about it.   
 
In yesterday’s BCRO email, paid for by John McCann, BCRO Chairman Jack Zisa makes statements indicating that he thinks his membership is either very stupid or has extremely short memories. 
 
Zisa writes that he has “worked tirelessly to unite our party, meeting early on with our candidates for U.S. Senate, CD5 and CD9, identifying common goals, imploring them to run their campaigns vigorously but professionally, and setting vital ground rules for all, the most important of which was there would be zero tolerance for any candidate who broke Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment ‘Thou shall not speak ill of thy fellow Republican.’”
 
Leaving aside the fact that Ronald Reagan didn’t follow his own “commandment”, pre-dating Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment were God’s Commandments and featuring rather prominently was the one about “bearing false witness”, about truthfulness, about not lying.  About not doing what Jack Zisa did in his statement above.
 
The Zisa family is a bi-partisan one.  Politics is the family business.  Political power is the source of much of the family’s income.  There is a long and sordid history of not only breaking Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, but of actually helping Democrats to win. 
 
Zisa writes that he “would not hesitate to publicly call out any one of them (candidates) for a violation” of the commandment – the Reagan one, not the God one.  Well, we really don’t like having to tell old Jack this, but he’s a rascal, with less moral authority to call out a candidate on a “violation” than a pimp has to lecture on chastity.
 
The elected members of the Republican State Committee – on the other hand – do have a duty to uphold some standards in their county party.  As representatives of the entire party and defenders of the Republican “brand” they should intervene when a local party leader is being dishonest – whether that dishonesty is canceling a vote of the elected members or coming up with some horseshit like the above. 
 
All any organization has is its reputation.  Reputation is a confluence of individual morality, transparent adherence to a set of rules, and successful outcomes.  The BCRO kind of sucks at all three.  You must do better. 
 
The elected State Committee members should work with Chairman Steinhardt to make it better.  Maybe put the BCRO into receivership.  You can’t have your Republican organization in your largest county suck forever.  Not if you hope to win statewide again.
 
Receivership is the way forward.

Just to refresh your memory, in 2018 John McCann lost by the biggest margin in the history of New Jersey's 5th congressional district.  So why are Jack Zisa and his crew looking to repeat that performance and ensure that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats keep the Congress? 

Maybe that's the point?

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”
(Karl Marx, author and philosopher)

NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt: 20 reasons to Vote Republican on Tuesday

Over on the New Jersey Globe website, editor David Wildstein assures us that New Jersey is still a two-party state, with the caveat that the GOP might not be one of those two parties. Wildstein’s words must be taken seriously, for whatever his faults, he has a laudable record as a campaign manager and operative. He even managed to get elected himself.

Under Governor Chris Christie, the New Jersey Republican Party functioned as a kind of cult of personality. If you were around for earlier GOP administrations, you would have recognized the difference. So far as legislative seats are concerned, this didn’t work all that well even while Christie was Governor.

Post-Christie, New Jersey Republicans have suffered from a crisis of identity. This has been exacerbated by two things. The first, of course, is Donald Trump – the face of the national Republican Party. Many New Jersey Republicans don’t know how to explain him or fit even the positive aspects of his hegemony into a local narrative. They got out of the habit of having big vision ideas or policies – so that they can’t even effectively change the subject.

This brings us to the second… the rise of South Jersey Democrats as a kind of opposition party to the Democrats of Governor Phil Murphy. As they did with the so-called “Clean Elections” gambit, they pose as “reformers” who are “pro-business” and “pro-taxpayer” – with watchwords like “efficiency”. In reality, they are an old-world political machine, fueled by crony capitalism and soft corruption (at the very least). Their model is the one-party state, with a relationship between political power and business that resembles something out of Red China… or National Socialist Germany.

But at least they have ideas and policies, many of which are attractive to business, so they occupy an alternative ground to the Murphy Democrats’ collectivist and confiscatory impulses. On social issues they are equally disreputable. Their refusal to post the Human Trafficking & Child Exploitation Prevention Act for a vote shows that they monetize anything to please a supplicant corporate interest. Just keep the money flowing… and suffer the children.

Which brings us to a post over the weekend on Matt Rooney’s Save Jersey website. In it, NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt provides an outline of why voters should choose Republican candidates over Democrats this coming Tuesday.

It really is a good list, and Matt did a great service publishing it. With due acknowledgement to Matt and to Chairman Steinhardt, we are re-publishing it below:

State Republican Chairman Doug Steinhardt

#20: New Jersey Has The Worst Foreclosure Rate In The U.S.
Phil Murphy and Democrats have had full control of the state house for 2 years now. Their liberal agenda has produced the highest foreclosure rate in the country. New Jersey is too expensive, and Phil Murphy, who said “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state,” is too aloof, for hard working families to afford their homes. This is the danger of one-party rule in Trenton.

#19: Governor Murphy Tried To Steal Money From Firefighter Burial Fund
The NJGOP is proud to fight alongside New Jersey’s first responders, especially after their Governor tried to pay for his laundry list of liberal handouts by stealing $33 million from the Firemen’s Association burial fund. And even though his screwball scheme failed, Phil Murphy’s last second retreat can’t erase his blatant disregard for the hard working men and women who risk their lives to protect our lives. New Jersey voters should be shocked and appalled, but then, hey, this is the same Governor who, last week, said, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.” You shouldn’t be our Governor either, and your Party’s policies are killing our State.

#18: New Jersey Has The Lowest Mainland US GDP Growth
Governor Murphy’s job-killing regulations and ever-expanding tax burden is leaving New Jersey’s economy hobbled and lagging behind the rest of mainland America. While the US economy is booming, New Jersey is failing. Trenton needs business-minded conservatives to bring a common sense check to Governor Murphy’s unbalanced budget.

#17: Phil Murphy Blew The Amazon Bid
Just weeks after New Jersey Democrats passed Phil Murphy’s billion plus dollar tax hikes, Amazon passed on New Jersey and put its HQ2 in New York and Virginia. Governor Murphy’s liberal lunacy cost thousands of well-paying jobs and a chance to revitalize our state’s biggest city. But this is the same Governor who maintains, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.”

#16: Phil Murphy’s Online Sales Tax
Phil Murphy calls New Jersey a high tax for high value state, but Democrats are squeezing out what little value is left. If it walks, talks, ships, shoots, rides, drives, eats or roots, New Jersey’s daft Democrats devise a devilish way to tax it. Under the Murphy Administration, New Jersey residents now pay an internet sales tax. But, this is the same Governor who says, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.”

#15: NJ Transit Fail
If a good executive keeps the trains running on time, Phil Murphy isn’t – good. New Jersey Transit is rated among the least reliable nationally. And even though Governor Murphy has the power to change it, he can’t. That’s because he’s more interested in liberal headlines than commuter wait times. People spend more time commuting than they do with their families. The system is so bad that even Democrats are investigating Murphy’s abject failure.

#14: Hiring Corrupt Officials
We should be throwing corruption out of government, not welcoming it back in. When Governor Murphy hired into his administration a former public official convicted of taking bribes, he called it the new normal. Never! The bar should never be so low. At a time when we should be building the public’s trust in government, Phil Murphy is tearing it down.

#13: Sky Blue Soccer Scandal
Governor Murphy preaches public equality, but fails miserably to practice it privately. As the owner of a women’s soccer team, Phil Murphy oversaw a team that was so badly treated that the Star Ledger equated the player’s conditions to a sweatshop. These professional women were housed in impoverished conditions, played without simple resources, like locker-room showers, and refused payment on their medical bills. That’s not stronger and fairer, that’s weaker and poorer.

#12: Legal Aid For Illegal Immigrants
The NJGOP will not ignore Governor Murphy while he scoffs at federal immigration laws for the sake of his personal political agenda. He has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into state sponsored legal aid for illegal immigrants while hardworking, middle-class New Jersey residents miss another opportunity for tax relief. But this is the same Governor who says, “If … tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.

#11: So-Called Free College
Phil Murphy’s promise of free college tuition is the classic political bait and switch. He dangles the feels-good carrot of “free education”, then beats New Jersey’s already battered taxpayers with his tax hike stick. Two years of free tuition for a lifetime of tax increases isn’t a bargain. It’s another bad deal that New Jersey can’t afford. Then again, all this is from a Governor who said, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your State.” That’s not leadership Governor. It’s what millionaires say to the middle class.

#10: Sanctuary State
Phil Murphy can’t pay for his progressive platitudes with the health, safety and welfare of New Jersey families. The Governor and the Attorney General should encourage cooperation between law enforcement agencies at all levels. Instead, they weaponize the Attorney General’s office and are taking aim at our County Sheriffs. Millions of innocent New Jerseyans depend on law enforcement to keep them safe from predators, drug dealers and violent criminals, but Phil Murphy will ignore them for a progressive headline.

#9: Worst Employment Rate In The Region
America’s economy is booming and our neighboring states are thriving, but New Jersey lags behind. Evidence continues to mount that New Jersey is teetering on the edge of an economic meltdown, but Governor Phil Murphy is stuck in a tax and spend trance. He is oblivious to, or simply ignores, the State’s affordability crisis and the crippling effect it’s having on New Jersey families. That was on full display at Rowan College in October, when the Governor let slip, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your State.” If you want more blind, political indifference, elect more Democrats this November, but if you want honest answers to the State’s real problems, vote Republican.

#8: Largest out migration of retirees, businesses and residents
Governor Murphy’s radical, liberal policies aren’t just emptying wallets, they’re emptying nests. More jobs and people are leaving New Jersey than any other State in America. Millionaire Phil Murphy is so disconnected from New Jersey’s working and middle classes that he let slip that, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your State.” Trenton’s Democrats share Phil Murphy’s callous indifference, so if you want honest answers to the State’s real problems, elect Republicans.

#7: Highest property and income tax rates in the US
Phil Murphy inherited a state with high taxes, but he campaigned on a promise for a stronger and fairer New Jersey. In reality, his radical tax hikes and progressive platitudes make us weaker and poorer. His solution is to tell working and middle class families, who can’t afford his high tax agenda, to move. But why move when we can vote? We need leaders in Trenton who will have the courage to reduce the size of state government and create real tax relief. On November 5, vote Republican.

#6: Ride Share Tax
Ride sharing has revolutionized urban and suburban transportation. Innovative new companies like Uber and Lyft provide safe rides home, affordable transportation for people who don’t own a car, and help stop drunk driving. So, how does Governor Murphy reward successful new businesses providing valuable services? He taxes them! That’s Phil Murphy’s New Jersey. If you don’t like it or can’t afford it, he says you’re welcome to leave. Don’t like the choices? Vote Republican instead. We can do better.

#5: Second Amendment Attacks
Governor Murphy’s political obsession with appeasing the radical, anti-gun lobby can’t come at the expense, or from the pockets, of New Jersey’s law abiding citizens for simply exercising their Second Amendment right to own a firearm. In his haste to punish legal gun owners, he’s proven unwilling and unable to deal with the scourge of gun crime, opting instead to criminalize lawful gun ownership. Taxes, fees and laws must have a rational nexus to a legitimate government purpose, and not just be a back channel to pay for feel-good, liberal giveaways. No Governor is empowered to choose which constitutional rights matter and which don’t and where Phil Murphy will trample long standing rights in his quest to replace them, the NJGOP will fight alongside grassroots Republicans to defend those rights.

#4: Shore Rental Tax
This year, among Governor Phil Murphy’s multitude of new taxes, he signed a tax on Jersey Shore vacation rentals. The NJGOP called on the Governor to refund to the moms and pops who were forced to pay it, the money he was so quick to take. In response, he ignored us, and them. It seems this was just another Democrat money grab that hit hardest in communities still recovering from Superstorm Sandy.

#3: Second Most Miserable State
The most miserable state in the Union is California. Governor Murphy has said he wants New Jersey to be the California of the east. So, it’s no surprise we’re number two. Under Phil Murphy, New Jersey is the second most miserable state in America. People in New Jersey are struggling with affordability. We have the highest foreclosure rate, and one in four families goes hungry. So, when our Governor says that, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state,” it hurts. New Jerseyans need hope for a better tomorrow, but they won’t find it in our state’s Democrat Party. This year, vote for the party that still has New Jersey pride and honest answers to our state’s real problems. Vote Republican.

#2: Corporate Business Tax
New Jersey has the worst business climate in America. We lead the nation, not just in the outmigration of residents, but in the outmigration of jobs. We’ve suffered the exodus of leading corporations, like Honeywell and Gerber, who uproot and run for low cost states like North Carolina and Virginia. We even lost the bid for Amazon’s HQ2. When Governor Murphy hikes the corporate business tax by over $1 billion it signals to business owners that they can’t count on New Jersey for stability, predictability or affordability. But then this is the Governor who said, “If tax rate is your issue … whether you’re a business or an individual … we’re probably not your state.

#1: Rain Tax
A rainy day fund used to be what responsible government collected for emergencies. Not anymore. Not in New Jersey. And not under Governor Murphy. Today, it’s just another Democratic property tax and Trenton money grab. Instead of feeding your families, Phil Murphy’s rain tax scheme drains money from your pockets and pours it into Trenton’s coffers, to feed Murphy’s liberal agenda. None of that should come as a surprise, since the Governor let slip that, “If tax rate is your issue … we’re probably not your state.”

Please visit the Save Jersey website here: https://savejersey.com/2019/11/vote-republican-new-jersey-assembly-election-results-november-5th-doug-steinhardt/

What happens after Tuesday will determine whether this is a first step on the road to an actual party platform… or if it was a one-off, albeit a very strong and persuasive one. Stay tuned…

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.

Bramnick has a message. Will NJ Republicans follow?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like in 1991, the NJGOP needs to hold a convention.

Take yourself back to September 1991.  The legislative midterm elections were less than two months away.  New Jersey was in the second year of a Democrat Governor, following eight Republican years.  The State Senate had not been in GOP hands for 18 years.  The Assembly was last Republican in 1989. 

1,032 delegates from across New Jersey attended the State Republican Convention that year.  They were exhorted by former Governor Tom Kean, who reminded them “that they must do more than criticize Florio and Democratic lawmakers” to wrest control of the Statehouse in the November elections: “People want to know what you're for, not just what you're against,” he said. “Attacking the present administration is not enough.”

The delegates discussed and debated issues… adopted a state party platform… and defined who they were.  In November, Republicans won a landslide victory and took control of both chambers of the Legislature.  Two years later, they took the Governor’s office too.

In contrast to last month’s gathering of the GOP in Atlantic City, the 1991 convention at Rutgers University was about policy, message, and people – it had a grassroots feel to it.  While the current state party operation is dominated by Trenton-centered professional operatives and consultants, in 1991 the party was still one of stakeholders – people with networks in their communities and districts.

New Jersey Republicans are suffering a crisis of identity.  And it’s not just the old controversies over social issues.  The current “favorite” for Governor in 2021 – former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli – called Donald Trump a “charlatan” who is “out of step with the Party of Lincoln” and an “embarrassment to the nation.”

The NJGOP can’t seem to make up its mind on something as basic as the tax restructuring package – championed by former Governor Chris Christie – that ended the Estate Tax, cut a bevy of other taxes, prevented a huge property tax hike, and provided enough property tax relief to enable places like Warren County to actually cut property taxes.  Some Republicans seem determined to run against one of Governor Christie’s hallmark accomplishments.  Let’s hash this thing out once and for all.  

Legalizing the sale and use of recreational marijuana is another issue.  Although both Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean Jr. and Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick have done admirable jobs of holding their delegations together on this – there are all these lobbyists occupying party office who are nibbling away at the resolve of individual legislators and there is no formal party position on this or any other issue of substance.

A convention could be just the thing to resolve these conflicts, to pull everyone together around what we agree on, our principles and objectives, to create a message, and build that message out with a platform of policies – which could then be fleshed out by people like Regina Egea and her Garden State Initiative.  Thus far, the only prescriptions offered by the NJGOP have been which consultant a candidate should hire or new “game changing” technology to employ.  These do not take the place of having an actual message to run on – as the past few election cycles have shown. 

Once upon a time, New Jersey Republicans knew how to tell their story.  Now it seems they’ve lost the art – or at least the plot.  Nothing like a gathering to bring everyone together to remember who they are, put it down on paper… and then go out and sell it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.gardenstateinitiative.org/