Ciattarelli: Giving the Whitman campaign model one more try?

By Rubashov

Jack Ciattarelli’s handlers have started a new organization. It’s called the Mainstream Majority. That’s “mainstream” as in the Mainstream Media that conservatives, populists, and the Bernie Sanders Left so often complain about.

As a noun, “mainstream” means “the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.” As an adjective, “mainstream” means “belonging to or characteristic of the mainstream.”

Wikipedia reports: “The mainstream is the prevalent current thought that is widespread. It includes all popular culture and media culture, typically disseminated by mass media. This word is sometimes used in a pejorative sense by subcultures who view ostensibly mainstream culture as not only exclusive but artistically and aesthetically inferior.”

So, it appears “mainstream” is just another way of saying, “the status quo” or “the establishment” or “middle of the road” or even, “moderate”.

And yet, in common with all Republican political campaigns (and even some Democratic ones) this new group employs the “c” word. The email makes this pitch to us: Yes, we are establishment moderates, but we are also “common-sense conservatives” (as opposed to the other kind?) who focus on “kitchen-table issues”.

Even Bill Clinton used the “c” word. So did Christie Whitman. Who doesn’t?

The email is long on braggadocio, claiming responsibility for every Republican victory in November 2021 – even the defeat of “New Jersey’s powerful Senate President.” Was it Jack Ciattarelli’s “compelling message and strong campaign” that elected Ed Durr? It wasn’t the backlash against incumbent Phil Murphy's extremist policies combined with a textbook low-budget, grassroots guerrilla campaign that did it? Sure about that?

Ciattarelli’s handlers have refused to share the same stage with Steve Kush, the political operative who actually managed Ed Durr’s campaign. Going back to election night, we don’t remember anyone in the NJGOP establishment even expecting Ed Durr to win. If they had, wouldn’t they have thrown some money to the Durr campaign? But nobody bankrolled Durr. Now everyone wants to take credit for the upset.

The email claims that the new group intends to be “pro-taxpayer, pro-law enforcement, pro-parent, and pro-small business, one that makes sure smaller government better serves the people who pay for it.” That’s very aspirational, but we would like to see details, a legislative agenda. We will keep an open mind and wait to see how the “Mainstream Majority” unfolds.

Still, we wonder how Jack’s handlers are going to sell “Mainstream” anything, given the political and cultural baggage the term has…

mainstream sellout

Pallotta wins in CD05. Sussex County’s Kelly Hart does it again!

By Rubashov

It’s hard to win when the establishment sets its face against you. After his upset victory in the 2020 primary and his narrow defeat to Democrat incumbent Josh Gottheimer in the November election, you would think the party grandees would rally around Frank Pallotta, clear a path for him, and start him on his way for a 2022 re-match. That would have made sense.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, some party leaders nursed the wounds they had received in the primary, when Pallotta beat the Bergen County “line” for his upset win. Others were unhappy that Pallotta hadn’t gone with an “insider” consultant and had Sussex County’s Kelly Hart run his campaign. Many thought Pallotta too conservative – too honest and open about it. And for others, the Jersey operatives at the NRCC included, Pallotta just wasn’t one of the boys.

So, the establishment went out and recruited a very plausible candidate in Nick DiGregorio and raised a lot of money – that they spent on internecine battle to defeat another Republican, namely Frank Pallotta. How this made sense to them, we cannot figure out, but it did serve as an emotional balm to some and an economic benefit to others. We don’t think it did the party any good.

Nick proved to be a formidable candidate and a strong campaigner. He had a wonderful back story, but his establishment handlers suppressed his policy positions, not allowing him to communicate with conservative voters. They believed they would prevail using the blunt force of money, the party “line” in Bergen County, the Jersey operatives at the NRCC, and establishment muscle in Trenton. Nick pulled away endorsements that Frank had previously enjoyed – with a final blow delivered by a legislator yesterday, the day of the election!

The establishment had failed to learn the lesson from last year’s result in LD03. It was there that Steve Kush pulled an upset win by fashioning a campaign that went around establishment filters and engaged directly with the electorate. Of course, this doesn’t always work. It doesn’t work when the electorate is asleep. But the electorate isn’t asleep, is it? It is very, very agitated.

Kelly Hart fashioned a similar win yesterday in CD05, using grassroots networks the Trenton establishment, and especially the Trenton blogs, continue to discount. Strong showings by outsider candidates across New Jersey are an indication of an electorate that is wide awake and open to hearing a conservative message. Even in the CD03 primary, Steve Kush was able to take a very wounded candidate to a respectable showing.

“It is very reassuring that the conservative base wields so much muscle,” said Steve Lonegan, the father of the modern conservative movement in New Jersey, “This should be a wake-up call for the NJGOP establishment.”

Hopefully, the establishment accepts Frank Pallotta’s win and rallies behind him. Nick DiGregorio already has. Let’s hope others follow his good example. We hope to be hearing more from him.

In contrast, Matt Rooney at Save Jersey penned a particularly dickish attack on the Republican nominee – the day after the election. Why is Rooney acting the sore loser when he wasn’t supposed to have a side? Didn’t he hold himself out as someone impartial enough to moderate a debate between Nick and Frank? Apparently not.

For all those Trenton bullies who got owned yesterday.

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!

Last weekend’s NJGOP Summit was a lost opportunity.

By Rubashov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A tragic lost opportunity.