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.

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.

The Woke Effect: Support for Big Business lower than ever

By Rubashov

Over the last year, the antics of woke capitalism have gutted support for major corporations among Republicans – while not improving its already low standing among Democrats. According to the Gallup polling organization’s annual snapshot of America, among Republicans and Republican leaners “satisfaction with the size and influence of major corporations” declined 26 percentage points – from 57 percent a year ago to 31 percent today.

Among Democrats and Democrat leaners, it declined 1 percentage point – from 25 percent a year ago to 24 percent today. Overall, Big Business in America is now less popular than the federal government. Among all Americans, satisfaction with the size and influence of major corporations declined 15 percentage points – from 41 percent a year ago to 26 percent today.

Among all Americans, satisfaction with “the size and power of the federal government” declined 7 percentage points – from 38 percent a year ago to 31 percent today. It lost 15 percentage points among Republicans/ Republican leaners – declining from 35 percent to 20 percent, while going up slightly among Democrats, from 38 to 41 percent.

Overall, Americans are more satisfied with the power of the federal government than with the influence of major corporations – 31 percent to 26 percent. This is a major shift and indicates that support for big corporations among Republican and Republican leaning voters has been wiped out. While many elected Republicans are still pro-Big Business, there is no longer a base for it among the party’s voters.

A decade or more of openly woke corporate activism has done its work. Now government is free to screw big corporations with taxes and regulations until they squeak. All that Big Business has left is its lobbyist shield and the various options of legal bribery open to them.

Overall, the nation is broadly unhappy with its institutions. Reformers take note, satisfaction with “our system of government and how well it works” declined 16 percentage points from 43 percent to 27 percent. Among Republicans and Republican leaners it collapsed 24 percent – from 54 percent to 30 percent. Among Democrats/ Democrat leaners it declined 6 percent from 30 percent to 24 percent.

This points up the mistake cheerleaders of the Establishment make in trying to replace what President Nixon called “the silent majority” of notionally “patriotic” Americans with those who don’t even like the sound of the word. Now that President Biden appears set to make war on them – we wonder, just who will support the Establishment’s foreign adventures? We can’t ever imagine A.O.C. breaking into a chorus of “U.S.A., U.S.A.!” as we embark on some new “adventure”.

Which brings us to the nation’s moral and ethical climate. Again, reformers take note… America’s satisfaction with its “moral and ethical climate” is reminiscent of the 1970’s – the period just before the Reagan revolution. It declined 14 percent in a year – from 32 percent to 18 percent. Among Republicans and Republican leaners it went down 18 percent – from 35 percent to 17 percent. Among Democrats/ Democrat leaners it went down 13 points – from 29 percent to 16 percent.

That said, if you are waiting for a fifth “great awakening” you might wish to pay attention to this data. For the first time in Gallup’s polling, Americans’ satisfaction with the “influence of organized religion” slipped below 50 percent. It fell 11 points in a year – from 59 percent to 48 percent. It does remain high among Republicans/ Republican leaners, however, falling just 4 percentage points – from 70 percent to 66 percent. Among Democrats/ Democrat leaners it fell 12 points – from 49 percent to 37 percent. Well, there are other organized “religions” to believe in these days – like the “original sin” made evident by the paleness of someone’s skin or the very religious notion that you can transubstantiate one’s chromosomes.

Despite the war on them by the federal government, Republicans and Republican leaners are bigger fans of America than Democrats and Democrat leaners. Republicans are more up on America, have more confidence in the idea of America, and generally like it more. 82 percent of Republicans are still satisfied with the “opportunity to get ahead” that America offers. That’s down from 93 percent a year ago, but still far ahead of the paltry 41 percent of Democrats who have the same feeling towards America.

58 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners are still “satisfied with the way income and wealth is distributed’ in America. Although that is down from 65 percent a year ago, it is way ahead of the 18 percent of Democrats and Democrat leaners who feel the same. That’s real funny, given the fact that so many One Percenters are Democrats. It looks like they are asking to have their taxes hiked.

The Democrat Party intends to criminalize the half of America that still likes the idea of America and still has confidence in it. When they are through, the Establishment will have a country without a constituency. Everybody will be a malcontent. That’s some plan.

Here is Gallup’s guy discussing this poll on The Hill…

“That’s what they’re doing now in the United States. They want to make it toxic. They want to make you afraid to fraternize with other Americans. Because it helps their political agenda.

That’s the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party wants you to keep thinking half the country is your enemy.

”

Jimmy Dore
#ForceTheVote
on Medicare for all

N.B. We welcome a conversation on this and all topics raised on this website. Jersey Conservative is entirely open to your ideas and opinions. To submit a column for publication, please contact Marianna at Marianna@JerseyConservative.org.

New Jersey Law Enforcement News blasts Sweeney

Yesterday, the leading figures of New Jersey’s legislative, governmental, legal, judicial, and political establishment (aka Trenton “insiders”) gathered together at a press conference to decry the state’s criminal justice system. NJ.com’s Blake Nelson did some great straight-forward reporting on this, with an assist from fellow journalist Brent Johnson:

Gov. Phil Murphy and leaders of the state Legislature said they’re planning to act swiftly on new recommendations to overhaul how people are sentenced in New Jersey, where prisons have had the worst racial disparity in the nation.

Murphy said during a news conference in Trenton on Thursday that he supports calls to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug and property crime and to speed up when people convicted of second-degree robbery or burglary are eligible for parole in the Garden State.

The recommendations were detailed in a new report by the New Jersey Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission.

Some of the changes, if adopted, could apply retroactively, although the Democratic governor emphasized that nobody was guaranteed release.
Murphy called the fact that black residents are incarcerated at far higher rates than whites “galling,” and he said the reforms would ensure that the criminal justice system works "for all communities.”

… State Senate President Stephen Sweeney said the changes were “long past due.”

“We’re destroying people," Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said. "People that made mistakes. They’re not criminals. But we turn them into criminals if we keep them in jail for a long period of time.”

Deborah Poritz, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the leader of the commission, said there was “overwhelming consensus” behind the proposals.

The hypocrisy here is rich.

If this was Pennsylvania – a state where the voters ELECT every judge and every prosecutor – there might be some cause for Establishment types gathering to point the finger at a system that they have only a partial hand in creating. But this is New Jersey, where EVERY facet of the criminal justice system is ENTIRELY controlled by this same Establishment. EVERY judge is a political appointment. EVERY prosecutor is a political appointment. The state Attorney General is a POLITICAL APPOINTMENT.

Trenton insider Deborah Poritz, who presented the recommendations, has worked in state government since 1981. Poritz was the APPOINTED state Attorney General from 1994 to 1996. Then she became the APPOINTED Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court from 1996 to 2006. She is critiquing the very system she played a huge role in creating!

Is it the sentencing… or the laws? New Jersey regulates or criminalizes some new behavior nearly every week. Even now, the Legislature is hard at work trying to criminalize menthol cigarettes. In his famous article on the subject, conservative columnist George Will argued that "overcriminalization" was responsible for the death of Eric Garner, a sidewalk merchant who was killed in a confrontation with police trying to crack down on sales tax scofflaws.

Will raises the question of how many new laws are created by state legislatures and by Congress in the rush to be seen to be "doing something". Will's brilliant column is a must read for legislators thinking about proposing their next round of ideas that will end up being enforced by men with guns. New Jersey has too many laws, too many restrictions, too many regulations. It suffers under a New Deal Era constitution that idealized the kind of authoritarian central-control necessary to fight a world war, but stifling in normal times. And to top it all off, it has the least democratic Legislature in America.

Perhaps those Establishment types should read a little before opening their mouths. We recommend Douglas Husak’s Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law or Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day. What we do know is this: Whenever the Legislature makes a law that requires blue-collar law enforcement officers to enforce it, when something inevitably goes wrong, you can always count on the white-collar Establishment to blame the cops who they sent to enforce the law. It’s a class thing.

To feign outrage over something created from the top down – as though you and your fellow Trenton insiders were innocent bystanders – is the height of hypocrisy. It is play-acting. The New Jersey Law Enforcement News summed up the politics behind the Establishment’s performance art…

New Jersey Law Enforcement News
“We’re destroying people," Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said. "People that made mistakes. They’re not criminals. But we turn them into criminals if we keep them in jail for a long period of time.”

WTF is Sweeney talking about? If you're in prison, you are in fact a "criminal." You committed a crime, you were prosecuted, sentenced and incarcerated. 100% leftist drivel here. The leftists believe you, the LEO are the criminal, the law abiding citizen is the "criminal," working people who want to enjoy the prosperity they've earned are the "criminals" To them capitalism is the crime, and "criminals" are merely political prisoners and victims of the "system." This is an evil philosophy. If you support, or vote for Murphy or any Democrat, in my opinion you are voting for self-destruction.
- NJLEN

The false narrative of Mikie Sherrill and Lisa Bhimani

In November 2017, three members of the so-called “Resistance” held a press conference to condemn the tax cut plan of President Donald Trump.  They were Mikie Sherrill, a resident of Montclair and then a candidate for Congress in District 11; Lisa Bhimani, a medical doctor and today a candidate for the Assembly in District 25; and Kellie Doucette, who has just been given a congressional staff job by Congresswoman-Elect Sherrill.

At their press conference, the three “resisters” spoke on behalf of the state’s “middle class” and claimed that Trump and the Republicans were only out to help “big corporations and the ultra-wealthy”.  They acted as though they were representative of the families who get by on the median-income of Northwest New Jersey. We now know, in the cases of Mikie Sherrill and Lisa Bhimani, it was all an act. Both Sherrill and Bhimani are rich.  They are establishment members of the One Percent.

But what about Kellie Doucette?  She spoke as if she were a working mom, pinching every penny.

Doucette has just been appointed to be Mikie Sherrill’s “face” in Sussex and Morris Counties.  So who is she?

Well, it turns out that Kellie Doucette had a very bottom-line reason for opposing the Trump tax cuts.  Doucette is a transplant to New Jersey from Bermuda, where her husband, John P. Doucette, is the President and CEO of the Reinsurance Division of Everest Re Group Ltd., a publicly traded reinsurance company headquartered in Bermuda.  The corporation describes itself this way:

“Everest Re Group, Ltd. is a Bermuda holding company that operates through the following subsidiaries: Everest Reinsurance Company provides reinsurance to property and casualty insurers in both the U.S. and international markets. Everest Reinsurance (Bermuda), Ltd., including through its branch in the United Kingdom, provides reinsurance and insurance to worldwide property and casualty markets and reinsurance to life insurers… Additional information on Everest Re Group companies can be found at the Group’s web site at www.everestregroup.com.”

It turns out that the Trump tax cuts helped American companies at the expense of off-shore companies, like those based in Bermuda.  This is from a website maintained by Bermuda (www.bermuda-online.org):

2017. December 21.  US tax reforms approved this week by the US Congress will be “credit negative” for the Bermuda re/insurance market, Fitch Ratings says. The US credit rating agency added that it expected the tax reforms, which will take effect from January 1, to benefit US reinsurers at the expense of Bermudian and other international reinsurers serving the US. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will cut the US corporate tax rate to 21 per cent from 35 per cent, reducing Bermuda’s tax advantages over US rivals, and a new tax on premiums ceded by US insurers to foreign affiliated reinsurers will be levied.

2017. December 18. Bermuda-based reinsurers are weighing restructuring options in response to US tax reform legislation that could be signed by President Donald Trump as early as this week and come into effect by the start of next year. Tax expert Will McCallum said that the island’s major industry will see its cost of doing business going up when the reform takes effect and some companies will likely have to relocate hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to the US.

According to public SEC filings, John Doucette was paid $2,557,414 in 2017.  That’s $49,181.03 a week – that’s $10,000 more than a Deputy Sheriff makes a YEAR in Sussex County!  

Hey… is this “Resistance” movement beginning to feel more like a “counter-revolution” to you too?  A long-suffering working class, under-represented in Congress and the Legislature, screwed-over by BOTH political parties votes for Obama in 2008 (and is promptly screwed again) then in its pain and desperation turns to Trump in 2016… and now the “Resistance” has come, to put us all back in our place!

In his book, White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making, Duke University's Nick Carnes points out that while upwards of 65 percent of citizens are "working class" and 54 percent are employed in a blue-collar occupation, just 2 percent of the members of Congress and 3 percent of state legislators held blue-collar jobs at the time of their election.  How about some diversity?

Donald Trump's campaign saw through the false political divide of Democrat and Republican to the vast economic and social divide that is the truer measure of America today.  Authors as diverse as George Packer of the New Yorker (The  Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America) to Charles Murray (Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010) to Chris Hedges (Days of Destruction Days of Revolt) to David Brooks (BoBos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There) have written about this, with Brooks actually employing Donald Trump as an example of what the "new upper class" finds unfashionable.  

And to counter this revolution, we have a One-Percenter “Resistance” made up of the likes of Mikie Sherrill, Lisa Bhimani, and Kellie Doucette.  

Congresswoman-Elect Mikie Sherrill wants Kellie Doucette to come into Sussex County and tell us how we should live.  The Congresswoman has sent Doucette to “feel our pain.” But there’s a problem with this… and it’s Kellie Doucette.

Just how insulated from the reality of the working-class is Doucette?  Well, when she moved from Bermuda to New Jersey, she settled in Chatham, a town with pretty good schools… but apparently, not good enough, because she sends her kids to boarding school in Delaware.  And not just any old boarding school… no way.

When Hollywood is looking for a boarding school that just oozes establishment wealth and privilege, they turn to Saint Andrew’s School, situated on 2200 acres in Middletown, Delaware.  You will remember seeing this well-appointed institution and its lush grounds from the Robin Williams film, Dead Poets Society, or from The West Wing, when they wanted to show what a really posh prep school looked like.  Yep, this is one posh school that Kellie Doucette sends her kids to… fall tuition for 2018-19 will set you back a cool $60,470 (per student).  

Yep, tell that to the working families of Ogdensburg – with a per capita income of just $29,447 – next time you are in Sussex County.  Hey, forget about feeling our pain, folks like you are our pain.

But Kellie Doucette has a solution for people who once had good-paying blue-collar jobs but who now must make do with under-employment, working two or three part-time jobs to make ends meet… abortion.

Kellie Doucette sits on the Board of an organization called Ibis Reproductive Health, and serves on their Finance Committee.  Ibis provides her biography:

“Kellie Doucette began her career in the health policy field, and worked for over ten years as an actuary in the individual disability and long-term care reinsurance markets in the United States and Bermuda. However, in 2016, she shifted her focus to the political sphere, first as a founding member of Chatham Moms for Change, and then in 2017 as the campaign manager for a local political campaign.  Kellie is currently the Constituency Director working with a congressional campaign in New Jersey’s 11th district, managing the constituency outreach for what has become one of the top watched congressional campaigns and races in the country this election cycle.

Kellie received her AB in Economics from Harvard in 1992 and completed her Associateship of the Society of Actuaries (ASA) in 1999. Kellie is also a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Andrew’s School in Delaware, of which she is a proud alumna and current parent, serving as Chair of the Advancement Committee and a member of the Finance Committee.” 

Ibis is all about abortion.  Its website makes Planned Parenthood look like a bunch of cautious moderates.  It operates several separate websites targeted to potential “client groups” – such as http://www.laterabortion.org/

Ibis even has a website aimed at teenagers with epilepsy, in which it promotes sterilization as a “birth control” option.  No kidding… here, check it out… http://girlswithnerve.com/birth-control/birth-control-options/

These people are off-the-hook.  Establishment moes and moettes who think they know better because they were well-born or have figured out a way to rig the system in their favor.  Now they want to masquerade as “comrades” and lead a “revolution” that will secure their fortunes and attitudes and leave America and its working people in the dust.  Mikie Sherrill got over on us this year, now Lisa Bhimani is trying for next year.

Are we going to let them get away with it again?

Mikie Sherrill's campaign tries to explain...

Democrat congressional candidate Mikie Sherrill is getting bashed by her primary opponent for saying one thing and then doing another.  Her campaign's spin doctors are having a very hard time explaining this to the media...

Sherrill's opponent, Tamara Harris, announced earlier this week that her campaign will begin running attack ads on cable TV.  The ads spotlight Sherrill's acceptance of $18,520 in campaign contributions from lawyers in the firm hired by the corporate giant Toys "R" Us in its bankruptcy proceedings.  The bankruptcy is expected to eliminate 30,000 jobs, while protecting the more than $8 million in bonuses handed out to corporate executives.

Sherrill has tried to portray herself as a liberal without corporate interests but the ad links Sherrill to the corporate law firm doing the bankruptcy and argues that she is, as a former federal prosecutor, part of the establishment, as indicated by her campaign's acceptance of special interest contributions.

Stay tuned...