This year, more than any before, I am present to the many blessing which have been bestowed upon me, for which I am grateful.
While I don’t recommend it, I am grateful that I was arrested and spent three weeks in the Monmouth County Correctional Institution.
I am grateful to have met the men and women I met while at MCCI, both inmates and staff. They gave me insights into life that will contribute to the rest of my life.
I am grateful to my friends who made sure I was safe.
I am grateful to know who loves me and has faith in me. I am grateful to know who doesn’t.
I am grateful to know who my friends are.
I am grateful to know that I am either “popular”, “powerful,” or “polarizing” enough that my arrest, incarceration and release where more newsworthy than items in the police blotter.
I am grateful that I will have the opportunity to celebrate these, and many other blessings with friends and loved ones.
Transcript From Governor Christie’s Inaugural Address On January 19, 2010
Governor Chris Christie:
The greatest thing about New Jersey has always been New Jerseyans themselves. To truly understand this, you need only look at the New Jersey heroes we have with us today.
There is Carolyn B.T. Wallace of Newark. Forty years ago, she and her late husband James founded the international youth organization as a way to help kids in Newark. She has dedicated her life to transforming lives through education and community service.
There is Dave Girgenti of Cherry Hill, who three years ago began the wish upon a hero website. Using the power of the internet, he brings wishers and granters of wishes together. In these three short years, the power of Dave’s idea has made the wishes of 48,000 people come true.
Tammy Evans-Colquitt of Pennsauken created “image and attitude” in the year 2000 to help improve the self-image of disadvantaged men and women in Camden county. She helped women transitioning from welfare to work and men from incarceration to the workplace. Tammy’s hard work has proven once again that no life is disposable and that everyone deserves a second chance.
Jim Benedict of Freehold started and runs a lunch kitchen out of St. Peter’s church, serving hot meals to 200 people, three days a week. With no formal funding from Government, Jim calls on the generosity of New Jerseyans to feed the hungry. (Benedict told him it was four days a week. Christie said his administration goal would be to make it five)
Finally, Chip Paillex of Pittstown is the founder of America’s grow-a-row, a non-profit that feeds the hungry by encouraging the donation of fresh produce to food banks all over new jersey. He started in his own garden and last year, over 700 volunteers donated 225,000 pounds of produce to area food banks.
These folks are just a few examples of what New Jerseyans are all about. When faced with tough problems, you choose hard work over giving up. You rise to the challenge, not shrink from it. For all of us on this stage we must now resolve to use all of you as our example. We in office must not shrink from the challenge, we must rise to it.
Posted: November 23rd, 2011 | Author:Art Gallagher | Filed under:Chris Christie | Tags:Chris Christie | Comments Off on Governor Christie: Service Is What Makes NJ Great
The 16th legislative district Assembly vacancy caused by the untimely death of Assemblyman Peter Biondi is resulting in yet another NJ Republican grassroots vs. establishment, conservative vs. moderate, battle.
The new LD 16 is comprised of parts of Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex and Somerset Counties. Somerset dominates the district. The Somerset GOP is dominated by Princeton Public Affairs Group, perhaps the most powerful lobbying firm in Trenton. The current Somerset GOP Chairman, Alfred Gaburo, is a senior executive at PPAG. The former Somerset GOP Chair, Dale Florio, founded PPAG.
PPAG’s Republican members have deep roots in the NJ GOP establishment dating back to the Whitman-DiFranceso-Haytaian era. PPAG’s Democrats have equally deep roots in their party. PPAG and their clients are prominent among the “Who’s Who” of New Jersey. It doesn’t get more establishment than PPAG.
The Somerset GOP has lined up behind Hunterdon County Freeholder William Mennen to fill Biondi’s Assembly seat, according to Politickernj. Mennen lives in Tewskbury, part of the new 23rd legislative district. He will move into the 16th. Most probably he will move into a Hunterdon County town in the 16th, as his Somerset County support is very likely the result of a deal between the Hunterdon and Somerset GOP chairs. The other LD 16 legislators, Senator Christopher “Kip” Bateman and newly elected Jack Ciattarelli hail from Somerset. Ciattarelli is a Somerset County Freeholder. He was nominated for Assembly after incumbent Denise Coyle was redistricted out of the district and decided to retire rather than move.
You really need a score card to keep track of the players in this district. Biondi’s death and Coyle’s decision not to move really messed up Dr. Alan Rosenthal’s theory of continuity of representation, at least as it applies to LD 16.
Mennen is an heir of the deodorant company that was founded in Newark in 1878 and moved to Morristown in 1953. He is the great-great grandson of company founder Gerhard H. Mennen.
The company, which was sold to Colgate-Palmolive in 1992, donated the land for the William G. Mennen Sports Arena to Morris County in 1973. G. Mennan “Soapy” Williams, grandson Mennen’s founder, was the Democratic governor of Michigan from January 1, 1949 through January 1, 1961. You don’t get much more establishment than Mennen.
Challenging Mennen and the establishment will be grassroots activist Bill Spadea of Princeton. Princeton is in the Mercer County part of LD 16, but the Mercer and Middlesex GOP organizations have little say in the race. They are minority portions of the district and the counties are Democratic strongholds.
Spadea was the 2004 GOP nominee for Congress against Rush Holt. In 2008, Spadea and his friend, biotech executive John Crowley, founded Building a New Majority, who’s stated mission is to develop Republican candidates for local, county and state offices through direct financial contributions and grassroots support. The organization’s pragmatic mission was widely considered to be the building of a network to support Crowley’s political ambitions to be a U.S. Senator, which have waned in recent years.
Spadea sent an email to Building a New Majority members last night announcing that he was stepping down as President to prepare for the LD 16 Assembly race.
While an activist with strong conservative credentials and relationships, Spadea is not a fire breathing RINO hunter in the Lonegan tradition. Through Building a New Majority he has sought to be a bridge between to the establishment and the more conservative grassroots Republicans. His bridge building could work against him in a primary. Establishment voters will automatically support Mennen. Conservatives may hold Spadea’s support of Rudy Guiliani in the 2008 presidential primary against him.
Spadea’s conservative supporters are already positioning him as the real conservative over the moderate Mennan. However that could prove to be a tough sell. Mennen’s record of fiscal conservatism as a Hunterdon County Freeholder is solid.
Spadea has little hope of winning at a convention to replace Biondi. If he is able to raise money to fund a competitive primary against likely incumbent Mennen, he will face a very uphill battle in a presidential year where Mennen will likely be sharing the line with the Mitt Romney, another heir of a Michigan governor, who will have likely have already locked up the GOP presidential nomination.
Governor Chris Christie held a press conference this afternoon in Trenton to announce DCA Commissioner Lori Grifa’s resignation, effective January 2, and his nomination of Richard Constable, the deputy commissioner of the Department of Labor and Workforce Development as Grifa’s replacement.
During the Q&A with reporters, Christie discussed fracking, telecommunications regulations, Newark’s concerns about the merger of UMDNJ and Rutgers and the politics of the state budget.
Middletown— Senator Joe Kyrillos (R- Monmouth/Middlesex) this weekend reiterated his call for the Legislature to enact reforms to New Jersey’s public education system in the closing weeks of the 2010-2011 legislative session at a roundtable discussion on principal and teacher evaluations at Princeton University.
“New Jersey is a national leader in student achievement,” said Kyrillos, “yet too many students still move through the system without receiving the quality education to which they are entitled. Reforming our public education system will not just make the good schools better, it will help children trapped in failing school districts obtain the education they need to build better lives and futures.”
Senator Kyrillos provided opening remarks to the forum, “Leading the Charge”, hosted by education reform advocates Better Education for Kids, Students First, and Princeton Students for Education Reform. They day’s panel discussions included public school teachers and administrators, representatives of the Department of Education, as well as leaders from the American Federation of Teachers and New Jersey Education Association.
Kyrillos said he is proud to sponsor two bills that are part of Governor Christie’s education reform agenda, the Opportunity Scholarship Act and the School Children First Act. “Quality education starts with an effective teacher in every classroom. That is why it is so important that we modernize teacher evaluations, tenure protections, and pay structure to value student achievement over seniority. In addition, children in chronically failing districts need options to improve the instruction they’re receiving immediately. The Opportunity Scholarship Act will provide these students an opportunity to enter a high quality school setting in the short term while we work to fix the systemic problems that are all too common in certain districts in New Jersey.”
Tent City has been in the news lately as the Lakewood and Ocean County governments are seeking to shut it down, and homeless advocates are seeking to compel those governments to provide shelter to the homeless.
Tent City would be a fascinating case study and debate of the role of big government in addressing social problems. Minister Steve Brigham, a high voltage electrical contractor, started the camp some six years ago on publicly owned land. He never asked anything of the government, including permission. He just started the camp to help people. Over time it grew.
Now, six years later there are suits and counter suits, media coverage and spin which will inevitably lead to more government and less freedom for the homeless and the taxpayers who will end up supporting them.
My friend Ed has gotten a headstart over his community members in receiving taxpayer funded food and shelter against his will.
Ed was brought into the Monmouth County Correctional Institution an hour or so after I was on Saturday morning October 15. While sitting in a holding cell wondering what was going to happen next, I couldn’t help but notice Ed come in. His white hair, orange T-shirt and ripped blue jeans stood out in the parade of men being brought into to the jail by police officers from throughout the county.
I could hear Ed being interviewed by the corrections officer and the nurse who were processing the parade. He was born in 1936. 75 years old. He looked older than my father who will be 80 next month.
I must have lead the parade that morning. I was the only one in the holding cell when the corrections officer and nurse finished processing me. As others arrived, they immediately started talking. Pleading their cases. Why they shouldn’t be there. How the police had violated their rights, etc. For the most part I just listened. By the time Ed was brought into the cell there will several of us there. The other men were pleading their cases to each other. Ed sat next to me and started his pleading.
He was arrested in his tent earlier that morning on a child support warrant! I wouldn’t have guessed that. His bail was set at some $42,000, the amount of his past due child support. “I’m going to be here for three years,” Ed exclaimed.
Over the next few hours Ed told me about his life in Tent City. He would start every day before dawn by bicycling to grocery stores in Lakewood where he had befriended employees who would give him food to bring back to the camp for himself and other residents. He managed to get a copy of the New York Post everyday. He told me about the chickens and his friends, the other residents of the camp.
He wondered if he would be able to get in touch with his sister and if she would bail him out. How much money would he need to get out? He wanted out. Would a judge let him pay off his child support debt at the rate of $100 per month? He receives $140 per month in general assistance, he said. He could manage on $40. I didn’t have it in my heart to point out to him that at $100 per month it would take 35 years to pay off the $42,000 he owed to the mother of his child. If it was going to take $42,000 for Ed to get out of jail, he may have just received a life sentence.
A few hours later Ed and I were both transferred from the holding area to A-1, one of two pods where most all inmates go to be classified before they are moved to other pods in the jail. For the rest of the weekend I got to know Ed a bit. He was a career horse trainer. He was a big fan of the San Francisco Forty Niners. The Forty Niners had a big game against the Detroit Lions that he was looking forward to watching on Sunday. Ed couldn’t see very well. He had glasses but usually didn’t wear them. He was always squinting.
On Monday I was transferred out of A-1 and lost track of Ed for most of the next three weeks. As others from A-1 came into the worker pod where I had been transferred, I asked about him. I also asked about him while at medical and was waiting with other inmates from throughout the jail to see a doctor or nurse. No one recognised him by my description. Maybe he somehow managed to get out. Maybe a judge or other authority realized the futility of incarcerating him.
The day before my release I was walking to visitation and saw Ed. He was in a dormitory type pod without cells that was mostly used to house illegal immigrants who were waiting to be deported. He didn’t look happy. I couldn’t get his attention. On my way back from visitation I waved to Ed who was squinting in my direction. He waved back. I couldn’t tell if he recognized me or remembered me.
He didn’t look happy, even though he had shelter and was in a safe place, getting three meals a day and free medical care.
I don’t know what will become of Ed. It seems as though he will spend the rest of his life in jail and that the mother of his child will never see her $42,000.
Middletown Mayor Tony Fiore, fresh off his reelection to his second term on the Middletown Township Committee, says he will not be a candidate to fill Freeholder Director Rob Clifton’s seat early next year.
Earlier this week, Politickernj reported that there was a “major push” to get Fiore to enter the race. Fiore said he has been receiving overtures from various county leaders to run for months, that he has a great deal of respect for the current Republican Freeholders and that it would be an honor to serve with them. However, running in a county-wide campaign for two consecutive years after just having completed a campaign in Middletown is not in the cards given his family and career obligations. The Fiore’s have a 4 year old and a one year old. Tony was recently promoted in his job at Prudential Financial Services.
Clifton was elected to the State Assembly two weeks ago. He will take office in Trenton at noon on the second Tuesday in January and must resign as Freeholder before he joins the Assembly. Clifton’s replacement will be elected at a convention of the entire Monmouth County Republican Committee. The winner of the convention will take office immediately and be expected to defend the seat in the November 2012 general election and again in 2013 at the scheduled expiration of the term.
The current contenders are Howell Mayor Bob Walsh, Holmdel Deputy Mayor Serena DiMaso and Manalapan Deputy Mayor Ryan Green.
Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vic Scudiery will announce his retirement next week. He will complete his current term, which ends in June. Scudiery will have served for 23 years.
Scudiery’s protoge, Vin Gopal, spent most of this week working the crowd at the League of Municipalities Convention in Atlantic City for support to take over for his mentor.
MMM has learned that the fight will be with Marlboro Councilman Frank LaRocca.
Gopal is a business owner and Scudiery’s partner in Community Publications, the publisher of four monthly newspapers and a magazine serving Aberdeen, Atlantic Highlands, Colts Neck, Fair Haven, Hazlet, Highlands, Holmdel, Keansburg, Keyport, Matawan, Middletown, Red Bank, Rumson, Sea Bright, and Union Beach. He was an Assembly candidate in the 11th legislative district this year.
LaRocca, along with his running mates, Mayor Jon Hornick and Council President Randi Marder were reelected in Marlboro earlier this month. LaRocca, Hornick and Marlboro Deputy Mayor Larry Rosen are law partners.
With the chairman’s election not until June, there is plenty of time for other players to enter the race.
There has not been a contest for the Monmouth County Democratic chairmanship since 2000 when then Red Bank Mayor Ed McKenna unsuccessfully challenged Scudiery for the post.
