Bye Bye Mennen. Really

Hunterdon County Freeholder William Mennen, heir to the Mennen deodorant fortune, has dropped his bid to to run for the 16th district Assembly seat vacated by the untimely death of Assemblyman Peter Biondi, according to a report on Politickernj.

Mennen was the GOP establishment choice for the seat.  He does not live in the district.  A proposed legal challenge from Bill Spadea, Princeton, also running, doomed Mennen’s candidacy.

Spadea still faces competition.  Donna Simon, a Readington Township Committeewoman announced her candidacy upon Mennen’s withdrawal, according to Politickernj.  South Brunswick Health Board Member John Saccenti is also running.

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Attack On Belmar Homeless Man Spurs Legislation

The horrendous attack of a Belmar homeless man, David Ivins, has already resulted in new legislation being proposed.

Monmouth County Republican Assembly Members Dave Rible and Mary Pat Angelini, along with Assembly Republican Conference Leader Jon Bramnick of Westfield, Union County, announced that they will sponsor legislation that will increase penalities for recording and distributing an assault:

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Redistricting Commission Looking To Limit Towns Represented By More Than One Congressman

Both Democratic and Republicans members of the New Jersey Congressional Redistricting Commission prefer to reduce the number of towns that are split between two or three districts, according to a report on NJ.com.

If they could find a way to reduce the number of two faced congressmen, that would be real progress.

Due to the one person one vote rule, each district must have 732,658 residents per the 2010 census,  it is mathematically impossible to completely elminate fragmented towns.  So says Bill Caster, the Democrats lawyer on the commission.

Linden and Jersey City have three congressmen.   35 municipalities are divided between two districts.

In Monmouth County, Manalapan, Marlboro and Middletown are each divided between the 6th district, currently represented by Frank Pallone, and the 12thdistrict, currently represented by Rush Holt, both Democrats.

Manalapan and Middletown are Republican towns.  Marlboro usually votes Republican on the county, state and federal levels but has been taken over by the “LaHornicca” Democrats locally.

Manalapan has 9,060 registered voters in the 6th district; 15,787 in the 12th.  Marlboro has 9,148 registered voters in the 6th; 15,957 in the 12th.  Middletown has 21,725 in the 6th and 22,264 in the 12th.

A Republican challenger to either Pallone or Holt would theoretically benefit by each of these towns landing in only one district.  A competitive district could emerge if all three towns were united and placed into the same district.   If that happens, maybe Anna Little will give up her U.S. Senate bid and run for Congress again.

Former State Attorney General John Farmer, the redistricting commission’s chairman and tie breaking vote, has said he would like the commission to complete its work today.  By law, the new map must be completed by January 17th.

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Unemployment Insurance Abuse

You know that bartender or waitress at your favorite summer spot at the shore?  The one that is there year after year, knows your name when you show up every season and remembers your favorite drink?  That one.

The really good ones make enough money in tips over the summer to support their households for the rest of the year.  Six figures in cash tips over the summer.

Way too many of these people are also collecting unemployment, every year, year after year, from September through May.   It is a way of life.

Two shore mayors from Cape May County, with the support of the League of Municipalities are looking for a legislator to sponsor legislation in the next session that would disqualify seasonal workers from collecting unemployment insurance, according to a report at NJ.com

The mayors and the league want to save money on unemployment for seasonal municipal workers.  That’s not a bad idea. However the real savings, for the state’s unemployment fund, can be found in eliminating unemployment insurance for private sector seasonal employees.

Governor Christie doesn’t want the State to be subsidizing the horse racing industry. Rightfully so. However the State is also subsidizing the labor costs of every other seasonal industry.  The State is subsidizing a comfortable way of life for many seasonal workers who don’t need it.

Unemployment insurance premiums are a major drag on the economy. They are a major disincentive to hiring new workers, especially for small businesses who have had to lay people off during this economy. 

Eliminating unemployment insurance for all seasonal workers, not just municipal seasonal workers, will go a long way to returning the unemployment fund to solvency, reducing premiums for the businesses who hire year round workers, and boosting overall employment.

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Monmouth Park Will Remain Open Through 2012

State officials and representitives of the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association came to terms on an agreement that will keep Monmouth Park operating through 2012.

Bob Jordan has the story at Captial Quickies.

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Little For Senate: On Again

One day after The Star Ledger’s Auditor reported that Anna Little said she was going to look at the congressional redistricting map before deciding whether to run for U. S. Senate or take another run at Congress, she sent out fundraising email for her Senate campaign.

Please join me, my family & “Anna’s Army” as we begin this amazing journey to help New Jersey, America and each of our own families futures.

Thank you!

Anna Little
Conservative Republican Candidate
for the U.S. Senate (R-NJ) 

 

The redistricting map has not be determined yet.  Won’t be before Wednesday, at the earilest.

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Judge Oxley?

The worst kept secret in Monmouth County politics became news today when Politickernj reported that “Monmouth County GOP Chairman Joe Oxley is poised to leave his chairmanship for a superior court judgeship.”

Politickernj’s story is premature.

“If it happens, it won’t be during this legislative session,” said State Senator Joe Kyrillos, “Joe is an excellent chairman.  Monmouth County is important to the party statewide going into 2012 and 2013.”

State Senator Jennifer Beck said she’d heard rumblings about an Oxley judicial nomination but assumed it was a rumor.  “Joe has never mentioned an interest in being a judge,” said Beck, “there are three Republican and one Democratic vacancy on the Monmouth Court now.  The workload is significant. About 60 lawyers have expressed interest in those positions, but the Chairman is not one of them.”

Rumors of Oxley moving to the Monmouth Vicinage were rampant in the legal community and among GOP politicos the week before Thanksgiving as several people who received calls from the State Police performing a background check on the former sheriff spread the word.

Oxley passed the background check, according to sources.  The bar association and the Monmouth Senate delegation still need to give their blessings before Governor Chris Christie will announce the nomination, which must be confirmed by the Senate.

“Nothing is official until the Governor makes his nomination,” Oxley told MMM in November, “as of now, I am completing my term and running for reelection as Chairman.”

Speculation for Oxley’s successor as chairman has centered around State GOP Committeewoman Christine Hanlon, State GOP Treasurer and former Senate President John Bennett, and former Assemblyman Steve Corodemus.

A source close to the former Assemblyman told MMM that Corodemus does not want the position.

Bennett and Hanlon could not be reached for comment.

Jim Giannell, the Kingmaker without a portfolio, told MMM that he won’t be a candidate for chairman should Oxley get benched.  Giannell ran for chairman against Adam Puharic in 2006.

Howell Chairman John Costigan, who challenged Oxley in 2010, also said that he would not be seeking the office.

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“How many bureaucrats does it take to screw up the light bulb?”

Let There Be Light!

A National Review Editorial

The 1,219-page, trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill that will fund the government through fiscal year 2012 appears to be the usual mix of compromise and compromised. But out of the mire of horse-trading and half-measures there is at least one bright light: bright light itself.

As we understand it, the omnibus contains a rider defunding Department of Energy efficiency standards that would have effectively killed the incandescent light bulb on January 1. The reprieve is temporary — instead of repealing the relevant regulations, it merely stalls their implementation through next September. But riders are sticky things, often renewed automatically, and this rider marks an important win for House Republicans, consumer choice, and Edison’s fine old filaments.

Breaking liberals’ usual rule about government not intruding in the bedroom, Stephen Chu’s DOE would have insinuated itself into your bedroom and into every other room of your domicile, casting the pale pall and dreary buzzing of compact fluorescence over every home in America.

And why? For our own good, Chu says, to “tak[e] away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.” What a splendid mission statement for the DOE, and a pithy summation of the case for abolishing it. Call us old-fashioned, but we think that if government interventions into a market are ever justified, they are justified on the grounds of giving consumers more choice. Regulation undertaken in the name of Green piety inevitably offers less. One need look no further than the contemporaneous, and so far successful, move by the FDA to ban arguably the most effective asthma inhalers because they contain CFCs. In Bureaucraworld, Freon in the atmosphere trumps oxygen in the lungs.

In a way, the damage done by the promise of the incandescent ban is irreversible: GE closed its last U.S. factory making incandescent lights in 2010, as GE chair and Obama crony Jeffrey Immelt counted on a rush of new business for his more expensive fluorescent bulbs. And Democrats will no doubt claim a “compromise” in the rider, as they have apparently managed to insert language forcing the recipients of DOE grants in excess of $1 million to meet the mothballed standards in any event. But DOE grants are not exactly held in the highest esteem these days, and should themselves be continued targets for conservative cuts. The branches have been pruned; next up, the roots.

The obvious joke here is, “How many bureaucrats does it take to screw up the light bulb?” Thanks to this small victory, we’ll have to wait at least until September to hear the punch line.

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Could Congressional Redistricting Impact the U.S. Senate Race?

New Jersey’s congressional redistricting commission has a deadline of January 17 to determine the lines of the state’s 12 new districts.  One incumbent congressman will be out of a job as a result of the 2010 U.S. Census determination that New Jersey’s population did not grow enough over the last decade to retain its 13 members of congress.

The commission’s chairman, Rutgers Law School Dean and former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer, has stated that he wants the commission’s work to be completed by Wednesday of this week.   The commission of 6 Democrats, 6 Republicans and Farmer is meeting today in New Brunswick.

While no one will say with certainty which incumbents will be pitted against each other, the most likely scenario according to several reports has the commission merging the 5th Congressional District, now represented by Republican Congressman Scott Garrett, and the 9th Congressional District, now represented by Democratic Congressman Steven Rothman.  Garrett lives in the Sussex County township of Wantage in the northwest corner of the state.  Rothman lives in the Bergen County borough of Fair Lawn.  Unless the commission creates a district that is more gerrymandered than the current 6th, it is hard to imagine a new district that combines the current 5th and 9th and that includes both Wantage and Fair Lawn, that is not predominantly currently represented by Garrett.

Despite that apparent advantage to Garrett, based on this scenario, conventional wisdom is that the advantage would be Rothman’s.

Here’s the question that no one is asking:  If Garrett is redistricted into a race against Rothman, would he forgo that battle in favor of seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Robert Menendez for New Jersey’s junior seat in the U.S. Senate?

If Garrett determines that his new district is unwinable or too close for comfort, why wouldn’t he take a shot at the Senate race?   As one of the most conservative members of congress and a Tea Party favorite, Garrett does not have close ties to New Jersey’s moderate GOP establishment.  That the party establishment has apparently lined up behind State Senator Joe Kyrillos for the U.S Senate nomination would not phase Garrett.

Garrett had $1.6 million in cash on hand in his congressional campaign kitty as of September 30.  As Chairman of the House Sub-committee on Capital Markets and Vice Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Garrett has a valuable fund raising Rolodex.  He would be a formidable primary opponent for Kyrillos.

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Little Backing Off Senate Bid

The Star Ledger’s Auditor reports that former Highlands Mayor and former Freeholder Anna Little is backing off her bid to challenge State Senator Joe Kyrillos for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate next year.  Her eyes may be back on Congress.

For now, a tea party favorite, Anna Little, appears to be leaning toward a run, but she also has her eyes on Congress. She has set up a “Little for Senate” website, although she hasn’t declared her candidacy. “We’re thinking about looking at the redistricting maps before we do it,” she said.

The congressional redistricting map, which will reduce the number of congressional districts in New Jersey from 13 to 12, is expected to be announced this week.  

The Auditor also reported that former Roxbury councilman Tim Smith will not be a candidate and that State Senator Michael Doherty will probably not be a candidate.

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