Former U.S. Senate candidate Gary Rich endorsed Tricia Flanagan for the nomination to take on Cory Booker in November, according to reports on NewJerseyGlobe and InsiderNJ.
“Conservatives in the Republican party need to speak with one voice, and after meeting Tricia Flanagan, I have decided that hers is the voice is the voice that speaks most clearly and powerfully for the principles that compel me to run,” Rich said. Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever had a day in your life that seemed ordinary; but as the day unfolds, it becomes life altering? The day I am about to tell you about was like that for me. After this became part of my past, each passing day after it became more aggressive and life altering than the day before it. I will tell you more about those later.
Sometimes I cannot believe it was part of my life. If this were a part of reality television, viewers would have been glued to their TVs each week. I have many awesome stories, along with some scars. I found it is in the scars where you find your true character, so it was an all around win for me.
In New Jersey politics, many who’ve been in it for a long time would say my story is all too common, and it is; but this story is uncommon in many ways. This story unfolds the intriguing details of the dynamic team work put in by my opposition to keep me as an unknown. They worked hard on a daily basis putting out fires, getting shows canceled, keeping articles of me from being published, making sure I was not invited places, and the list could go on and on. I congratulate this machine of people in their success; they are really good at what they do.
By popular demand (from Matt Rooney and a Democratic operative who doesn’t want people to know he/she talks to me) your favorite blogger is shifting his focus away from the Sandy Aftermath and back to politics on this election eve.
Rooney said, “Let’s hear your projection, Gallagher.” My response: “The power will be off at my house for the rest of the week.”
Kyrillos spends the day focus on supporting victims of Hurricane Sandy
US Senator Bob Menendez’s campaign manager told PolitickerNJ that his boss didn’t pay for sex while on a trip to the Dominican Republic last spring and that the story first reported by The Daily Caller is a product of the “right wing smear machine.”
The Menendez camp is blaming the Kyrillos camp for planting the story:
“It is disgusting that on a day when New Jerseyans are focused on responding to one of the worst disasters to ever hit the state, Joe Kyrillos and the right wing smear machine are peddling lies about Bob Menendez,” Soliman said. “Let’s be clear: the accusations Kyrillos and his friends in the right wing media are peddling are absolutely false. This unsubstantiated, untrue attack is a new low, and we hope that Kyrillos will pull his campaign out of the gutter and join us and other leaders in helping get this state back on its feet. Bob Menendez is going to continue to focus on helping New Jersey recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy and will not be distracted by desperate smears from a flailing campaign in the final days before an election.”
Democrats are furious with Kyrillos for responding to The Daily Caller’s article by asking Menendez to release his schedule and travel documents, and for even trying to win the election in the face of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation.
“Kyrillos’s career is over,” a angry Democratic operative said on the condition of anonymity, “Obama and Christie did the right thing, and he’s (Kyrillos) talking about prostitutes. While his legislative district is in shambles from the storm, he’s off campaigning in Bergen and Ocean Counties. Even my Republican friends are disgusted with him.”
Kyrillos visted with residents and local officials in Middlesex, Bergen and Passaic counties today. He stopped at the Peterpank Diner in Sayreville, the Police Athletic Leaue in Wayne where hot meals were served to those without power, and the Christian Health Care Center in Wyckoff.
“This infamous storm has caused more destruction and devastation among our residents than anything I’ve witnessed or care to see again,” Kyrillos said.“This process of physical and emotional mending will certainly be arduous. But as my meetings continue, I’m starting to notice a sense of ‘Jersey strong’ resilience coming out of residents and community leaders, saying we will get through this. We will rebuild and be stronger from it.”
Kyrillos calls on Menendez to release his travel records
A prominent reporter with one of New Jersey’s largest media outlets told MMM that The Daily Caller’s story about US Senator Bob Menendez covorting with prositutes in the Dominican Republic and paying them $400 less than agreed is “extremely thin, our resources are spread thin.” The reporter said that it will be the editors’ judgement about what to do with the story.
The Daily Caller story included video of the women who charged Menendez paid them less than agreed for sex, and referred to aircraft records of a Menendez donor’s private airplane landing at Teterboro Airport, a short drive from Menendez’s Hudson County home, and flying to the Dominican Republic during the time last spring when the incident is alleged to have occurred.
State Senator Joe Kyrillos’s campaign spokeswoman called on the incumbent to release his schedule and travel documents for the time of the alleged incident.
“Like the recent Secret Service sex scandal in Colombia, the allegations reported today are deeply disturbing and raise serious questions,” said Kyrillos Campaign Communications Director Meaghan Cronin. “Senator Menendez must do the right thing and help settle this matter by immediately releasing his schedule and travel documents from the time the alleged incidents occurred. The people of New Jersey deserve answers today.”
Two women charged that US Senator Bob Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex but they only received $100 in the end, according to a report on The Daily Caller.
The women say they met Menendez at the Dominican Republic resort Casa de Campo, an upscale 7000 acre resort described as “a grown up Disneyland, everything you want is right there,” by Robb Report contributor James Frank, last spring around Easter time.
Daily Caller said that Menendez spokeswoman Tricia Enright refused to answer questions on the subject. “We’re not going to respond to a completely false accusation,” she wrote in an email.
“My baseball career spanned almost five decades—from 1925 to 1973, count them—and in all that time I never had a boss call me upstairs so that he could congratulate me for losing like a gentleman. “How you play the game” is for college boys. When you’re playing for money, winning is the only thing that matters. Show me a good loser in professional sports, and I’ll show you an idiot. Show me a sportsman, and I’ll show you a player I’m looking to trade to Oakland so that he can discuss his salary with that other great sportsman, Charley Finley.”
If Joe Kyrillos overcomes the double digit lead that several polls give Bob Menendez in the U.S. Senate race over the next two weeks without going negative, he not only will be making political history, he will have transcended human nature and rewritten the “how to win an election as a challenger” campaign books.
As much as people complain about negative political ads, they are the only ads that work for a challenger or candidate behind in the polls.
Vice President George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” ad against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign is probably the most memorable political ad of all time. It is arguably the most negative…and effective…as it propelled Bush to overcome a 17% deficit in the national polls and win the White House.
Kyrillos’ campaign has been complaining that the mainstream NJ media has not been covering the campaign enough. That changed this weekend as The Star Ledger/NJ.com featured Monmouth County’s senior state senator and the U.S. Senate campaign three times in the last two days. NJTV’s Reporters Roundtablededicated a third of this weekend’s show to the Senate race.
If Joe K’s objective was to introduce himself to New Jersey as the nice guy that he truly is, his campaign is working. If he’s out to beat Menendez, it does not appear to be working. The predicate of the campaign was if Obama wins New Jersey by less that 10%, Kyrillos could beat Menendez. Yet, based upon recent polls, Menendez is outperforming Obama in New Jersey. Put another way, Kyrillos is under-performing Romney in New Jersey.
Even the jabs Kyrillos threw at Menendez in their three debates were nice. His press releases leave the harsh quotes to his campaign manager. His TV ads are nice.
If nice gets voters’ attention and overcomes a double digit deficit in the current New Jersey race, it will be a first.
