State Senator Barbara Buono, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, continues to lag terribly in name recognition in various independent polls that show her losing the November general election to Governor Chris Christie by over thirty points.
Worse for ‘Dawn Quixote’ Buono, as she was dubbed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, she can’t raise the money needed to increase her name ID and message. Numerous media reports indicate that Buono will likely be the first major party nominee not to qualify for the maximum in New Jersey’s state matching fund program for gubernatorial candidates.
Christie, who has opted out of the state matching fund program for the primary, is spending $850,000 of the $6+million he has raised to boost Buono’s name ID and define her by her record of voting to raise taxes 154 times and as former Governor Jon Corzine’s budget chair.
It’s a deal a week with the Bayshore Tea Party backed slate of candidates running in the LD13 and Monmouth County GOP primary.
If you missed the opportunity for a free 2013 tax return in exchange for canvassing for the candidates, freeholder candidate Ed Pekarsky has a new deal for you!
Join the phone bank team at the BTPG bunker on Thursday and Pekarsky will review your retirement plan and investment portfolio. Bring your statements with you.
Do you know what investments are in your 401K, IRA, Roth IRA or investment accounts? Bring your monthly statement and let Freeholder candidate and BTPG member Ed Pekarsky evaluate your investment portfolio.
He will provide an informal portfolio analysis and go over the investment holdings, along with discussing your allocation strategy. We should all know where our hard earned money is invested, let him assist with some of your financial planning needs.
John Loffredo (Forward Asbury Park ticket) and Amy Quinn (One Asbury ticket) are the top guns in the Asbury Park City Council race. That’s not news for me; I’ve known it for years and have let them both know they should be together.
In fact, I thought it was a foregone conclusion that they would run together since it makes so much sense. Had I known they would overlook the obvious I would have lobbied them vigorously over the past 4 years to create a political marriage (or civil union, if that’s your preference).
Just look at the last election. Tickets make it easier for candidates to win, particularly weaker candidates, but Amy Quinn fell just short of being elected while running as an independent. That means she carries a great deal of support on her own, perhaps as much as any individual candidate running this year.
How Loffredo didn’t see the benefits of scooping up Quinn and all her support befuddles me. She was clearly the off-season prize; the league’s most valuable free agent. How Quinn didn’t see the benefits of picking up support from the team who won for the past dozen years amazed me more. It’s like she passed up an opportunity with the Yankees to start her own team. That hasn’t worked out well for the Mets, has it?
Two weeks ago MMM gave the Trenton GOP a head slap over their idiotic strategy of trying to pick up seats in the Legislature by running against Corzine Democrats.
Evidently, someone heard us.
The Assembly Republic Victory Fund is paying PolitickerNJ to run their video, The New Republicans-Coming to a Voting Booth Near You
Call that a good first step. But it’s far from a winning strategy.
Back in February 2009 I had the honor of being one of 10-15 people in the country that was on the conference calls that planned the first round of tea party protests. There were only 50 cities and in Orlando, where I was organizing our rally, we only had about 100 people. From the beginning we developed a set of core values for the tea party that many groups ended up adopting. It was actually Justin from Cincinnati that came up with “fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets”. Many tea party web sites you visit will have those core values listed. I don’t know if the bayshore group uses the core values or not but it doesn’t matter if they do or not because those values become the core of the movement. How the bayshore group could so ignore these core values in their selection of endorsements astounds me.
The fact that they have decided to run against Declan O’Scanlon shows that they have different reasons for picking their endorsements. Our group in Orlando, and most tea party groups I know, encourage people to learn about all the candidates and talk to them. Ask them questions. Then decide. We avoided telling people who to vote for because that is the very thing that the establishment we hate so much does. Full disclosure: I worked for Declan for about 2 years in his legislative office. But I am not writing this article because I worked for Declan. In fact, it is quite the contrary. I worked for Declan because he is the kind of legislator about whom I would write such an article.
O’Scanlon calls on Bayshore Tea Party and their slate to withdraw support for Peters
Dan Peters
Three time Monmouth County Sheriff Candidate Dan Peters worked as an Account Executive for RedFlex, the ‘traffic safety’ company that has been implicated in an ongoing federal criminal investigation into a $2 million bribery scheme in Chicago.
Peters’ LinkedIn profile included the job on his resume from 2010-2011 yesterday afternoon. Today, the job has was removed from his LinkedIn profile. MoreMonmouthMusings called Peters twice yesterday and once this morning to ask him about his resume and education. He did not return the calls.
Peters admitted to working for the company on Saturday May 4 while speaking before a group of activists from Campaign for Liberty, according to Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon. O’Scanlon, the New Jersey champion of the fight against red light cameras, was an invited speaker for the group’s meeting. Peters and the LD 13 Tea Party backed candidates also spoke at the event which was held in Hightstown.
Monmouth County Democrat Chairman Vin Gopal told MMM that a representative of the Bellew for Senate campaign reached out to him for financial support and help in generating publicity for the Bayshore Tea Party backed slate of candidates in the 13th Legislative District Republican Primary. “We need help getting the truth out,” Gopal said the operative pleaded.
The campaign operative, who Gopal said is close to Bellew but not so involved with BTPG, said the campaign was having difficulty raising money, recruiting volunteers and getting positive press.
“I turned him down,” said Gopal, “this is a primary between two Conservative Republican tickets. It’s not our fight.
“Kyrillos may have run as a moderate in the U.S. Senate campaign last year,” Gopal added,” but based upon his voting record in the legislature, he is a Conservative as far as I am concerned. He’s voted against abortion rights, marriage equality rights and the millionaires tax.
“I’m glad to see the Republicans spending money fighting with each other instead of coming after us.”
MMM called Bellew, her campaign manager Dwayne Horner, and BTPG co-founder Barbara Gonzalez for comment. None have returned the call.
What’s a “messenger ballot?” Excuse me if my answer is a bit sketchy, but I’m just learning about it from a group of bad guys who appear to be illegally exploiting it.
I don’t know if other states are doing this, the history of it, the need for it, etc., but here in New Jersey we are learning the perils of not having people show up to vote in person and present identification.
Apparently a “messenger ballot” is allowed when one person acts as a “messenger” for a voter, picks up forms for the voter to be allowed to vote by messenger, then votes for the voter by absentee ballot.
Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
Does the phrase “penchant for fraud” even cross the minds of legislatures when passing such a statute? Or, in a Democrat-controlled legislature like New Jersey, is fraud the goal?
Goal or not, it certainly seems to be the result in Asbury Park, a city poorer than most and more liberal than San Francisco (with a fraction of the feigned sophistication).
Residents of Asbury Park vote for their entire governing body (5 people) all at once, in an off year and in May — when no one is paying attention.
There are 22 people running this year – four “tickets” of 5 people and 2 independents.
State Senate primary candidate Leigh-Ann Bellew owes her supporters, and the voters of the 13th Legislative District, the truth about her resume. Any candidate’s educational and employment history is an important consideration for voters to take into account when choosing their nominees and elected officials. Bellew is asking Republican voters to fire an long term and distinguished incumbent in Senator Joe Kyrillos, and to hire her instead. In order for her candidacy to be taken seriously, she needs to be transparent about her education, career and character.
Bellew has gone into hiding since the questions about her resume and education have become public. When the questions about her legal education arose in early April, Bellew told MMM that she graduated from law school in Texas but never took the bar exam. She said she went to work in customer service for American Express rather than pursue a career as a lawyer, and then exited the work force to raise her children.
However, since PolitickerNJ questioned the veracity of her resume, Bellew has stopped returning MMM’s repeated phone calls. Her campaign manager, Dwayne Horner, has not been able to provide answers.
Bellew, her running mates and campaign volunteers have been distorting Kyrillos’s record. Kyrillos is a moderate, but he is not a tax and borrow liberal as the Bayshore Tea Party Group backed ticket is claiming. Kryillos does not support partial birth abortion and death panels, as the duplicitous literature the BTPG backed campaign has been distributing claims.
If a candidate or campaign is going to take liberties with the truth about their opponent’s record, they at the very least should have the decency to be transparent about something as basic about their own education and career.
Leigh-Ann Bellew can put an end to all of this nonsense over her past by simply proving she has the degrees she has claimed she has. She should do that immediately. If Bellew has embellished her past, she should come clean about that and explain herself.
Worse for ‘Dawn Quixote’ Buono, as she was dubbed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, she can’t raise the money needed to increase her name ID and message. Numerous media reports indicate that Buono will likely be the first major party nominee not to qualify for the maximum in New Jersey’s state matching fund program for gubernatorial candidates.
