Governor Chris Christie continues to enjoy sky high approval ratings among New Jersey voters and is heavily favored to be reelected in November, according to a Farleigh Dickinson University Public Mind Poll released this morning.
66% of New Jersey voters, including 55% of Democrats and 61% of Independents approve of the governor’s job performance. If the election were held today, Christie would defeat presumptive Democratic nominee Barbara Buono by 58%-22% with 20% unsure. Christie would garner 36% of the Democratic vote.
48% say they like the Christie personally and like his policies. 18% like him, but not his policies. 12% don’t like the man, but like his policies and 17% don’t like him or his policies. 5% are comatose and were awakened by the pollster’s phone call.
The Committee is comprised on one male and one female from each New Jersey county. The members are elected by Republican voters in the June primary. Primary challenges are rare with the members typically being chosen by the County Committee.
Hanlon and her fellow State Committee Member John Bennett squared off in the race to replace Joe Oxley as Monmouth Republican Chairman last June. Bennett prevailed by 3 votes out of 615 cast. Since then, Hanlon has been the consummate team player. She is an attorney with Archer & Greiner’s Shrewsbury office, serves as the Deputy Municipal Attorney of Tinton Falls, the Atlantic Highlands Prosecutor and a Commissioner of the Monmouth County Board of Elections.
Bayshore Tea Party co-founder Bob Gordon told MoreMonmouthMusings that he would recommend that the groups’s candidates for the Legislature from the 13th district, sheriff and freeholder not file as candidates in the June 4 Republican primary if GOP Chairman John Bennett would allow the candidates onto the March 23 County Convention ballot without having to submit the signatures required under the new by-laws to challenge incumbents. He would not guarantee that the so far unnamed challengers would abide by the results of the convention and not file for the primary if they lose in Colts Neck on the 23rd. “That would be up to the candidates,” he said.
Gordan said that county committee members inclined to support the Tea Party challengers are reluctant to sign convention petitions for fear that they will be challenged in the next committee election in 2014.
The deadline to submit petitions for the convention ballot passed last week. Primary petitions are due on April 1.
Neither Gordon nor fellow co-founder Barbara Gonzalez would name the potential challengers. Gordon said that there is a full slate of candidates to take on Senator Joe Kyrillos and Assembly Members Amy Handlin and Declan O’Scanlon in the 13th district. On the county level, Sheriff Shaun Golden faces a challenge while Freeholder Director Tom Arnone and Deputy Director Serena DiMaso may only have one challenger, if the candidates file.
Save Jersey is reporting that East Brunswick Mayor David Stahl is endorsing Governor Chris Christie for reelection, leaving the Democratic Party and will run for the State Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Buono. Buono will be the Democratic nominee for governor, unless Carl Bergmanson or Willie Arajuo beat her in the June 4 primary.
Stahl is the third Democratic mayor to endorse Christie’s reelection. He is the first to join the GOP and become a Christie running mate.
Middlesex County Republican Chairman, Senator Sam Thompson told MMM that Stahl has his “100% support.” “I can’t think of anyone better to win Buono’s seat,” said Thompson, “Stahl was reelected in East Brunswick last year by a wider margin that Obama won the town.”
Christie narrowly won the normally Democratic Middlesex County in 2009. Thompson said the GOP will field its strongest legislative ticket in memory in an effort to sweep the 7 districts that represent his county.
Stahl will make his formal announcement tomorrow morning, 10:30 am, at the Colonial Diner on Route 18, according to SaveJersey.
Senate President Steve Sweeney has been waging a little noticed campaign over the last few weeks to get Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr to commit not to accept campaign contributions from Ashbritt and other contractors who cleaned up New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy.
This morning, Sweeney ramped up the campaign with a video parody of the viral Harlem Shake.
Harlem Shake is owned by songwriter Harry Bauer Rodrigues, who records under the name “Baauer”and the record label Mad Decent.
The song’s viral popularity in recents weeks has spurred claims of copyright infringement on the part of artists whose voices are in the song who have not been credited or compensated by Baauer or Mad Decent, according to the New York Times On the flip side, Mad Decent and Baauer stand to collect millions of dollars from people, like Sweeney, who “steal” their song, according to Hollywood Reporter. YouTube and a company called INDMusic have created a program, ContentID, to track copyright piracy and collect from the offenders.
MMM wondered if Sweeney’s video was funded by New Jersey taxpayers and if the Senate President had obtained a license from Mad Decent for the use of the song. The YouTube channel that hosts the song is called NJSenDemsMajority, a similar name to the state funded website, njsendems.com.
MMM called Sweeney’s West Deptford and Trenton offices to find out. Within a half hour, a well known political hired gun who asked not to be named in this story called back.
Monmouth County Republican Chairman John Bennett announced this morning that Governor Chris Christie will be on hand to accept the party’s nomination for reelection when the Committee convenes at Colts Neck High School on Saturday, March 23.
In an email to County Committee members, Bennett said that he was hopeful that all members would be able to join him in nomination Christie, Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno and all incumbent legislative and county candidates.
The Bayshore Tea Party Group is preparing a primary slate to challenge 13th district legislators, Senator Joe Kyrillos and Assembly Members Amy Handlin and Declan O’Scanlon, and county office holders, Sheriff Shaun Golden and Freeholders Tom Arnone and Serena DiMaso, according to the group’s co-founder Barbara Gonzalez.
Gonzalez told MoreMonmouthMusings that the group has six candidates who are clearing their potential candidacies with their families and employers. She wouldn’t name any of the candidates but expects to make a formal announcement next week. If the slate declares, they will bypass the Monmouth GOP convention on March 23 and file to run in the June 4 Republican primary.
Gonzalez said that former Highlands Mayor Anna Little, who twice ran and won in Congressional primaries with the group’s backing, is not one of the candidates.
Governor Chris Christie blasted Washington over sequestration and the general state of dysfunction in the national capitol during a press conference at Metropolitan Family Health Network, Women’s Health and Pediatrics Unit in Jersey City this morning.
Former Massachusetts U.S. Senator Scott Brown is hosting a fundraiser on Friday night in Boston for Governor Chris Chrisite’s reelection campaign, according to the Associated Press.
Brown was a model while in law school. During his reelection campaign, which he lost to Elizabeth Warren, Warren noted that she kept her clothes on while financing her college education. Scott retorted, “Thank God.”
We’re similarly grateful that Christie kept his clothes on while working his way through school.
Back in 2004, Save Jerseyans, your Blogger-in-Chief was an undergraduate at Washington, D.C.’s Catholic University of America when a couple other friends and I interned at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
It was an amazing experience for a wide-eyed young conservative nerd to interact with so many distinguished politicians, media personalities and career activists in one place.
It was also a very different time in the Republican Party, and I discovered a healthy level of intellectual diversity on display from the right-of-center CPAC attendees. Libertarians, neocons, paleocons, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives from across the country mixed, drank, shared cabs, and downed hot dogs while discussing equally hot races in long book signing queques.
The common thread among the CPAC patrons? A healthy disdain for large, active, expensive and intrusive federal governance.
