With Governor Chris Christie racking up endorsements from Democratic elected officials, State Senator Barbara Buono, the cash strapped presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, has resorted to false advertising on facebook.
She is claiming Republican blogger Art Gallagher’s endorsement.
Gallagher is the publisher of MoreMonmouthMusings and a frequent contributor to SaveJersey.
Rather than protest or “unlike” Barbarba Buono for NJ, Gallagher encourages his facebook friends and followers to click on the link when they see it. “By clicking on Barbara Buono’s ad, her campaign will be charged more money by facebook,” Gallagher said to himself while writing this article, “that will weaken her campaign further and give facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg more money to donate to Christie.”
Yet, good news for Trenton Democrats—the NJ Republicans are trying to lose
By Art Gallagher
State Senator Barbara Buono, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, received two doses of bad news today (so far) for her fledgling campaign to unseat Governor Chris Christie in November.
1) A Quinnipiac poll released today indicates that Buono has made no progress over the last month in increasing her dismal name recognition. 78% of those polled don’t know enough about Buono to form an opinion. That compares to 79% last month. Of the few who recognize her name, 43% have an unfavorable opinion.
Christie’s numbers remain amazingly strong. 67% approve of the job he is doing as governor. 66% says he deserves to be reelected. In a head to head match up with Buono, Christie wins 58%-26%, with 13% out to lunch.
2) Even worse for Buono, PolitickerNJ reports that she is likely to be the only major party gubernatorial candidate in the history of New Jersey’s matching funds campaign program not to qualify for the maximum amount. PolitickerNJ said that Buono has raised only $29,000 per week since she declared her candidacy in December. In order to earn the maximum $2 million in state matching funds for the primary, she would have to raise $216,000 per week over the next six weeks of the primary campaign.
Christie has opted out of the state matching funds program and has raised upwards of $5 million to date for the primary.
Trenton Republicans Trying to Lose
With Chrisite’s polling and financial numbers so strong, one would think that the Trenton Democrats that control the legislature would be concerned about Christie coattails. Trenton Republicans seem enthused about the prospect of taking control of the legislature, but so far their campaign is deploying the stupidest strategy imaginable.
I’m not a professional political strategist, I just play one of the Internet. In my not so humble opinion the NJ GOP‘s campaign against Corzine Democrats is the dumbest political strategy since Christine O’Donnell declared she is not a witch.
Last September Steve Lonegan addressed a group at Montclair State University. During his presentation, a fat guy asked Lonegan about his famous 2006 billboard controversy. In case you forgot, Lonegan gained widespread press coverage in 06 for asking McDonalds to remove a billboard written in Spanish from a Bogota roadside. Lonegan was mayor of Bogota at the time.
The fat Montclair State student proceeded to heckle Lonegan, calling him a racist and a shameful American fascist. Fatboy was escorted from the meeting after he refused to shut up. The incident was captured on video and posted to youtube where as of this writing it has only 510 views. (UPDATE: The fatboy youtube has been set to private)
Evidently fatboy has a fat girl friend. It’s not clear from the video who the girlfriend is, but Joseph Aziz, a graduate student at Montclair got himself into hot water for posting a comment on Youtube that the woman’s legs look like “a pair of bleached hams.” Someone complained to the university administration, according to a surviving reporter at the Star Ledger, They forbade Aziz from having any contact with the fatgirl or from posting her name anywhere on the Internet. MoreMonmouthMusings was going to ask Lonegan if the girl was really fat, but we figured he wouldn’t know.
Aziz later joked about the incident and the fat girl in a facebook group. He said he thought the facebook group was private. Someone sent Aziz’s comments to the Montclair University Internet Police and Aziz was suspended from the university for a year. Karen Pennington, Montclair’s vice president of student development, campus life and manners, cited New Jersery’s Anti-Bullying Law as justification for Aziz’s suspension and for denying his appeal of the suspension. Aziz says the suspension puts his future career as a microbiologists at risk.
MMM has been told that the fatboy who called Lonegan a racist and a shameful American facist while disrupting the event received no disciplinary consequences from the Montclair State administration.
Neither fatboy nor Aziz should have been disciplined by the University. Their friends and families should tell them they were being assholes. The only fascists in this sordid story are the administrators at Montclair who are abusing their power to forward a polictical agenda.
Photo credit: Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association
Neptune Township’s beachfront and boardwalk in the Ocean Grove section of the Township might not get the estimated $3 million in FEMA funding needed to rebuild because the property is owned by the private non-profit and religious Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association (OGCMA), according to an article by freelance journalist Caren Chesler published at NJSpotLight.
Neptune Township Committee Member and Ocean Grove business owner Randy Bishop, as well as Michael Bascom, the Township’s CFO are working with OGCMA to pursuade FEMA to pay for the repairs on the stretch of beach that connects the regional shoreline from Asbury Park south to Spring Lake.
In a press release posted on OGCMA’s website, President Dr. Dale C. Whilden said, “The Camp Meeting is fully committed to restoring Ocean Grove’s beautiful beachfront, a keystone of our community as well as a protection from ocean storms, and we’re on track to implement a comprehensive beach and boardwalk restoration plan. With God’s blessing and the assistance of our local, state and federal officials, as well as support from individuals and organizations, our beach will open on Memorial Day weekend.”
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Marlboro Mayor Jon Hornik told NJ.com that Governor Chris Christie is playing politics by not supporting Marlboro’s decision to post armed police officers at each of their schools as a reaction to the Newtown, CT massacre.
“Unfortunately, I believe that if Governor Christie was not contemplating running for President or was not running for re-election, he would be firmly behind [Marlboro’s actions], but politics has had its influence on him,” said Hornik. “Politics can’t come into play when you’re talking about children’s safety. We need gun control in this country, and we need to get rid of assault weapons and multi-bullet clips. I don’t see a need for them, while recognizing the Second Amendment, at all. But the reality is that guns are out there, right now.”
Since the day after the Newtown shooting, Christie has said that he does not think cops at schools are conductive to the learning environment nor are such deployments the answer answer to mass shootings.
At the press conference for the Belmar boardwalk groundbreaking this week, the governor said that he would not take action to stop communities that decide to have police at their schools.
Middletown Mayor Gerry Scharfenberger told MoreMonmouthMusings that Hornik’s comments sound political. “Maybe Jon’s running for governor,” said Scharfenberger, “his comments sound just plain silly. I don’t hear anything political in what Christie said. He is sharing his philosophy and a lot of people agree with him.”
Hornik told MMM that he’s not running for anything this year. “I doing my job as mayor. No other office excites me. You never know what will come your way, but I am not pursuing anything politically.”
In early December of 2005 I attended the annual holiday gathering of the Monmouth Ocean Development Council. This particular party stands out in my memory of the hundreds of such parties I’ve attended over the years because of the entertainment. A jazz band from New Orleans was touring the country to raise money for the Katrina recovery efforts. Their music was fabulous. Their plea for help is what stuck with me. It was deep, personal and profound. The wreckage seen on television four months earlier was a distant memory for me, until I felt a little of the pain in that band’s plea.
The difference between hearing about and watching news accounts of a devastating hurricance and living through the aftermath of such a catostrophic event is like the difference between watching porn and having sex, though not nearly as fun. It’s not fun at all.
James O’Keefe, the independent journalist and president of Project Veritas who has exposed corruption and malfeasance at ACORN, NPR, the NJEA and Planned Parenthood , released the second video in a series that exposes corruption at SEIU yesterday.
O’Keefe secretly records his meeting with SEIU leaders as he is ostensibly seeking government funding for his project of digging ditches and refilling them.
SEIU Local 617 President Rahaman Muhammad is caught on camera exclaiming that U.S. Senator Bob Menendez would be enthusiastic about the project.
“Menendez is going to be like, ‘Oh for real? SEIU, Oh, good, great!” Muhammad says at the 1:53 mark of the video.
Menendez is not the only politician the union officials discuss. The other is Newark Mayor Cory Booker who fares better, or worse if you believe in wasteful government spending. Booker is not a supporter of the working class, in the assessment of the SEIU officials recorded.
As some national polls show President Obama widening his lead in his race for another term, much has been made about the sampling weights that pollsters use. Analysts on the left insists the polls are accurate. nalysts on the right say the polls are inaccurately favoring Obama by assuming his supporters will come out on election day in the same numbers as they did in 2008.
But its not just weighting that reveals a pollster’s bias. The way the question is asked also makes a difference.
In a Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press poll about the 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial race released this morning, pollster Patrick Murray asked if voters were “bothered” with how Governor Chris Christie interacts with his critics and detractors.
Thinking about Chris Christie’s style and not his policies, does the way he speaks to or about people who disagree with him bother you personally or not bother you? [If BOTHER: Is that a lot or just a little?]
63% of respondents said they weren’t bothered by Christie’s style. 23% said they were bothered a LOT and 11% said they were bothered a LITTLE. Given the way Murray asked the question, one could conclude that 74% of New Jersey voters are indifferent about Christie’s style.
In his narrative of the poll, which sets the tone for how much of the lazy lefty media covers it, Murray highlights his spin on Christie’s style.
“NEW JERSEY ON CHRISTIE’S STYLE: ‘MEH!’ ” is Murray’s headline. His opening sentence:
Governor Chris Christie’s job approval rating has ticked up a few points in the latest Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Polland few New Jerseyans are particularly bothered by the way he deals with people who disagree with him.
Notice the use of the word few.
Christie’s numbers are the highest they ever been in a Monmouth poll. 55% of registered voters approve of the governor’s performance. 36% do not approve.
Yet Murray spins the results to read that a few people like him better and a few people are bothered about how he talks to people who don’t agree with him. The few who are bothered take top billing over the fact disclosed but not reported that Christie’s numbers are better than ever in Murray’s poll.
To their credit, PolitickerNJ cut through Murray’s spin and covers the poll results very well. They reported the real news of the poll results; New Jersey’s sagging economy is not hurting Christie’s popularity with voters and that of potential Democratic challengers in 2013, only Newark Mayor Cory Booker and former acting Governor Richard Codey have sufficient name recognition to be considered credible candidates for governor next year.
What if instead of asking if voters were bothered by Christie’s style, Murray asked if they liked his style? If Murray had done that, the headline would be:
