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The Office of Legislative Services released a report this morning stating that New Jersey’s state government revenues for last fiscal year were $253 million short of the Christie administration’s projections. Last month OLS said the FY2012 shortfall was $542 million.
The Obama campaign is so confident of winning New Jersey comfortably that the prime responsibility of its New Jersey staffers is to recruit volunteers to go to Pennsylvania for the rest of the campaign, according to a high level Democrat who spoke to MMM on the condition of anonymity.
“Menendez will win by at least 10 points,” said the source, “the internal numbers have Obama up by 18 and Menendez up by 12. Elsewhere in the country, the Senate and Congressional candidates are doing better than Obama, but not in Jersey. Menendez needs Obama’s coattails, but he’ll have them.”
The source said Menendez is working harder than he ever has in his life. “He’s out shaking hands with commuters every day at 5:30am and doesn’t stop campaigning until midnight.”
“We don’t see Kyrillos working that hard,” the source said as a dig to the GOP challenger.
Menendez 2012 Communications Director Paul Brubaker has still not called back.
Middletown, September 10… Today the Joe Kyrillos for U.S. Senate campaign formally announced that attorney Lawrence E. Bathgate II, of Lakewood, has been named Finance Chairman.
“Susan and I could not be more pleased and humbled that such a well-respected and influential fundraiser, business and community leader, has joined our ranks as Finance Chairman,” said Senator Joe Kyrillos. “My friend, Larry Bathgate is a man of integrity, and I know with his hard work and leadership, we will have the means necessary to beat our opponent, Bob Menendez, in November. I appreciate his acknowledgment of how important this election is not only to the future of our state, but also of our nation. Larry brings decades of experience to my campaign and will be a tremendous leader of our finance team.”
“I know that Joe Kyrillos is the right man to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate,” said Mr. Larry Bathgate. “I am proud to join the Kyrillos team and together, we will bring the same kind of reform that Joe Kyrillos has brought to New Jersey’s capital to the nation’s capital.”
Mr. Bathgate served as Republican National Finance Chairman under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and also served in the same capacity for Governor Tom Kean. He is the co-founder and senior managing partner of the Bathgate, Wegener and Wolf law firm and has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal.
Kyrillos calls on U.S. Senator to defend his 20 year record in Washington
Is Bob Menendez planning to dance back into office without defending his record and debating his opponent?
That seems to be his strategy so far. Menendez refused to accept a written challenge to debate from GOP nominee Joe Kyrillos last month. This morning, the Kyrillos campaign announced that Menendez is also ignoring media and academic invitations to debate. Menendez has not responded to then following invitations according to the Kyrillos release:
1. League of Women Voters/WPVI-TV, WABC-TV, and Univision
2. The Record/FIOS 1 News
3. Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show/WNYC Radio and NJPR AM Radio
4. William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey/ NJTV
5. Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey/Jewish Standard News
6. The Uribe Society/Hudson County TV
“One of us will be the next United States Senator from New Jersey,” said Senator Joe Kyrillos. “New Jerseyans need to know our position on the issues before, not after the election. I’m ready to talk about my record of saving New Jersey taxpayers $11.9 billion in new taxes and bringing bipartisan reform to Trenton. I’m proud of my record and it’s time for Senator Menendez to stop running from and defend his.”
MMM left a voice mail for Menendez 2012 Communications Director Paul Brubaker asking if Menendez would be accepting any of these invitations. Brubaker has yet to respond. Nor has he called back, as promised, for comment on the polls that were released last week.
Prior to last month the buzz about Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s future was that he would run for U.S. Senate in 2014, challenging Senator Frank Launtenberg if necessary. Booker opened a federal PAC last year and Lautenberg has been sniping at him ever since.
But in the weeks leading up to the convention Booker met with county chairs to plant the seeds of a gubernatorial run against Governor Chris Christie last year. In Charlotte he went into full campaign mode without making an announcement. In the process he made himself the front runner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2013. A Booker candidacy for governor will clear the Democratic field. Without Booker in the race there will be a contentious primary. Senators Dick Codey, Barbara Buono and Steve Sweeney could be contenders. Assemblymen John Wisniewski and Lou Greenwald are acting like candidates. Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage says he will run if Booker doesn’t.
None of the other potential candidates will be able to gain any traction until Booker makes his intentions clear.
As a nod to Booker’s front runner status, Quinnipiac polled a Christie/Booker match up. Christie won the poll by 7%, but Booker’s name was recognised by 60% of those polled. That is an extraordinary high number for a New Jersey politician who has never run a statewide race. Booker has better name recognition than Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno. He is as well known and better liked than U.S. Senator Bob Menendez.
Booker told the New Jersey delegation in Charlotte that Christie can be beat and that he is only governor because urban Democrats didn’t come out to vote for Jon Corzine in 2009. The implication is that he can get urban voters out, regardless of the desires of Democratic bosses George Norcross in the south and Joe DiVincenzo in the north who didn’t rev their machines for Corzine in 09.
Yesterday in Ohio, in a town called Seaman, Vice President Joe Biden channeled former President Bill Clinton while campaigning in a diner.
I wonder how those biker dudes would have reacted if the Secret Service hadn’t been there. Then again, maybe they were undercover Secret Service agents.
Biden opened his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention with a effusive expression of his love for his wife, Jill. “I love you,” Biden professed to 20,000 in the convention hall and a national TV audience, “you’re the love of my life and the life of my love.”
FREEHOLD, NJ – It is with profound sadness that Monmouth County announces the untimely passing of William K. “Bill” Heine, the county Director of Public Information.
Bill’s untimely passing was the result of natural causes.
Bill had been employed with Monmouth County as the chief spokesman and department head of the Monmouth County Public Information and Tourism Departments since 2005.
Bill also championed many charitable endeavors to include many food drives for the Monmouth and Ocean Food Bank and the Howell Little League.
Bill was recently honored for winning a nationwide photography contest sponsored by the National Association of County Information Officers for his photograph taken during a 10th anniversary memorial service for 9-11. He was the recipient of many other state and national awards for his work in the county’s public information program.
Prior to his employment with Monmouth County, Bill served as the spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance and State of New Jersey Public Defenders Office. He was also a reporter and editor for the Asbury Park Press from 1980 to 1997.
Bill was a consummate professional and touched many people on both a personal and professional level. Bill’s keen wit, intellect and attention to detail will be sadly missed by everyone who came into contact with Bill. He worked on many projects to recently include formulating a communications strategy for all of county government operations. Bill worked very closely with the five freeholders and the county administrator.
Funeral arrangements have not been confirmed at this time. Information will be posted to the county website when they become available.
Bob Woodward’s new book, “The Price of Politics” may do more to threaten President Obama’s reelection than the anemic jobs reports.
Obama may be a great orator with a clever campaign, but Woodward’s book depicts his White House as dysfunctional and disorganized. The president himself is depicted as aloof and unable to develop the relationships necessary to lead the nation. Congressional leaders of his own party, Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate, have little regard for Obama’s leadership abilities.
The book focuses on the debt ceiling crisis that the nation face during the summer of 2011. A crisis that was so serious that “they wouldn’t tell the world how bad in was at the time,” according to Woodward in a interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that will be aired Monday night.
As I was reading several reviews of the book I was reminded of Governor Chris Christie’s frequent criticism of Obama’s lack of leadership and inability to work across the aisle. It’s worse than Chrisite imagined. Harry Reid asked Obama to leave the room, at a meeting Obama called of congressional leaders at the White House, so that the congressional leaders could hammer out a deal to avert our nation defaulting on its debt that Obama would have no choice but to sign. Earlier in the Obama administration, Nancy Pelosi muted a conference call from Obama while she and Reid were together working on details of the stimulus package so that the president wouldn’t know that he did not have their undivided attention for his pontification. Clint Eastwood was right. The chair is empty and even the national Democratic congressional leaders know it.
The mainstream media’s coverage of the book may be more damaging to Obama’s reelection chances than the content of the book itself.
Reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post read like the reviewers compared notes before publication. They are trying to suppress sales by depicting the book as boring and a rehash of previous reporting. Yet they have enough integrity to report Woodward’s conclusion:
“It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition.
“But presidents work their will — or should work their will — on the important matters of national business. There is occasional discussion in this book about Presidents Reagan and Clinton, what they did or would have done. Open as both are to serious criticism, they nonetheless largely worked their will.
“Obama has not. The mission of stabilizing and improving the economy is incomplete.”
But ABC is giving Woodward prime coverage of the book on Monday night in a intervew with Sawyer during “World News Tonight” and “Nightline.” Woodward will sit down with George Stephanopolous live on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, September 11, the day the book is release.
