The Quinnipiac poll released this morning has some encouraging news for State Senator Joe Kyrillos and his supporters as they campaign to unseat U.S. Senator Bob Menendez in November.
Menendez’s lead over Monmouth County’s favorite son is down to single digits, 44%-35%, with 18% undecided or not saying. A February poll by Quinnipiac had the race at 49%-34% .
Menendez’s favorability and familiarity ratings remain anemic for an incumbent. 35% of voters have a favorable opinion of Menendez, 27% have an unfavorable view and 37% haven’t heard enough about him. In February, 38% approved of Menendez, 24% didn’t and 36% didn’t know enough. If this trend holds, Menendez is in trouble.
Kyrillos remains largely unknown, but the trends are in his favor. In today’s poll 14% view Kyrillos favorably, 6% don’t and 79% don’t know enough about him. In February 82% didn’t know enough about Kyrillos to form an opinion, 11% approved of him and 6% didn’t.
Perhaps more encouraging for Kyrillos than the head to head numbers against Menendez are the poll results of the presidential campaign.
Quinnipiac says that Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney by 9 points in New Jersey, 49%-40%. The presidential race in NJ tightens to 49%-42% if Governor Chris Christie is the VP nominee.
Obama won the popular vote in New Jersey by 15% in 2008. NJ’s GOP leadership expects that he will take our electoral votes again. However, they believe that if the race is within single digits, that Kyrillos can unseat Menendez.
Administrative Law Judge Jeff S. Masin ruled that Barack Obama is eligible to appear on the Democratic primary ballot, according to a report on Conservative News and Views.
Mario Apuzzo, Esq., argued for the objectors to Obama’s petitions yesterday at a hearing presided over by Masin. Alexandra Hill of Genova, Burn and Giantomasi argued for Obama.
Apuzzo has a write up of the proceedings on his blog.
CNV reports that Masin informed Apuzzo of his decision on the telephone at 7PM last evening and gave him a two hour deadline to file an exception to the ruling.
Apuzzo took exception to the following:
Judge Masin ruled that Obama was born in Hawaii with no evidence on record, after acknowledging that fact during the hearing.
Judge Masin ruled that Obama need not comply with statute to show that he is eligible, solely because he need not “consent” to someone circulating a nominating petition for him.
The judge suggested that Obama might have to show eligibility later. He laid no basis for such a ruling.
The judge misread the precedents and gave short shrift to the historical evidence that the Framers of the Constitution defined “natural-born citizen” as one born in-country to two citizen parents. Apuzzo devoted half of his 30-page exception to this analysis alone.
Apuzzo plans to appeal to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court.
59% of New Jersey voters approve of the job that Governor Chris Christie is doing, according to a Quinnipiac Poll released this morning. 36% disapprove.
Republicans approve of the governor’s performance by 92%-6%. Independents approve by 64%-32%. Democrats disapprove by 64%-30%.
Women give Christie positive marks at a rate of 52%-42%. Yet the gender gap remains. Men approve of Christie’s performance by a measure of 67%-30%.
New Jersey’s traditionally Democratic urban areas are evenly split in their assessment of the governor’s job performance. Christie scored 48%-48% in the cities. “Philly Land” approves by 55%-38%, suburan areas approve by 60%-36%, ex-urban by 67%-29% and the shore by 65%-31%.
Tax decreases are popular in New Jersey.
Voters approve of the way Christie is handling the state budget by 58%-35% and approve of his proposed 10% across the board income tax cut by 54%- 32%. Voter also like Senate President Sweeney’s 10% property tax cut for residents earning less than $250,000 per year by 57%-24%. If we have to choose, we prefer Sweeney’s plan by 49%-38%.
Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,607 registered voters between April 3-9. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.4 %.
The New York Times is reporting that former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator will announce that he is suspending his campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination this afternoon.
The group that exposed corruption at ACORN and Planned Parenthood has exposed how ludicrous it is that the Obama administration is squashing state Voter ID laws .
Watch a Project Veritas volunteer being offered U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s ballot to vote in the DC presidential primary.
Like Kane, Politikernj and The Star Ledger framed their articles as if the PACs set up to funnel campaign donations from engineers, lawyers and their firms to political campaigns were doing something scandalous. Each of the articles acknowledges that the contributions are legal, yet they say that the donors “skirt” or “cloud” the law or that the contributors are “buying” the candidates that ultimately benefit from the contributions.
The real scandal is that campaign finance laws at every level of government, federal, state, county and local, that are ostensibly designed to eliminate the influence of money in our political system and to increase transparency actually have the opposite effect, by design.
Money is like air and water. Set up a structure to restrict it and money, like air and water, will find a crack in the structure to get to where it wants to go. With enough pressure the structure breaks. Fix or reform the structure and the cycle repeats itself.
Our campaign finance laws decrease transparency in the process. Kane and the reporters from Politickernj and The Star Ledger spent many unproductive hours combing through ELEC reports of campaigns and PACS to connect the dots. Not many people have the time or resources to make that effort. Kane, Politickernj and The Star Ledger reporters did us all a service by connecting those dots. It is appropriate for the public to know who is financing the campaigns of their candidates for public office.
Restricting the amount of money that a person or entity can contribute to a campaign is inappropriate. Such restrictions are impediments to free speech and push otherwise well meaning people out of the political process or into breaking ill conceived and complex laws. Such restrictions don’t and won’t keep “bad money” out of the process.
The only way to increase transparency in the process is to require immediate disclosure of campaign contributions. Removing the limits that candidates and campaigns can accept would reduce the utility of PAC, Super PACs, etc.
Creating a simple system of full disclosure would increase participation in the political process. It would increase competition among government contractors and professionals. It would make the entire process more democratic, which is probably why we won’t see such a simple system anytime soon, if ever.
In the unlikely event that any of the challenges to Barack Obama’s candidacy for a second term makes it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and succeeds, then what?
Before the case even got that far, would Judges and Justices appointed by Obama be eligible to hear and rule on the issue? Can you imagine Hannity or Limbaugh if they do rule? Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann (if he gets a job) if they don’t?
If Obama is ruled ineligible to serve as President of the United States, is he immediately removed from office? If so, who becomes President? If Obama’s 2008 election was invalid, it seems that Joe Biden’s election as Vice President would also be invalid. Next in line would be House Speaker John Boehner.
If John Boehner assumes the presidency, would the GOP nominate him as the 2012 candidate? Boehner isn’t ready to retire. Why would he want to give up the Speakership in order to be President for a few months. Would Boehner appoint Mitt Romney as Vice President? Would the Senate confirm Romney? Would Romney accept the job?
Would Boehner pardon Obama?
Who do the Democrats nominate for President? Biden? The party never warmed to him as a presidential candidate in his multiple tries. Hillary Clinton? John Kerry? Al Gore? Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton? Keith Ellison (a real American Muslim)? Cory Booker? Dennis Kucinich?
What happens to all the laws, executive orders and appointments that Obama signed? Is ObamaCare the law? Are Sonya Sotomayor and Eleana Kagan Supreme Court Justices? Did Sandra Fluke really need all of that birth control?
Obama hasn’t signed a budget sinced he’s been President, but is the debt ceiling valid? Is all of that debt backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America?
Would Obama owe the U.S. Treasury his salary, rent on the White House? Would he have to reimburse the Treasury for his security and vacations? Does he has to reimburse all his donors from the 2008 and 2012 campaigns?
I can understand why Judges would look for procedural or jurisdictional grounds not to hear such a case.
What would be better for the country? To pursue the issues raised by the Objectors or look the other way?
Two New Jersey residents, a Republican from Monmouth County and a Democrat from Ocean County, have filed an objection to Barack Obama’s name being placed on the New Jersey Democratic primary ballot and the general election ballot for the office of President of the United States, according to a story first reported on Conservative News and Views.
Nicholas Purpura, the Republican, and Theodore Moran, the Democrat are represented by Attorney Mario Appuzzo of Jamesburg. They filed their objection to Obama’s candidacy with the New Jersey Division of Elections on April 5. A copy of the objection can be downloaded here.
There is a plenary hearing is scheduled before an Administrative Judge at the Office of Administrative Law in Mercerville on Tuesday April 10, 10am, according to Appuzzo.
The Objection to Obama’s nominating petition is that he has not provided competent and sufficient evidence to the New Jersey Secretary of State showing his identity and that he was born in the United States, and that even if he were born in the United States, he is not and cannot be an Article II “natural born Citizen” because he was not born to two U.S. citizen parents. The Objection therefore demands that the Secretary of State not permit Obama’s name to be printed on the primary and general election ballot.
The Star Ledger’s Tom Moran is back to his old tricks of using the race card while attempting to advance his political agenda.
In early 2010, shortly after Governor Chris Christie took office, Moran tried to derail the Christie administration by teaming up with Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver to call Christie and his team “…white men, most of them political neophytes…” who never rode a bus and couldn’t understand how their deeply their economic policies were impacting “working poor families.”
Moran did that before he realized that Christie is a “force of nature who could probably make a dog sing if he put his mind to it.”
In a column posted on Tuesday that defends the President’s constitutional pronouncements about the Supreme Court’s right to overturn ObamaCare Moran employed Jeanane Garofalo’s tactic of accusing Obama’s critics of being racist.
Because Moran is smarter and prettier, his accusation is sublter than Garofalo’s crude remarks, yet it is no less offensive:
Obama went on to make an important point: That if the court overrules the health care law, it will be practicing judicial activism. Conservatives have been complaining about judicial activism since the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow segregation laws in the South, and the heat rose considerably after Roe v. Wade.
Maybe fellow Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine can explain the difference between judicial activistism and constructionism to Moran.
Activistism is when a Court finds, invents or redefines a constitutional provision in order to make new law that is consistent with its political or ideological preference. That is what the U.S. Supreme Court did in Roe v Wade and what the NJ Supreme Court did in the Abbott decisions.
Constructionism is what a court does when it decides that the legislative or executive branches exceeded the power granted to them in the Constitution, like mandating people buy something they don’t want.
Moran, like Obama, probably knows the difference. Also like Obama, he probably just doesn’t think the Constitution is that important. That’s OK for Moran who hasn’t sworn to protect and defend the Constitution. It’s not OK for the President who has sworn that oath.
The race card worked well for liberals in 2008. The invoked it successfully to mute Obama’s poltical opponents in the Democratic primary and during the general election. They appealed to ‘white guilt” to get Obama elected. It was a disgusting and effective strategy.
But the race card is played out. It didn’t work in the politicization of the Trayvon Martin tragedy. It didn’t work when Garofalo played it. It didn’t work in 2010.
Moran should stop playing the race card. Conservative opposition to ObamaCare has nothing to do with the Jim Crow laws, just as Governor Christie’s economic policies have nothing to do with how many of his cabinet members and staffers have ever ridden a bus.
Moran’s job is the inform, educate and persuade. He should leave the obfuscation to politicians, activists and B-rate entertainers looking for their next gig.
The Republican Party will have primaries in both congressional districts that include Monmouth County on June 5.
Anna Little, the 2010 nominee in the 6th congressional district, will have the party line in Middlesex County. Little filed petitions with the Secretary of State with 594 signatures. Ernesto Cullari has the party line in Monmouth County. He filed petitions with 319 signatures. The winner of their primary will face Congressman Frank Pallone in the general election.
In the 4th congressional district, Congressman Chris Smith is being challenged by Terrence McGowan. Smith filed with 1,064 signatures to McGowan’s 311. 200 signatures are required.
Brian Froelich of Spring Lake is the only Democrat who filed in the 4th district.
In the 7th district, Congressman Leonard Lance is being challenged by David Larsen in a head to head rematch of the 2010 primary that included two additional challengers. Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula is the Democratic nominee. He filed with 430 signatures.
The statewide list of congressional primary candidates can be found here.
