Chirp Chirp Chirp. Where are the GOP U.S. Senate Candidates? Congressional Candidates?

© Jim Urquhart / Reuters

New Jersey’s Comptroller issued a scathing report yesterday alleging that Newark’s Watershed Director stole millions of dollars during the Booker Administration.

The report included an referral to the Attorney General for a criminal investigation and was sharply critical of Cory Booker, the former Newark Mayor who is now a U.S. Senator, completing the term of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg.

Not a peep out of Murray Sabrin, Brian Goldberg, Rich Pezzullo or any of the other candidates for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate whose names I don’t know.

Yesterday’s news that HUD is preventing victims of Superstorm Sandy from rebuilding their homes is another layup that Republican candidates for federal office, challengers or incumbents, missed.

Joe Kyrillos stepped up about HUD prolonging the agony for New Jersey residents with the strongest statement I’ve heard from him in the eight years I’ve been covering New Jersey  politics.  How about someone who is actually running for office this year stepping up and getting from free media?

Can we get a Republican who wants to be on the ballot this year grow some balls please?

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Murray Sabrin is running for U.S. Senate

Ramapo College Professor Murray Sabrin made it official yesterday.  He is running for the GOP nomination to challenge Senator Cory Booker.

Sabrin made his announcement on NJ 101.5’s Dennis and Judy Show yesterday followed  by a fundraising appeal to supporters via email.

Sabrin’s announcement is an indication that he received sufficient encouragement from Republican county chairmen and other party leaders over the last two weeks since he announced his interest in challenging Booker that believes he has enough support to win the majority of establishment party lines in the primary.  Sabrin told WHDT 9 News, that he would only enter the primary if he had sufficient establishment support to avoid a competitive primary.

As a three time statewide candidate, once for governor as a Libertarian and twice as a Republican primary candidate for U.S. Senate, Sabrin is the favorite to win the GOP nomination by virtue of the name recognition and relationships built during those earlier races.

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Opinion: NJ Republicans and U.S. Senate — The Five-Decade Losing Streak

Opinion: NJ Republicans and U.S. Senate — The Five-Decade Losing Streak (via NJSpotlight)

In any field of human endeavor, a half century of futility, of reaching for a goal, coming tantalizingly close but ultimately falling short, is understandable cause for frustration, discouragement, and a temptation to throw up one’s hands, surrender…

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Murray Sabrin Seeking Support For U.S. Senate Bid

Murray Sabrin, right, with Jay Lassiter, Jeff Gardner, then BlueJersey bloggers, Michael Aron, then of NJN, and MMM publisher Art Gallagher at a November 2010 shooting of Reporters Roundtable.

Murray Sabrin, PhD, the Ramapo College finance professor who challenged Governor Christine Whitman’s 1997 reelection as a Libertarian candidate and sought the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in 2000 and 2008, wants another shot at the seat now occupied by Senator Cory Booker.

The professor has started the process of reaching out to party leaders, previous Republican Senate candidates and county chairmen to gauge and seek their support for the nomination that no mainstream Republican seems to want. Thus far, only little known small businessmen have taken steps to secure the nomination.

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Freehold Businessman Announces U.S. Senate Run

Rich Pezzullo

Monmouth county businessman Rich Pezzullo will throw his hat into the US Senate race in New Jersey during an appearance at the Freehold Township Republican Club tonight , 7 PM, at the Szechuan Star Restaurant in Freehold New Jersey.

Pezzullo, 55, is a IT consultant serving small businesses. He served in the U.S. Army Reserves for 20 years, attaining the rank of Major, according to his campaign website.

In 1997, Pezzullo ran for Governor as the nominee of the New Jersey Conservative Party.

If Pezzullo wins the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, he will attempt to unseat Senator Cory Booker in the November election.

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Doherty Will Not Challenge Booker

State Senator Mike Doherty, considered the most conservative member of the NJ Senate, will not attempt to block U.S. Senator Cory Booker from being elected to his own six year term.

A source close to Doherty told MMM that the senator is focused on his appointment to the State Senate Committee investigating the Christie Administration’s involvement in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal that has become know as Bridgegate. Doherty was one of three Republicans appointed to the seven member committee by Senate President Sweeney yesterday.  Senators Kevin O’Toole (Essex and Passaic) and Gerald Cardinale (Bergen) are the other Republicans on the investigating committee.  The Democrats are Senators Loretta Weinberg (Bergen), the Chair, Nicholas Scutari(Hudson) Nia Gill (Essex) and Linda Greenstein (Mercer and Middlesex).

“Mike would not have accepted that appointment if he were going to run for U.S. Senate,” this source said, “The party is in disarray and the investigation will be time consuming.”

Steve Lonegan,  Booker’s opponent in the Special Election for U.S. Senate last October,  told The Star Ledger that Doherty should run.   Lonegan has announced his candidacy to the House of Representatives seat being vacated by Congressman Jon Runyan in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District.

Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick announced this morning that he would not be challenging Booker.

West Orange businessman Brian Goldberg, a political newcomer, is the only announced Republican candidate to U.S. Senate to date.

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Bramnick Won’t Run For Senate

By Matt Rooney, SaveJersey.com

Asm. Jon Bramnick has shocked the N.J. political world by declining to run for U.S. Senate in 2014, Save Jerseyans, leaving the field wide open…

His statement:

“After thoroughly considering the opportunity to run for United States Senate in 2014, I have decided to remain focused on my role as Assembly Republican Leader. I appreciate the support and enthusiasm offered to me by countless party leaders, elected officials, and devoted volunteers across New Jersey. I look forward to continuing to work with Governor Christie and the dedicated members of the Assembly Republican caucus to advocate for the hardworking taxpayers of our state. “

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Sick of election season? Here are 7 political stories you’ll want to follow after Tuesday

Sick of election season? Here are 7 political stories you’ll want to follow after Tuesday (via NJ.com)

Are you a political junkie weary of campaign season and tired of the barrage of television ads that have assaulted you during your favorite television shows? Ready for it all to be done? Well for those of you who’ve had enough but are not yet ready…

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Front Page News?

The big story in yesterday’s Asbury Park Press was the political spat between southern Jersey lawmakers and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg over the proposed Rutgers-Rowan merger.  Large photos of State Senate President Sweeney and Lautenberg covered most of the front page.

In case you haven’t been following, Governor Chris Christie has proposed reorganizing Rutgers, Rowan and the University of Medicine and Dentistry.  Rutgers-Camden would become part of Rowan. Rowan would get a medical school associated with George Norcross Univeristy Cooper University Hospital.  Robert Wood Johnson Hospital would become part of a medical school at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and it will be a while before there are more UMDNJ indictments.

MMM hasn’t been following it all that much.  Our young legal eagle friends at Save Jersey don’t like it because they think it will devalue their law degrees if they apply to a firm that doesn’t know the difference between Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark.  And then there’s the two idiots who don’t like the deal…that former Navy SEAL that ran for Assembly who got into it with Christie at a Town Hall meeting and Lautenberg.

If not for the idiot SEAL and the idiot U. S. Senator nobody from New Jersey who isn’t directly affected by the merger would know about it, except for news junkies like us.

Lautenberg wrote to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging the proposed merger is improper and copied U.S. Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder and New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Paul “New Jersey is not corrupt” Fishman, thereby implying that the merger is criminal. 

Having already used “idiot” and “numb-nuts” with great fanfare, Christie’s team dubbed Lautenberg’s letter as “outrageous,” “uninformed,” and “bizarre.”

None of that was front page newsworthy.  It took Norcross and Sweeney launching  Sweeney’s 2014 campaign for Launtenberg’s job to make the front page of the APP.

Wednesday morning Sweeney emailed a scathing open letter attacking Lautenberg for opposing the merger and for his failure as a U.S. Senator to bring home Washington money for New Jersey’s higher education institutions.  Several other south Jersey lawmakers, including two Republicans, signed with letter with Sweeney. Norcross later sent a statement calling Lautenberg a “great Senator for north Jersey” who has failed southern New Jersey to the same email list.

The Sweeney/Norcross statements are not really about the Rutger-Rowan merger.  The real message is that Lautenberg’s career is coming to an end.  That message has been confirmed by the silence of Democratic leaders who have staid out of this fight.  U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Assembly Speaker Sheilia Oliver, Democratic State Chairman John Wisniewski, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have all been silent.  No one is backing up Lautenberg. 

The message to Lautenberg…prepare for retirement… just don’t quit and let Christie appoint your replacement.  The message to Democratic donors…don’t give to Lautenberg’s 2014 reelection campaign.

So, the point of the last 460 words is that The Asbury Park Press made the 2014 race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate front page news yesterday.  That wouldn’t be so bad if there were not a U.S. Senate election between two relatively unknown candidates, U.S. Senator Bob Mendendez and State Senator Joe Kyrillos this year.

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