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.
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.”
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.
Governor Chris Christie will have his first post keynote town hall meeting in Howell on Wednesday September 12, 3PM, at the Southard School Gymnasium, 115 Kent Road.
The doors open at 2:15PM.
Seating is first come first served. The Governor’s office requests that you RSVP here, in order to ensure adequate seating.
A Quinnipiac poll released this morning indicates that Governor Christie’s approval numbers remain strong among New Jersey voters…53% approve of his performance compared to 42% that do not….and that Christie would have been reelected if Newark Mayor Cory Booker was his Democratic opponent and the gubernatorial election was held last week when the poll was taken.
That’s good news for Christie, the NJ GOP and New Jersey taxpayers. Yet, in their write up of the poll, Quinnipiac did their best to spin the poll as a negative for Christie and the lazy main stream media is so far following that lead.
While 58 percent of New Jersey voters watched Gov. Christopher Christie’ keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, only 22 percent of voters say it makes them think more favorably of the governor, whose 53 – 42 percent job approval rating is barely changed, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
…..
“If Gov. Christopher Christie’s speech marked the opening of a 2016 presidential campaign he might want to try again. People who like the governor liked the speech; those who don’t didn’t. The net result – zero,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Quinnipiac surveyed 1560 registered voters from August 27-September 2. Christie delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention late in the evening on August 28. The Bobcats pollsters didn’t start asking about Christie’s speech until the third day of the seven day poll.
While showing their own biases, the Bobcats purported to measure New Jersey voters’ prejudices regarding offices seekers’ gender, race, creed, sexual orientation and waste line.
The numbers say that New Jersey is accepting of most. In the poll that has a margin of error of +/- 2.5%, 3% said they would be less inclined to vote for a female candidate while 10% would be more likely to vote for a female. 4% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who was African-American and 1% would be less likely to do so. 11% would be less likely to vote for a homosexual and 1% would be more likely.
Atheists and Muslims did not fare as well. 39% would be less likely to vote for an atheist, 1% would be more likely.
15% said they would be less likely to vote for an obese candidate, 1% would be more likely to vote for the big boned.
Does this mean that we should adjust Governor Chirstie’s numbers? Would his numbers be 14% higher if he was svelte? No, it doesn’t mean that. It means that this poll is seriously flawed. It reveals more about the pollsters than it does about those being surveyed.
While Republicans are settling in after their trip to Tampa for the Republican National Convention, Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vin Gopal launched the first salvo of the county race for two freeholder seats and county clerk with a column posted on Patch sites throughout Monmouth, before he heads of to Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention.
Gopal blasts Freeholder Lillian Burry, her former campaign treasurer, John Cantalupo, and the mythical “Club Monmouth” for the Brookdale Community College scandal.
Gopal’s column did not mention the Republican candidates, Freeholders John Curley and Serena DiMaso and County Clerk M. Claire French, that he says that Monmouth County taxpayers should unite against. Nor did he mention his Democratic challengers, Kevin Lavan and Bill Shea for freeholder and Michael Steinhorn for county clerk.
Oddly, the Monmouth Democrats website, which has been redesigned since Gopal became chairman, makes no mention of his county candidates. Their facebook page also makes no mention of the county Democratic team. Both websites feature Gopal prominently.
Pretty funny coming from a guy who blasted Governor Christie’s keynote address at the GOP convention as “all about him” to NJ.com:
Vin Gopal, the Monmouth County Democratic Party chairman, took a dimmer view of Christie’s moment in the national spotlight.
“The governor sang a tune that is not at all what is really happening. He’s a Republican governor in a Democratic state, and he’s doing a horrible job,” said Gopal, of Long Branch, citing New Jersey’s high unemployment and property tax rates. “He beat an incumbent Democratic governor in 2009 who was incredibly unpopular – here in Monmouth County, Jon Corzine said two weeks before the election that he wanted to raise tolls for the third time. Whoever the Democratic gubernatorial nominee is in 2013, the 700,000 registered Democratic voter advantage in this state, and the 20,000 registered Democratic voter edge in this county, is going to haunt Gov. Christie.”
“Christie’s speech was all about him,” added Gopal. “I don’t know how his message could have connected well with a lot of people. We are working to build up our base of teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public service workers here in Monmouth, as well as other Democratic constituency groups, that will turn out in 2013.”
Gopal says that Monmouth County taxpayers should unite against Club Monmouth, yet despite his overwhelming victory in the Democratic Chairman’s race, he does not seem to be uniting his party behind their own candidates.
This stage and this moment are very improbable for me.
A New Jersey Republican delivering the keynote address to our national convention, from a state with 700,000 more Democrats than Republicans.
A New Jersey Republican stands before you tonight.
Proud of my party, proud of my state and proud of my country.
I am the son of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother.
My Dad, who I am blessed to have with me here tonight, is gregarious, outgoing and loveable.
My Mom, who I lost 8 years ago, was the enforcer. She made sure we all knew who set the rules.
In the automobile of life, Dad was just a passenger. Mom was the driver.
They both lived hard lives. Dad grew up in poverty. After returning from Army service, he worked at the Breyers Ice Cream plant in the 1950s. With that job and the G.I. bill he put himself through Rutgers University at night to become the first in his family to earn a college degree. Our first family picture was on his graduation day, with Mom beaming next to him, six months pregnant with me.
Mom also came from nothing. She was raised by a single mother who took three buses to get to work every day. And mom spent the time she was supposed to be a kid actually raising children – her two younger siblings. She was tough as nails and didn’t suffer fools at all. The truth was she couldn’t afford to. She spoke the truth – bluntly, directly and without much varnish.
I am her son.
I was her son as I listened to “Darkness on the Edge of Town” with my high school friends on the Jersey Shore.
I was her son as I moved into a studio apartment with Mary Pat to start a marriage that is now 26 years old.
I was her son as I coached our sons Andrew and Patrick on the fields of Mendham, and as I watched with pride as our daughters Sarah and Bridget marched with their soccer teams in the Labor Day parade.
And I am still her son today, as Governor, following the rules she taught me: to speak from the heart and to fight for your principles. She never thought you get extra credit for just speaking the truth.
The greatest lesson Mom ever taught me, though, was this one: she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected. She said to always pick being respected, that love without respect was always fleeting — but that respect could grow into real, lasting love.
Now, of course, she was talking about women.
But I have learned over time that it applies just as much to leadership. In fact, I think that advice applies to America today more than ever.
I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved.
