Senator Jennifer Beck and Assemblywoman Mary Pat Angelini told representatives of Garden State Equality that they would vote to override a gubernatorial veto of a Same Sex Marriage bill, should such an opportunity come before them in the next legislature. The incumbent Republican legislators were being interviewed for GSE’s endorsement in the 11th legislative district election yesterday at Monmouth University.
Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande, Beck and Angelini’s running mate, did not attend the interviews due to a family commitment. She spoke with GSE privately today. Casagrande has not yet taken a position on gay marriage.
Beck, who has previously voted against Marriage Equality in the Senate, was unabashed in her commitment to cast an override vote. Angelini, who has long supported same sex marriage rights, was reluctant say she would vote to override Governor Christie’s veto, but finally did so, according to sources who were in the room.
Garden State Equality’s President Steven Goldstein would not say if the women’s pledge would result in the organization’s endorsement. “Those commitments are being taken into consideration as we complete our evaluation process,” Goldstein said. He indicated that the endorsements would be forthcoming later this week.
Beck is competing with Freehold Township attorney Ray Santiago, the Democratic nominee for Senate. Both support same sex marriage.
Angelini and Casagrande are competing with Democrats Vin Gopal,Red Bank Councilwoman Kathy Horgan and Independent Dan Jacobson, all marriage equality advocates. Jacobson told GSE that they should endorse Angelini because she is the only Republican in the Assembly who has supported their cause.
Beck told MMM that gay marriage is one of the very few issues with which she differs with the governor, “I support him 99.99999%, but we differ on this issue.”
“We all believed that civil unions would provide equal rights,” said Beck, “but that has turned out not to be the case for many people. I was very conflicted over my Senate vote against marriage equality because I personally believe in it, yet I voted against the bill because I felt the majority of my district was against it. I believe the majority of my new district is more open minded and in favor of equal rights.”
Angelini has not responded to MMM’s call for comment. However, Beck said she understood her running mate’s reticence to pledge to override Christie’s veto. “It is not an easy decision. We all have great respect and admiration for Governor Christie, personally and politically. He is a great leader. ”
Beck also noted that the bill recently passed in New York giving same sex couples the right to marriage has stronger protections for religious institutions than the bill that came before the New Jersey legislature during the 2009-2010 lame duck session. Beck said she would only support a bill that had such protections.
Star Ledger reporter Ginger Gibson, a member of the Statehouse press corps tell me she is Mexican:
I saw your piece about the diversity of the press corps. I just wanted to let you know, I’m Mexican. So it’s not all white guys in the press corps, there are some minorities. Just wanted to make sure you knew that.
I never would have guessed that, given Gibson’s fair skin and last name. Another lesson about assumptions.
Yet the point of my piece still stands. The press corps is far from 40% minority, and the Ledger editorial board is still FOS.
On Saturday The Star Ledger published an editorial calling on Governor Chris Christie to appoint minorities to the State Supreme Court.
The Ledger is lamenting the fact that since Christie took office both minorities who were on the court, Justice John Wallace and Justice Roberto Rivera-Sota, have left the bench. For the first time in twenty years there are no minorities on the court. “And yet more than 40 percent of the state’s population is black, Hispanic, or Asian.”
The Ledger took the diversity theme a bit further this morning with an article that sites a Star Ledger analysis which concludes Governor Christie is favoring white middle class senior citizens in selecting communities to host his Town Hall meetings.
This got me thinking about the diversity of the New Jersey Media. Is the New Jersey press corp comprised of 40% of African Americans, Hispanics and Asians? Not even close.
From my experience, without doing an extensive MMM analysis like the Ledger did of Christie’s Town Halls, journalism may be the least diverse industry in New Jersey.
The State House press corp? Overwhelmingly white.
NJ.com, The Star Ledger’s website? Only one African American columnist who writes almost exclusively about Newark.
Giving credit where it is due, Gannett’s papers have a diverse group of reporters, on the local levels. They have an African American Executive Editor, Hollis Towns, at The Asbury ParkPress. Their Statehouse Buerau? Five white guys. They would be wise to make Jane Roh part of that team.
News12 has a diverse staff.
So what is with the progressives at The Star Ledger? Should they be telling the Governor to take the speck out of his eye while they have a log in their own?
Are the folks at The Ledger hypocrites or has Gannett scooped up all the good minority writers?
I don’t know for sure, but I tend to think they’re full of poop. They’re attempting to set the agenda for Christie’s Supreme Court appointments by using the race card. As part of the vast progressive conspiracy, the Ledger likes an activist court that requires billions of dollars to be flushed into urban schools that produce morally unacceptable results in educating minority children. If they can convince the public that race should be a criteria for selecting a Supreme Court Justice, rather than scholarship, judicial temperment and a philosphical committement to interpreting law, rather than writing it from the bench, The Ledger figures they can thrwart Governor Christie from “turning Trenton upside down” anymore than he already has.
The Legislature is very likely to remain in Democratic control after the coming election, which limits severely the reforms Governor Christie can make over the rest of his term. Given the legislative map, a second Christie term will most likely also have a Democratic legislature. That he will have the responsiblity to appoint the majority of the court in his first term, to reshape the court as he promised, will result in the real legacy of the Christie administration.
The Star Ledger’s lip service for diversity is nothing more then getting ready for that coming political battle.
Stile is wondering how Lonegan is reacting to American For Prosperity benefactor David Koch’s declaration that Governor Christie is “my kind of guy” at the super secret corporate donors meeting in Colorado last June. That was the meeting where Christie told the tale of how he saved Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver’s position by lining up Assembly Republicans to vote for her had the Democrats staged a coup to prevent the pension and benefits reform bill from being posted.
Strangely, Lonegan who is never shy with the press, rebuffed Stile’s inquiry four times in two weeks.
Stile probably hasn’t noticed that Lonegan’s rare pontifications about Christie have been positive since April of this year. That is when Christie prevailed upon Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips to get Lonegan to tone his rhetoric down, as reported at the time by the now defunct TheStateNJ.com.
Lonegan’s focus has been on co-opting and controlling New Jersey’s Tea Party movement and attempting to destroy Tea Parties he can’t control, if The Bulldog Pundit, Gene Hoyas’ body of work over this summer is accurate.
Hoyas has been white knighting for the Bay Shore Tea Party Group which has suffered ad hominem attacks from conservative websites that Hoyas says are Lonegan mouthpieces. Hoyas’ smoking gun that Lonegan, and Senator Mike Doherty, are behind the attacks is that they haven’t publically called for the conservatives sites to stop picking on the BTPG.
All of this nonsense, from Stile’s piece this morning, to Hoyas and other purists fighting all summer, to Lonegan trying to control Tea Parties, if he is, are gifts to the Democrats who are on track to keep control of the legislature in Trenton.
Stile could have written about the current and ongoing rifts within the Democratic party, rather than suggesting to his readers that Christie is more “far right” than Lonegan. Instead he attempted to tweak Lonegan into reigniting a battle that he surrendered months ago. We should expect that from Stiles as a center-left opinion leader.
But Hoyas and other conservatives fighting with each other, as well as the ongoing ideological Inquisition of RINO hunters is nothing more than a circular firing squad.
Now that they have wasted the summer, it is time for all the ideological purists to stop fighting over which angel does a better dance on the head of a pin and get to work electing candidates who are right and center-right.
The Bergenfield school system has a long tradition of excellence and out of the box thinking. It is appropriate that one of their schools was chosen for the pilot program.
Senator Loretta Weinberg, whose district includes Bergenfield, and Senate President Stephen Sweeney used the occasion to issue a snarky partisan statement that has nothing to do with the merits of the teacher evaluation system.
Snark is par for the course with Weinberg, but I didn’t expect her to make such a blatant gaff about Bergenfield’s history and the history of a New Jersey Hall of Fame member, Jersey Boy Frankie Valli.
Weinberg and Sweeney opened their statement as follows:
“It is great to see the governor visiting the wonderful schools in Bergenfield, home to the outstanding music program where Frankie Valli got started.
Bergenfield does have an outstanding music program. It has for decades. But that is not where Frankie Valli got started. Valli grew up in Newark.
Bob Gaudio, Valli’s partner in The Four Seasons and the writer of most of the group’s hit songs, got his start in Bergenfield. Gaudio had his first hit record, Short Shorts, at the age of 15 while still a student at Bergenfield High School.
Guadio and Valli met in 1958 while they were both touring with different groups. Two years later they formed The Four Seasons.
Weinberg should know this. Not because it is Bergenfield trivia, but because she attended Gaudio’s honorary graduation from Bergenfield High School only two years ago in 2009.
That Gaudio didn’t graduate with his class is an example of the long history of out of the box thinking for Bergenfield educators. Paul Hoffmeister, then-principal of Bergenfield High School, helped Gaudio convince his parents to let him drop out of school to pursue his musical career, according to the Jersey Boys Blog:
But, in 1958 he was only a 15-year-old kid who had tasted the success of “Short Shorts” and knew in his gut that music would be his life.
Concerned parents
Now he only had to convince his parents that it would be a good idea for him to leave school so that he and the Royal Teens could go on tour with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry.
Though it was an easy decision for Gaudio, he knew it would be a hard sell to his parents.
But an ally came to his aid from a very surprising corner during a meeting with Bob, his parents and Paul Hoffmeister, then-principal of Bergenfield High School.
“My parents were very concerned,” said Gaudio, “and this meeting was my last resort to try and convince my dad, in particular, to let me go.”
“But I didn’t expect what happened,” he said. “I thought the principal would side with my parents, but he didn’t; and he shaped my future.”
“It was very astute of him,” said Gaudio, “and I think he was very tuned in to what kids were thinking and how they’re feeling at that stage in their lives.”
“I don’t know if he gave that type of advice to other people,” he said, “but it just made sense to him and was definitely the right decision for me, though I’m sure a major part of it was that I already had a hit record — I wasn’t just going to quit school and twiddle my thumbs and throw darts.”
Not only was Gaudio’s life shaped by Hoffmeister’s risk. American culture was shaped by it.
Weinberg and Sweeney should get their facts straight if they’re going to be snarky.
All the New Jersey media is abuzz over the leaked audio and transcript of a talk that Governor Chris Christie delivered to a secret meeting of GOP mega-donors organized by the Koch brothers in Colorado on June 26. The meeting was so secret that Christie did not disclose to the press, as is customary, that he was leaving the state and transferring power to the Lt. Governor.
What has everyone in a tizzy is a story that Christie told the group about how he saved Sheila Oliver’s speakership during the landmark pension and benefit bill negotiations:
And Thursday night it came time for the Assembly. And they started to caucus at 11:00 in the morning. They were supposed to start voting at 1:00. It got to be 5:30 and they were still in the caucus room. And the reports I was getting out of there were not positive about what was going on to my friend the Speaker. She was takin’ a beating at the hands of her own party. At 5:30 she called me and she said to me, “Governor, I don’t know how this is going to play out, but I’m going to, I want to post the bill but I think when I go on the floor, my own party’s going to take a run at me to remove me as Speaker. So I can’t post the bill.” She said, “I think the only way I survive is if the 33 Republicans in the chamber will agree to vote for me for Speaker. Can you work it out?” [scattered laughter] So I said, “Give me five minutes.” [laughter]
So I went down to the Republican Assembly caucus room. I stood at the front of the room and I said, “Ladies and gentleman, it’s a historic day today. You’re going to get an opportunity to cast two historic votes.” [laughter] “The first one, of course, is about pension and benefit reform and I know that everybody in this room supports it. The second one is a little more unusual.” [laughter] I said, “Probably for the only time in my governorship I’m going to actually ask you to vote for a Democrat. I said Sheila Oliver is under siege. And she wants to do the right thing. And we cannot be slaves to party or partisanship. She is right on this issue and she is with us on this issue. So if they take a run at her on the floor, I need all of you to vote for her for Speaker.” I had these men and women look back at me like, “What?” [scattered laughter] And I said to ’em, “We were sent here to lead. Not to preen and posture, posture and pose. To lead. A public office to lead. We need to do this. So raise your hands. Are you with me or aren’t you?” All 33 of them raised their hands and said they were with me.
And so I went back to my office, I got on the phone and I called the Speaker, and I said, “You just got 33 new votes.” And she said, “Well, you just got yourself a bill.” And she went on the floor, she led the debate, another two and a half hours of debate. They never took a run at her. It was the Minority Leader who suddenly went over to the Majority Leader of the Assembly, it was the guy who was gonna take a run at her, and said, “By the way, we’ve got her back, so don’t try it.” [very scattered chuckles] They didn’t. They opened up the board, they cast the votes, by then 46 to 32, with 33 Republicans and 13 Democrats, we passed health and pension reform that will save the taxpayers of New Jersey over the next 30 years at least 132 billion dollars. [audience: “wows”, whistles, applause]
When I get back to New Jersey tomorrow morning, we will sign the bill on Tuesday and make it law and it will become effective July 1st. And that’s what we were sent to do to govern.
At a press conference in Atlantic City today, Christie confirmed he delivered the speech and he issued a correction. He said there were 32 in Assembly members in the Republican caucus room, not 33 as he said in Colorado. The Star Ledger quotes Christie today saying he was “proud” that he helped protect Oliver’s speakership. He said that the story shows that “Republicans put policy over politics,” according to the Ledger.
“The assertions that Gov. Christie has made, they are outright lies. Outright lies. I am beginning to wonder if Gov. Christie is mentally deranged,” Oliver said. “At no time did I ever, ever pick up the telephone, call Gov. Christie and ask him to quote ‘save my leadership.’ ” The governor was engaged in a chest-thumping vaudeville entertainment session in front of the Republican donors, she said. “I don’t expect to call him at all,” she said. “I think it’s disgraceful.”
Now the Democratic leaders of both houses of the New Jersey legislature have called Christie a liar. In January Senate President Stephen Sweeney refuted Christie’s claim that he was in direct contact with Sweeney during the December blizzard while Sweeney was Acting Governor.
Sweeney famously called Christie a “rotten prick” in July after Christie used the line item veto to balance the budget. Today Oliver called Christie “mentally deranged.” Christie calls these people his friends.
Multiple people who were in the Republican caucus room spoke to MMM on the condition of anonymity. They confirmed Christie’s version of the story, sort of. Let’s just say that while 32 hands went up, not all of them had five fingers raised.
The caucus knew that Oliver was under siege. They expected Majority Leader Joe Cryan to try to replace her in order to prevent the pension and benefits reform bill from being posted.
No one could confirm Christie’s account of Minority Leader Alex DeCroce going over to Cryan and telling him, “By the way, we’ve got her back, so don’t try it.” If it happened, it may have been a bluff.
Several of the more conservative members of the caucus were very concerned about casting a vote for Oliver as speaker. “Such a vote will follow me for the rest of my career, if I have a career,” one Assembly member said, according to a source who was in the room.
“There are two factions if the Republican caucus,” said the source, “those who are concerned about primary challenges from Tea Partiers and those from the more moderate districts who are concerned about winning the general election. The conservatives were worried about having to vote for Oliver.”
There is some truth to Oliver’s carefully worded response to the leaked tapes. Christie’s speech was entertainment. As Assemlbyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex) told the Ledger, this was “a red meat speech.”
As those who have followed Christie on the stump know, the Governor is a great story teller, in the tradition of great Irish story tellers.
Great stories and tales get better every time they are told by a master. While the underlying truth remains, the details get embellished and the story gets “better.” It makes a point better, is more moving or entertaining. Anyone who has attended three or more of Christie’s town hall meetings knows Christie is a great story teller.
Individual Assistance Approved for Burlington, Hudson, Mercer, Ocean and Union counties, making New Jerseyans in all 21 counties eligible fordirect relief
Trenton, NJ – Governor Chris Christie today announced that the federal government has approved New Jersey’s request for disaster assistance for New Jerseyans impacted by Hurricane Irene in all 21 counties. Individual and public assistance were approved for Burlington, Hudson, Ocean and Union counties, and individual assistance was approved for Mercer county, following the public assistance eligibility granted yesterday. Every New Jersey county has now been approved for both individual and public assistance by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
New Jersey residents and small businesses in all 21 counties are now eligible to apply for different types of federalassistance, including temporary housing, repair, replacement or other needs such as Disaster Unemployment Assistance, and Small Business Administration disaster loans.
Public assistance eligibility for all 21 counties allows state, eligible local governments, and certain nonprofit organizations to apply for federal funding on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by Hurricane Irene.
Survivors of Hurricane Irene in every New Jersey county who suffered damage should apply for disaster assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency – even if they have insurance or aren’t sure they are eligible.
Register by phone at 800-621-FEMA (3362) or TTY800-462-7585for those with hearing or speech impairments. Specialists are standing by at the toll-free numbers seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time, until further notice. Help in other languages is available. Or you can register online atwww.DisasterAssistance.gov.You can also apply through a web-enabled mobile device or smartphone by visitingm.fema.govand following the link to “apply online for federal assistance.”
Posted: September 4th, 2011 | Author:Art Gallagher | Filed under:Chris Christie, FEMA | Tags:Chris Christie, FEMA | Comments Off on Governor Chris Christie Announces Federal Disaster Aid Has Been Approved for All 21 New Jersey Counties
