Yesterday the Neptune Nudniks ran an editorial lamenting the lack of competition in the primaries.
This morning The Star Ledger reported that there are five candidates seeking the two major party nominations for U.S. Senate, 44 candidates for 13 congressional seats (they should have said 12 seats or 24 nominations) and 8 candidates for three special election primaries for State Assembly.
There are two GOP primary races in The Asbury Park Press’s coverage area. The CD-6 race between Monmouth GOP candidate Ernesto Cullari and Middlesex GOP candidate Anna Little, and the CD-4 race between incumbent Congressman Chris Smith and Terrence McGowan of Howell.
A search for “Anna Little” reveals that the former Highlands mayor’s name has not appeared on the site since February. “Ernesto Cullari” produced no results in a search of the site. On May 14 a letter to the editor in support of McGowan in CD-4 was published. Nothing else. Congressman Smith has made international headlines recently for his work to secure Chen Guangcheng’s release from China. Yet the APP is interested only in what Smith is doing for Lakewood’s schools, an issue that Smith’s office has no authority over. APP.com also reported that a 71 year old Manchester woman drove her car into the side of Smith’s Whiting office last November.
This is not to say that the press should cover every candidate that collects signatures to get on a primary ballot. Earned media should indeed be earned and so-called “fringe” candidates should be challenged to earn their coverage. MMM is aware that it could have made the CD-4 race more competitive than the rout it will be with Smith getting over 80% of the vote. However, McGowan did nothing to earn coverage on MMM. The first we heard from anybody in the McGowan campaign was last week when we were invited by a reader to a meet and greet a couple of hours before it started.
But there is no excuse for the APP’s lack of coverage of the CD-6 race where the competing candidates each earned the endorsement of a county Republican organization. That is a story.
One could argue, and the Nudniks do as an excuse for their lack of coverage in their editorial, that the gerrymandered congressional districts make the CD-4 and CD-6 races uncompetitive and the end result of each election is a fait accompli.
Where were they during the redistricting process? They ran an editorial lamenting the gerrymandering after fact, but provided little coverage that would have increased public awareness before or during the process.
How do the Nudniks think that voters will get their information about the electorial process? They are very supportive of pay to play restrictions that make it more difficult for candidates and parties to get their messages out, yet the APP does little to pick up the slack or provide coverage to to the electoral process.
Bayshore Tea Party Group founder Barbara Gonzalez said “I have never done that and I never would” regarding the report on MMM on Saturday that a Cullari for Congress volunteer said she and BTPG activist Joe Abbruscato were spotted stealing Cullari’s signs in Middletown.
In an email to MMM Gonzalez said her attorney advised her to request a retraction and an apology or proof that she stole the signs.
On facebook Gonzalez threatened to sue Cullari’s Middlesex County coordinator Peter Carrol, campaign manager Charles Measley and “a certain blogger” unless proof of the allegations is produced by 9PM.
MMM contacted the campaign volunteer who says he witnessed the theft at about 7:40 PM on Friday. He said he “definately saw Joey with the signs. Barbara’s Jeep was pulled over so she was likely around.”
Rob Little, the former Highlands Mayor’s husband, called MMM shortly after our report was posted to say that Gonzalez was with him all night on Friday and that she could not have been involved in the theft. MMM immediately updated the report with Little’s story.
Monmouth University Polling Director Patrick Murray says on PolitickerNJ that Ernesto Cullari will defeat Anna Little in the CD-6 GOP primary based on Senator Joe Kyrillos coattails and “the bigger issue” that some of Little’s key supporters have fallen out with her since the 2010 race.
I wonder who Patrick is referring to.
CD6 GOP
2010 nominee Anna Little hopes lightning strikes twice and she knocks off the Monmouth County organization’s preferred candidate – this time, Ernesto Cullari. But it just ain’t gonna happen. It’s not because the party has gotten any better at GOTV. Fewer than 14,000 Republicans voted in the last primary – and the only reason more will vote this year is that native son Joe Kyrillos is running for Senate. The bigger issue is that some of Little’s key supporters have fallen out with her since the last race. Winner: Cullari
Murray predicts that 15% of partisan voters will come out on Tuesday statewide. If the turnout is higher in Monmouth because of Kyrillos’ favorite son status, that should favor Cullari. Little benefits from Kyrillos’s coattails in Middlesex where she appears under the senator on the ballot.
Despite Murray’s swipe at the Monmouth GOP get out the vote effort, the real key to this race is will be the turnout in Middlesex. If Sam Thompson’s team gets 5000 or more voters to the polls, Little should win. In the 2010 race less than 3800 Middlesex Republicans voted. However the Middlesex portion of the district is much larger now since redistricting. If less than 5000 voters come out in Middlesex and 6000 come out in Monmouth, Cullari wins. If 10,000 come out in Monmouth because of Kyrillos, Cullari wins handily.
MMM’s prediction: In a repeat of 2010, the race will go to a recount.
Unlike 2010 the race, the recount won’t be resolved before the Monmouth GOP convention. Little will get up at the convention and endorse John Bennett for Chair as a payback for headlining her $10 per head spaghetti dinner fundraiser in Keansburg. Cullari will get up and endorse Christine Hanlon because she’s Christine Hanlon.
Little will be forced to concede on June 15 in order to pay her fines from the FEC. She won’t have enough money to pay her recount team and the fines. John Bennett, fresh off his defeat in the Chair’s race, will be in Florida and unable to host a spaghetti dinner to pay Little’s fines and pay the recount team.
On the day Anna Little won the endorsement of the Middlesex County GOP, she became the favorite to win the 6th congressional district nomination. Despite that all of the candidates, Democrat and Republican are from Monmouth County, the new 6th is a Middlesex County district.
With no presidential contest on the top of the ballot and the U.S. Senate race uncompetitive, turnout is likely to be very low. 13,000 voters decided the 2010 primary race between Little and Monmouth County GOP Vice Chair Diane Gooch by less than 90 votes. This time out, I’ll be surprised if there are more than 6000 votes.
Based on name recognition, Little should be considered the favorite. She scored an upset in the last primary. She was the general election candidate in 2010 and she was a countywide candidate for Freeholder in 2006.
Coming into the race, Ernesto Cullari, the Monmouth County GOP endorsed candidate was a complete unknown, except for readers of the triCityNews where he was the token conservative columnist. The nomination in both Middlesex and Monmouth Counties was his for the taking because no one else wanted it. Little was running for the U.S. Senate nomination against Joe Kyrillos.
Little has been once again running against the Republican establishment who turned her away for the congressional nomination twice and never wanted her as freeholder candidate. She won the office of Freeholder by one vote at a raucous January 2006 convention and was denied the nomination for reelection in 2007.
But it was during a meeting with Kyrillos in early March, before the Monmouth County screening/candidate selection and after Cullari announced his candidacy, that Little give up her Senate bid and decided to make another run for Congress. Kyrillos did not want a primary challenge from the pesky Little. Little did not want her career to end with a primary loss to Kyrillos. The independent minded elected officials and municipal chairs of the Monmouth GOP were not going along with the deal. They knew Little was no more of a threat to Kyrillos than Badar Qarmout.
Asbury Park, NJ– Pumps Plus in Keansburg, New Jersey is what many would call a “seedy strip club”. Yet, this business was a client of Congressional Primary candidate Anna C. Little, Esq, for nearly a decade. One can argue that representing less than appealing clients is simply an aspect of any lawyer’s practice. However, the methods employed by Mrs. Little to represent her clients was as undesirable as the client themselves for most of their nearly 10 year relationship.
The case began in 2001, when the State accused the strip club of tax evasion. As their lawyer, Mrs. Little filed an appeal of the ruling as documented in Jay Kay Jay, Inc., Kathleen A. Tartivita vs. Director, Division of Taxation, Docket No. A-005085-08T1. In the appeal, she contended that the State was deliberately discriminating against the tax-dodging strip club, as well as utilizing illegal and unethical tactics to threaten and intimidate them.
What was the outcome of Mrs. Little’s defense of this seedy business? Little lost the original appeal, but continued to appeal the case until the maximum numbers of appeals were reached nearly 10 years later in 2011. As expected, the Appeals Court ruled against Little and her strip club clients. Records show that Little successfully dragged the case through the legal system for years by employing absurd allegations against the state. The state prevailed in its case asserting the strip club must pay its taxes just like any other law-abiding business inNew Jersey.
“Attorneys, like Anna Little, use the system to distort our laws and tax codes in order to serve their own interests, or the interests of those who pay them. It seems that the Washington crowd is saturated with lawyers who lack principles, and that has contributed to the vast disconnect between Congress and the average American,” commented Ernesto Cullari, the Monmouth County GOP endorsed candidate running against Little in the June 5th primary. “They really are part of the problem in Washington,” he continued.
“In the case of Little, we see a lawyer defending a strip club that did not want to pay their taxes. Litigious lawyers that make careers out of abusing our legal system are a major problem facing America,” argued Cullari, a professional in the medical field. “Real solutions do not include sending yet another attorney to skirt around the edges of the law as our next representative inWashington.”
HIGHLANDS, NJ – June 5th is an important day for New Jersey Republicans. This primary election is one that will determine if New Jersey will move ahead in promoting transparency in government.
The citizens and voters in New Jersey – and across the United States — are tired of the exaggerated claims and negative attacks made in blogs and online postings against many candidates.
The citizens and voters are sick of political party monopoly control in selecting elected officials. The rise of the grassroots Tea Parties is based on educating voters and encouraging open, public meetings, where political candidates and elected officials must interact with the citizens and voters they are supposed to represent.
The Tea Parties are not beholden to any single political party, nor does it matter what political party their members are aligned with. The Tea Parties support candidates who best represent their views and promote open government.
The unsubstantiated attacks made against Herman Cain, a Tea Party favorite for President, earlier this year were nothing more than an orchestrated attack to remove a candidate who many people believed in supporting and voting for. The recent smears of the Jersey Shore Tea Party and Bayshore Tea Party Group are another example of how political insiders are trying to blind the voters and discourage them from having independent views and thoughts.
Likewise, Anna Little is being attacked merely for standing behind her convictions and daring to challenge the Monmouth County system, where the political party bosses and bloggers scheme to predetermine who will be the winning candidate. Three of the exaggerated and outright false attacks being made on Anna’s good record include:
CD- 6 GOP challenger Ernesto Cullari had an ad on Fox and Friends this morning.
The 30 second spot bashed his opponent, former Highlands Mayor Anna Little for advising her legal clients to pay undocumented workers in cash in order to avoid taxes and for the “exploding” taxes and debt in Highlands during her tenure as mayor. “And now she’s running for congress?”
The spot concluded with Cullari saying that he wants to cut taxes and spending. “I don’t want to go to congress to write laws, I want to go to congress to repeal them.”
As part of a fundraising email sent this evening, former Highlands Mayor Anna Little issued the following statement in response to today’s news about the lawsuit that accuses her of failing to perform the work she was hired to do and advising her client to pay undocumented workers in cash:
“Every citizen has the right to seek legal redress if they believe they have been wronged. The other party also has the right to defend themselves, and be judged by a judge or a jury of their peers. The pending legal action is an allegation. There is no final money judgement (sic) in the matter. It has just come to my attention that Default has been entered, a technicality which occurs when one party doesn’t answer on time. I have filed an Answer and have sought legal counsel to defend me. I intend to seek to vacate default, defend myself, and make motion for the complaint to be dismissed as we deem appropriate after thorough review of the matter.”
The subject/title of the email was,”What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…”
Little has the Middlesex GOP endorsement in her primary battle with Ernesto Cullari, the Monmouth County GOP endorsed candidate for the nomination for the 6th congressional district seat in the House of Representatives.
Asked why Little would have terminated her congressional campaign account, “Anna C. Little for Congress Inc.,” with the FEC, which she did on April 2, while maintaining her U.S. Senatorial candidate status through her “Friends of Anna Little” account, Thompson said, “I have no idea.”
Asked why her “Termination Report” would indicate $71 thousand more in receipts than expenditures yet show a zero balance, Thompson said, “I have a hard enough time keeping my own campaign finance reports straight.”
Asbury Park, NJ – On Friday, May 25th and again on Saturday, May 26th, Ernesto Cullari, Republican Candidate for Congress, personally invited former Freeholder and Mayor Anna C. Little to a debate scheduled for May 31st at 7pm. This marks the first time that either campaign has directly contacted the other to seek approval on terms and format. The debate, as proposed by Cullari, will be held at a prominent local university with a moderator, who is a well respected journalist. Members of the press are encouraged to attend.
The invitation to the Little Team clearly lays out the format of the event being proposed. This is in stark contrast to an event, which was to be hosted last week by Democratic Tea Party Leader and Little endorsee, Mark Falzon. Cullari agreed to attend Falzon’s Candidates Forum more than eight weeks prior to the event. Only through third party sources as the event neared, did the Cullari Campaign learn that the format had been changed to a debate without any communication or agreement from Cullari or his surrogates.
Every aspect of the debate proposed by Cullari is to ensure that each candidate has an equal opportunity to be heard by the voters and that no one candidate has an unfair advantage over the other. If any facet of the venue, format, or the stipulations surrounding the debate changes, the Cullari Campaign pledges to notify all involved parties to discuss the proposed changes immediately.
The Little Team has not responded to Cullari’s debate request.
