(ABERDEEN, October 18) -Republican Congressional challenger Anna Little – buoyed by the support of a crowd where her supporters outnumbered 22-year incumbent Frank Pallone’s supporters by at least 10-to-1 – handily dispatched Pallone in their League of Women Voters debate last night at the Temple Shalom in Aberdeen.
Usually, a post-debate press release includes some chest thumping by the campaign, claiming victory. And our headline certainly engages in a bit of that chest thumping, to be sure.
But a picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words – and a YouTube clip, as we say, is worth even more. So rather than tell you what happened last night in Aberdeen, we’re going to let last night’s encounter speak for itself. Simply click on the links below to see the exchanges between Anna Little and Frank Pallone on each of the key issues addressed.
A crowd of about 300 showed up at Temple Shalom in Aberdeen for the only scheduled debate between Congressman Frank Pallone and his GOP challenger, Highlands Mayor Anna Little. The crowd was heavily pro-Little.
Anna’s Army will caravan through the northern parts of the 6th district today with100’s of cars and trucks decorated with Anna Little for Congress paraphernalia will parade through the streets in Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties. The caravan meets at the Keyport IHOP at 11:30 this morning and will end at the American Legion in Piscataway, 840 Washington Ave, for a rally with Governor Chris Christie from 5:00 till 6:30.
If you can’t make the caravan, don’t miss the rally with the Governor. Christie has repeatedly said, “there’s nobody I want to see defeated more than Frank Pallone.”
At 7PM, Little and Pallone will face off in their only scheduled debate. This event, moderated by the League of Women Voters, will be held at Temple Shalom, 5 Arymont Lane, Aberdeen. The doors open at 6:30.
Not surprisingly, The Neptune Nudniks let Pallone spin the stroy
By Art Gallagher
The Asbury Park Press has finally reported Congressman Frank Pallone’s interference with the Food and Drug Administration on behalf of a campaign donor.
After receiving campaign contributions from ReGen Biologics, a Hackensack based medical device manufacturer, and its executives in 2008, Pallone, Congressman Steven Rothman and Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menedez , the four legislators pressured the FDA into approving ReGen’s Menaflex knee patch. Menaflex had previously been rejected twice. This week the FDA reversed the decision and announced it was rescinding the approval.
Pallone told the Asbury Park Press that what he did was routine, what he would do for any constituent.
ReGen is in Hackensack which is not in the 6th congressional district. ReGen CEO Gerald Bisbee, who along with his wife Linda contributed $32,000 of the over $50,000 contributed to the legislators and the Democratic party, lives in Connecticut. John Dichiara, the company’s government affairs director, wrote checks for $20,800. He lives in New York.
Pallone told the APP that he has three staffers who help residents who are having trouble with government red tape.
Patrick Donohue hasn’t given any money to Pallone either. Maybe that is why Frank won’t release H. Con Res. 198, a resolution recognizing Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury as the leading cause of death and disability in the United States for children and young adults from birth until 25 years of age and endorsing the National Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury Plan, from the committee he chairs.
Pallone told the APP that the FDA has mismanaged the project from the beginning. He said that the product is approved in Europe and that, “This is a product that could have helped people. It could have saved people a lot of pain.”
That’s not what Pallone was saying in May of 2009. He, Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak signed a 16 page letter to the FDA raising questions about the ReGen Menaflex approval and asking them to review it. That hardly seems routine. I guess the APP fact checkers missed that.
During his Red Bank town hall meeting in August of 2009, Pallone said “Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman are the two finest people I know in Washington.”
Let’s summarize what we know of Pallone’s involvement with ReGen and the FDA so far.
1) In 2008 Pallone received campaign contributions from ReGen executives and then he joined his NJ colleagues Rothman, Lautenberg and Menedez in applying pressue to the FDA to approve the ReGen product.
2) In 2009, Pallone reversed course. He joined Waxman, “one of the finest people he knows in Washington” in raising questions about the ReGen product’s approval and asking the FDA to review it. He did so in a 16 page letter with a signature larger than John Hancock’s.
3) In 2010, while in the midst of the tightest election he has ever faced in his career, Pallone flips again. He tells the Asbury Park Press that what he did was routine, like what he would do for anybody. He said the FDA mismanaged the process from the beginning and that the product could help a lot of people.
(HIGHLANDS, October 15) – Republican Congressional challenger Anna Little – continuing to highlight a report in The New York Times indicating that her opponent, 22-year incumbent Frank Pallone, worked to overturn a decision by the Food and Drug Administration after receiving campaign contributions from a medical device manufacturer whose device had been unanimously rejected on multiple occasions by FDA scientific reviewers – today called on Pallone to explain the exact nature of the transaction.
“Yesterday, The New York Times published a disturbing report about our Congressman, Frank Pallone, using his influence to get the FDA to approve a medical device after receiving campaign contributions from the device manufacturer,” said Little. “So yesterday, we challenged Rep. Pallone to tell us what OTHER federal government agencies he’s influenced on behalf of campaign contributors.
“Today, we’d like to go back to the original transaction, and get some more detail from Mr. Pallone,” said Little.
“Specifically, we’d like answers to the following questions:
“When you accepted your first contribution from an executive of the device manufacturer in December 2007, did you know then that he was hoping you would look favorably upon his request for help with the FDA? Put another way, was the campaign contribution — $2300, the maximum then allowed by law – the first you had heard of the device manufacturer and its problem with the FDA?
“If not – that is, if you knew of the device manufacturer’s problems with the FDA BEFORE you accepted the contribution – did you or anyone on your congressional or campaign staff (including fundraising consultants) indicate to the executive that his request would be far more likely to be given favorable consideration if it were accompanied by a contribution?
“If yes – that is, if you did NOT know of the device manufacturer’s problems with the FDA at the time you accepted the contribution – at what point, exactly, DID you become aware of the problems with the FDA? And at that point, did the fact that you had already accepted a contribution from an executive of the company raise any questions at all in your mind as to the propriety of offering assistance to a campaign contributor?
“The timing of the two contributions – the first, in December 2007, the second, in October 2008 – certainly seems interesting, given that the heavy lifting of the influence exerted by your office appears to have begun in December 2007. Would it be reasonable to draw the conclusion that the December 2007 contribution was an enticement to action, and the October 2008 contribution a ‘thank you’ for a job well done? If not, why not?
“We have many more questions for Mr. Pallone on this matter,” said Little. “But we don’t want to overtax him the way he overtaxes us. So we’ll just leave it here for now.
“Remember, you cannot change Washington without changing the people we send to Washington!”
Posted: October 15th, 2010 | Author:Art Gallagher | Filed under:Anna Little, Pallone | Tags:Anna Little, Frank Pallone | Comments Off on LITTLE TO PALLONE: WHAT OTHER DECISIONS DID YOU TRY TO INFLUENCE BECAUSE SOMEBODY GAVE YOU CAMPAIGN CASH?
The FDA made an extraordinary and unprecedented move today when it announced that it was rescinding its 2008 approval of a medical device. The FDA said that the approval was made in error, after the product had already been rejected, based upon political pressure made by Congressman Frank Pallone and Steve Rothman as well as Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez. All four knee jerks waged their campaign for the product’s approval by the FDA after receiving significant campaign contributions from the product’s manufacturer.
It’s pretty big news when a federal agency reverses itself and cites the inappropriate, if not illegal, actions of four federal legislators from the same state as the reason for their errant decision. Don’t you think? Some might say it is something of a scandal. No?
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, Fox, The LA Times, TIME and many others thought it was newsworthy today.
Not so the NJ Media outlets. The Star Ledger’s NJ.com has a difficult to find article on the matter, but their piece doesn’t mention Pallone, Rothman, Lautenberg or Menendez.
The APP and MyCentralJersey have nothing on it. The Associated Press, the news syndicate the APP and MyCentralJersey(the website for the Courier News and the Home News Tribute) get much of their news from, published a the story, with the knee jerks named, at 4:30 this afternoon.
The Little Campaign issued at press release on the matter, questioning what else Pallone has sold his office for, at 5:05 this afternoon.
Maybe the story broke too late in the day for the Neptune Nudniks and their MyCentralJersey brethren and they will cover it tomorrow. What’s the Star Ledger’s excuse from editing out Pallone, Rothman, Lautenberg and Menedez from the story? The Star Ledger subscribes to the Associated Press too.
My guess is that they are unfair and biased, i.e biased and pretending not to be.
UPDATE:It has come to our attention that the APP has a reporter working on a story about Gerry Scharfenberger’s reverse 9-11 call about recycling, with a political rather than budgetary or environmental slant. That’s a higher priority than Pallone selling his office and putting patients’ health at risk.
(HIGHLANDS, October 14) – Republican Congressional challenger Anna Little – responding to a report in The New York Times indicating that her opponent, 22-year incumbent Frank Pallone, worked to overturn a decision by the Food and Drug Administration after receiving campaign contributions from a medical device manufacturer whose device had been unanimously rejected on multiple occasions by FDA scientific reviewers – today called on Pallone to tell his constituents what OTHER federal government decisions he has tried to influence on the basis of campaign contributions.
“Today The New York Times published a disturbing report about our Congressman, Frank Pallone, using his influence to get the FDA to approve a medical device after receiving campaign contributions from the device manufacturer,” said Little. “The device in question had been reviewed and rejected unanimously by FDA scientific reviewers over a number of years, according to a report issued by the FDA last year,” continued Little. “But under pressure from Frank Pallone and others, senior managers at the agency made a political decision to overturn the recommendation of their own reviewers.
“According to a report in The New York Times from last year, Rep. Pallone began making inquiries on behalf of the device manufacturer after receiving contributions to his campaign account — $2300 in December 2007 and another $1000 in October 2008 – from an executive of the device manufacturer. The inquiries began in December 2007.
“Here in New Jersey, especially, where we have long fought a corrupt political culture where ‘pay to play’ has been deeply embedded at the state and local level, it’s especially troubling to learn that our representatives in Washington apparently have been engaging in the same kind of activity.
“I don’t know which is worse – knowing that the FDA can be influenced by political pressures, or NOT knowing what other federal agency decisions Frank Pallone has tried to influence because a campaign donor asked him to. Perhaps Rep. Pallone can save us a lot of time and trouble by just telling us what other federal agency decisions he’s tried to influence based on his latest campaign needs?
“Remember, you cannot change Washington without changing the people we send to Washington!”
