She’s on the GOP primary ballot as a candidate for congress from the 6th district, but as far as the Federal Election Commission knows, she’s still a candidate for U.S. Senate.
Hundreds of Little for Congress lawn highway signs showed up on Route 36 on Friday night. “Paid for by Anna C. Little for Congress Inc.”
The “paid for” disclosure sparked my curiosity and prompted a visit to the FEC website. Little’s website is paid for by “Friend of Anna Little.” It seemed odd that Anna C. Little for Congress was paying for signs.
Oddly, the campaign committee “Anna C. Little for Congress Inc” was terminated. The campaign filed a termination report on April 2 and the FEC issued a approval of termination letter on April 12.
The letter from the FEC says:
If your committee again becomes active in federal elections, it will be required to re-register with the Commission in accordance with the Federal Election Campaign Act and applicable Regulations. Your committee will be treated as a new entity by the Commission and should register as a new committee on FEC FORM 1, pursuant to 2 U.S.C. §§ 432(g) and 433(a).
But, a thorough search showed no reinstatement of the campaign committee. Little has no congressional campaign committee or congressional account registered with the FEC.
Anna Little, the former Mayor of Highlands, former Freeholder and the 2010 GOP nominee in the 6th Congressional district is one step closer to challenging Monmouth County State Senator Joe Kyrillos for the GOP 2012 U.S. Senate nomination.
Little told Politickernj that she would be filing with the FEC today to open a campaign account for her U.S. Senate bid.
Atlantic Highlands Municipal Chairwoman Jane Frotten has resigned as Little’s campaign treasurer. Atlantic Highlands Mayor Fred Rast has resigned as president of Anna’s Army Foundation, “a non-profit educational foundation created in the image of Anna Little and her campaign for Congress in the 6th Congressional District of NJ.”
Until recently, the race for the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Robert Menendez was seen as battle between Kyrillos and fellow State Senator Michael Doherty. Kyrillos has a Senate Exploritory Committee. Doherty has been traveling the state touting his Fair School Funding plan. MMM has learned from very reliable sources that Doherty is leaning against entering the Senate primary. If Doherty does stay out of the race, a head to head match up between Kyrillos and Little could be in the making.
Little should take a reality check and reconsider before her dreams of a political future are irreparably shattered.
Little made a name for herself with the stunning upset victory over Diane Gooch in the primary for the 6th congressional district nomination in 2010. Little’s margin of victory was 84 votes out of roughly 14,000 cast.
What Little has failed to realize, and she stops talking to anyone who tells her the truth, is that she didn’t win that primary so much as Gooch lost it.
Not that her victory was an accident. The strategy of the Little primary campaign was to sneak up from behind. I know because I, then still a close confidant of Little, helped design the strategy. None of the “experts” took Little’s challenge of the county party lines and the uber funded Gooch seriously going into the primary. That was the key to victory. Build a ground game to bring out new voters and count on the fact that the “experts” don’t see the Tea Party wave coming. Even the Tea Parties were shocked by the depth of the 2010 tsunami. David Corsi’s inexplicable primary victory over Scott Sipprelle in the Monmouth County portion of the 12th congressional district proves that the party establishment was caught with their pants around their ankles.
They won’t be caught off guard again.
The Gooch campaign’s primary strategy was to ignore Little and run against incumbent Congressman Frank Pallone. It was a good strategy for a conventional time. Conventional times ended in 2010 before the establishment realized it.
It wasn’t until the final weekend of the 2010 primary campaign when Little managed to get onto TV, that the Gooch campaign realized that they might have a problem. They tried legal maneuvers, that failed, to get Little’s ads pulled. It was too late to respond. Little had successfully used the “surprise them” and “get the last word” strategies that we had successfully used in Highlands campaigns many times.
The problem with a “don’t let them see you coming” playbook is that it only works once.
A key political operative with close ties to both Gooch and Kyrillos has been keeping a close eye on Little since she declared her rematch with Pallone on election night 2010.
“She won’t get a free ride next time,” said the operative on the condition of anonymity, “we had a thick opposition research file on her in 2010 but didn’t use it because we weren’t taking her seriously and didn’t want to hurt her needlessly. The file has gotten a lot thicker in the last year.”
With their discharge from Anna’s Army, Frotten and Rast join the growing brigade of Monmouth County politicos who will no longer go to battle for Little.
Roughly a year ago, this blog compared Little to Jon Corzine over a policy position she took in one of her final acts as the mayor of Highlands. Unfortunately, it is becoming apparent that Little also shares a personality trait with the former governor. She surrounds herself with people who tell her what she wants to hear and burns bridges with those who tell her what she needs to hear.
Little had a bright political future ahead of her on election night in 2010. Then she started talking.
She declared her rematch with Pallone, announced the formation of Anna’s Army and challenged Gooch, who had funded independent anti-Pallone ads, to a rematch. She failed to thank her supporters, Tea Party and establishment, who were caught off guard by her lack of humility.
She’s on the verge of crossing a line from which there will be no return. She should reconsider and start mending fences. Many of her old friends are forgiving.
It’s been a week and Pallone is still silent on his operative assaulting a 68 year old woman
Frank Pallone talks a good game when it comes to violence against women. He was a co-sponsor of Violence Against Women Act of 1999 , which never became law. In September of 2009 he announced that the Justice Department gave a $250K grant to Manavi, Incorporated, a New Brunswick-based women’s rights organization that works to end all forms of violence against South Asian women living in the U.S.
In the last week Phoney Palloney has managed to tweet about the GOP’s antipathy towards high speed rails, the pea soup at the Highlands Oktoberfest, homecoming at Rutgers and the New York Times.
Nothing about his long time friend slugging a 68 year old woman over campaign sign placement.
Competing sign teams came to blows last evening in Atlantic Highlands when long time Pallone supporter Joe Hawley assaulted Atlantic Highlands GOP chairwoman Jane Frotten, 68.
According to Frotten, Hawley was interfering with a Little sign team in the borough when she showed up and tried to reason with the him. Hawley screamed disparaging remarks about Jane’s husband Bernie, 79, and pushed her. Jane, who serves as Anna Little’s campaign treasurer, hit him back.
The Atlantic Highlands police were called to the scene. No charges have yet to be filed.
“He probably skipped his meds,” said Frotten about her assaulter.
