72 % of New Jersey voters still do not know enough about Joe Kyrillos, thus Bob Menendez has slightly widened his lead in the U.S. Senate race, according to a Qunnipiac poll released this morning.
Menendez favorablity rating remains weak, especially for an incumbent, at 37%-25% with 36% not knowing enough about him to form an opinion.
Barack Obama is leading Mitt Romney in New Jersey by 49%-38%. Romney’s favorability rating is upside down, 35%-43%.
New Jersey voters are split over ObamaCare. 47% favor keeping it, 45% favor repealing it.
In honor of Senator Bob Menendez crying, “twice choking back sobs” today as Poltickernj put it, because Joe Kyrillos is distinguishing himself as the pro-women candidate in New Jersey’s U.S Senate race, MMM is announcing a song parody contest with the theme being “Joe Kyrillos is the pro-woman candidate in the New Jersey U.S. Senate race.”
The contest is open to all readers of MoreMonmouthMusings. Submissions will be accepted until midnight on July 31st, or whatever time Art Gallagher wakes up on August 1. There is no limit on the number a submissions any one person or team of people can submit. Submissions can be made in the comments of this post or by sending a message to Art Gallagher on facebook. Submissions can be made in your real name or with a pseudonym. By submitting a parody you give up any copyright or right to profit monetarily from the parody.
The winning song will be made into a professional quality video produced by our friend and professional videographer Joe Schilp. MMM readers will be stars of the video. The video will be launched on YouTube the week after Labor Day
To get things started, MMM publisher Art Gallagher reached deep into the MMM archives to find Lightshines, a prolific parody writer for MMM and other sites in the late 2000’s. Art asked Lightshines to write a parody entitled “Don’t cry for me Bob Menendez” to the tune of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Don’t cry for me Argentina.” This is Lightshines’ first entry in the contest:
After witnessing the sad spectacle of Bob Menendez breakdown when addressing a Union County Day Care Center (he didn’t get his nap?) we channeled Eva Peron who, feeling Senator Bob was a little too corrupt even for her, had this to say:
Don’t cry for me, Bob Menendez The truth is we never liked you All through your Hudson days your dirty politics You kept no promise Now keep your distance
And as for fortune, and as for fame That didn’t do much for us Cause it seemed to the world that was all you desired
You’re an illusion You are not the solution you promised to be The answer was here all the time Defeat you and all of your grime
Don’t cry for me, Bob Menendez The truth is we never liked you All through your Hudson days your dirty politics You kept no promise Now keep your distance
Pick any song you like to write your parody. You can use “Don’t cry for me..” or any other song.
MMM is assembling a panel of judges who will select the final four parodies.
MMM readers will select the winner in early August.
Politickernj is reporting that U.S. Senator Bob Menendez cried emotionally, “twice choking back sobs,” at a Union City daycare center earlier today.
State Senator Joe Kyrillos’ claim that he is the “women’s candidate” in New Jersey the U.S. Senate race is reportedly what brought Menendez to tears.
Menendez and a cohort of Democratic women were at the Union City daycare center to take a page out of the Obama playbook by accusing Kyrillos of being anti-woman, according to a report on NJ.com
“That fact of the matter is, on all of the issues that matter most to the women of New Jersey, state Sen. Joe Kyrillos has been on the wrong side,” state Sen. Barbara Buono said at a campaign rally held in a Union City daycare center. “For every stride Sen. Menendez has made to uplift and support women in New Jersey and across the nation, Sen. Kyrillos and his allies took a step — a leap — backward.”
The Kyrillos campaign fired back with a statement from Communications Director Meaghan Cronin:
“Sadly, aided by some partisan politicians, Bob Menendez today tried to deflect from his record of failing women by attacking Joe Kyrillos. The truth is women have been hurt by Bob Menendez’s votes and policies. In fact, there are 780,000 more women unemployed today than there were three and a half years ago. What does Menendez’s record show: increased debt, reduced jobs and cuts to Medicare. No wonder he wants to draw focus away from that. While Menendez continues to play politics, a ticking time bomb awaits New Jersey families. While he continues to talk and not act, the threat of a massive tax increase that will hurt women and all taxpayers continues to grow. Bob Menendez promised us better, but gave us so much worse.”
U. S. Senator Bob Menendez raised nearly $400 thousand more than his challenger, State Senator Joe Kyrillos did during the quarter that ended June 30th. Menendez raised roughly $1.7 million to Kyrillos’ $1.3 million. During the first quarter, Kyrillos out raised Menendez by $100 thousand.
Menendez has $10 million in cash to Kyrillos’ $2 million.
“I am grateful for the support of so many people for my campaign, which is about so much more than re-electing one person as Senator. It’s about the middle class of New Jersey and what matters most to all of us,” said Senator Menendez. “These resources are invaluable to me as I prepare for a long hard fight in the Senate race. Contributions from regular people who hold a tremendous stake in this election serve as a bulwark against the very real possibility of my opponent turning to corporations and billionaires to fund his campaign.”
The Kyrillos campaign said that the $3.1 million they have raised to date puts them in the top tier of U.S. Senate candidates, both incumbents and challengers, throughout the country.
“Bob Menendez has raised millions of dollars from special interests,” said Kyrillos Campaign Manager Chapin Fay. “Oil companies, banks and Wall Street are all kicking in big bucks. And like Jon Corzine did in 2009, Menendez will have more money in this race. But no amount of money can explain away Bob Menendez’s failed record on jobs and the economy. We are right on pace for Joe Kyrillos to have the resources necessary to get out his job growth message.”
June was by far the most active month in MMM’s history. There have been 32,000 visits and 57,000 page views so far month. 71% of those visitors were repeats. Google analytics says that all of that traffic came from 8700 computers. Unbelievably to me, the average visit is for 11 minutes, which is longer than it takes to read an entire issue of the Asbury Park Press.
According to alexa.com, only 15,850 websites in the New York area and 125,439 in the United States get more traffic than MMM.
Special thanks go out to Anna Little, Ernesto Cullari, John Bennett, Christine Hanlon, Vin Gopal, Frank LaRocca, Barbara Gonzalez, Bob Gordon, Linda Baum Rachel Alintoff, Judge Paul Escandon, Louise Murray and everyone who wears bathing suits on the Asbury Park Boardwalk. I can’t forget Bob Menendez’s opposition research team.
I doing my monthly review, I couldn’t help but notice the success of my friends in Asbury Park.
Congratulations to Dan Jacobson and Molly Mulshine at the AsburyParkSun. In only three months they have made a significant impact in the local media market. Alexa.com says that APS is in the top 200,000 of all websites nationally and in the top 35,000 in the New York area. Mulshine was the first to report the Asbury Park Boardwalk beach attire controversy, a story that went national.
UPDATE: July 1
Wow! I haven’t had such a busy last day of the month since I was in the car business. The final numbers for June are 32,959 visitors fromm 9,194 unique IPs and 58,768 page views. Ranked 120,646 in the U.S. on Alexa.
As Lois mentioned in the comments, thank you so much to all the commenters, especially the “congregation” as Lois called the regulars. I won’t name them all because I’m sure to leave an important one out.
The Joe Kyrillos for U.S. Senate Campaign launched a new website yesterday, CheapTalkBob.com
The site centers on a video of Bob Menendez’s constant chatter about the middle class, with facts that prove he does nothing to help the middle class.
Six years ago, Senator Menendez campaigned on a message of job creation for the middle class, but instead gave us a national unemployment rate that ballooned from 4.7% to 8.2%, a national debt that has nearly doubled, and a deficit which has more than quadrupled. Talk is cheap and Bob Menendez’s inaction continues to make things worse for the middle class.
Middle class families need a real reformer like Joe Kyrillos. Senator Kyrillos doesn’t just talk about reform, he’s implementing it for middle class families across New Jersey. Senator Kyrillos, under the leadership of Governor Christie and with the help of like-minded reformers, has worked to balance the state’s budget without raising taxes, cut spending, stopped borrowing, and reformed programs like the pension system. Election year rhetoric, like Bob Menendez’s cheap talk about the middle class, is no excuse for consistently voting to raise taxes, explode debt and stifle job creation.
“Bob Menendez thinks that if he talks enough about helping the middle class, people will start to believe that he actually is,” said Senator Kyrillos. “But you can’t hide from the facts. Bob Menendez has been consistently making things worse. He is making it harder for businesses to expand, and create more jobs. He is making families insecure about their financial decisions because of the frailty of the economy. He is hurting our friends, families, and neighbors, who have worked hard to succeed but have fallen on hard times. Those that want a better job, and to make a better living for their families. His constant talk about making things better for them is just that—talk.”
Monmouth County Prosecutor Peter E. Warshaw, Jr was nominated by Governor Chris Christie to become a Superior Court Judge on June 14. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold his confirmation hearing today. He is likely to be confirmed by the full Senate before the end of the week, ending his 18 month tenure as county prosecutor.
First Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni is expected to be nominated to replace Warshaw as the chief prosecutor in Monmouth County. Word in the legal community is that Gramiccioni, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney under Christie, was the governor’s first choice to become Monmouth County Prosecutor in 2010 but that he was 18 months short of the residency requirements.
Former Monmouth County Sheriff Joe Oxley, also former Monmouth GOP Chairman, was nominated to the Court on May 14. Oxley’s confirmation has yet to be scheduled by the Democratically controlled Judiciary Committee, due in part to a Star Ledger report that federal informant Soloman Dwek accused Oxley, Senator Joe Kyrillos and Assemblywoman Amy Handlin of trading favors for campaign contributions.
Dwek’s allegations were revealed in discovery documents in the civil case of former Hudson County Assemblyman Louis Manzo who unsuccessly sued the U.S. Attorney’s office to recover $100K in legal fees that resulted Manzo’s 2009 Operation Bid Rig indictments. Manzo was accused under the Hobbs Act of accepting bribes from Dwek in exchange for future help in zoning and permit applications should Manzo be elected Jersey City Mayor. Manzo was running for Mayor for the fifth time when the alleged bribe occurred. Federal Judge Jose Linares threw out the charges on the basis that the Hobbs Act applied only to elected officials, not candidates. The Appellate Court affirmed Linares’ ruling.
The discovery documents in Manzo’s civil case miraculously found their way to the Star Ledger in what Kyrillos called an “oppo (opposition research) dump” by U. S. Senator Robert Menedez’s reelection campaign. Kyrillos is the GOP nominee to unseat Menendez and a minority member of the State Senate Judiciary Committee which reviews judicial nominations.
Expect the Judiciary Committee to schedule Oxley’s confirmation hearing in September or October as the general election campaign is heating up. Democratic Senator Ray Lesniak has called for Dwek, who is in federal prison, to testify at Oxley’s hearing. That would put Kyrillos, as a member of the committee and also accused by Dwek of trading favors for contributions, in a hot seat at the height of the U.S. Senate campaign.
In another potential twist in this tangled web, Gramiccioni was one of the federal prosecutors working on the Bid Rig investigations, including Manzo’s, according to Bob Ingle and Michael Symons in Chris Christie: The Inside Story Of His Rise To Power (page 90). Should Gramiccioni be nominated Monmouth County Prosecutor, as expected, his nomination will also be subject to a Judiciary Committee hearing.
Gramiccioni’s wife, Deborah, is Governor Christie’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Cabinet Liason.
“Senator Kyrillos has built a sterling reputation throughout his career, and this is a shameless oppo dump from the Menendez political machine. The fact of the matter is that Senator Kyrillos never did anything to help this man at any time. And furthermore, the second it was clear that this man was a con man, Senator Kyrillos, unlike others, immediately gave his campaign contribution to charity and documented that with the Election Law Enforcement Commission.”
Swarmy swindler Solomon Dwek told federal investigators in 2006 that Joe Oxley, Joe Kyrillos and Amy Handlin were in his pocket, according to a Star Ledgerreport posted on NJ.com Monday night.
Dwek’s claims became public in an FBI report prepared in August of 2006 that was recently released after former Hudson County Assemblyman Louis Manzo unsuccessfully sued the U. S Attorney’s office to recover $100,000 in legal fees that resulted from his July 2009 Operation Bid Rig arrest. Manzo had been indicted twice in the Bid Rig III scandal but all charges against him were eventually dismissed, according to Bob Ingle and Michael Symons writing in their just released biography of Chris Christie.
Dwek alleged that Oxley, while Monmouth County Sheriff, tipped him off about upcoming foreclosures two weeks before the information became public, thereby giving Dwek an advantage in purchasing the properties before the foreclosure auctions. The FBI’s subsequent investigation of Oxley found no wrong doing.
Oxley is the Monmouth County GOP Chairman until Tuesday evening. He has been nominated by Governor Chris Christie to be a Superior Court Judge. Christie was U.S. Attorney during the investigation of Oxley.
99% of the votes of been recorded for the U.S Senate GOP primary and Joe Kyrillos won 77% of them, 161,137 votes.
None of Kyrillos’ three opponents broke 20,000 votes. David Brown came in second with 18,666 (9%), Joseph “Rudy” Rullo was third with 16,691 and Tea Party favorite Badar Qarmout was last with 12,636.
