NY Times Calls Romney Winner Of Florida Primary

The New York Times called the Florida GOP presidential primary for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at the moment the polls closed in the western part of the state.

As of 8:29 pm EST, with 63% of the results reported, Romney leads former House Speaker Newt Gingrich 47%  to 31%.  Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has 13.2% of the preliminary count and Texas Congressman Ron Paul 6.9%.

The Times reported that Santorum, the winner of the Iowa caucuses has started running ads in Nevada targeting Gingrich’s Tea Party support, saying the Speaker’s policies, including support of Wall Street bailouts mirror those of another former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and President Barack Obama.

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In Search Of The New Jersey Presidential Primary

By Bob English

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Why the push for same sex marriage now?

In a widely published OpEd piece, Rob Eichmann, the GOP State Committeeman from Gloucester County, questioned why the the State Legislature’s Democratic leadership has made gay marriage their top priority of the year.

Assembly Minority Conference Leader Dave Rible says the Democrats putting the issue on the front burner is a “slap in the face to the guy on the unemployment line.”

Both men have a point. 

Garden State Equality, the gay rights organization behind the push for same sex marriage, boasts of 86,000 members on its website.   That makes them, they say, the largest civil rights organization in the state.

That 86,000 number is questionable. 

Steve Goldstein, Chair and CEO of the GSE, told MMM that they consider any person who takes two affirmative actions for equality to be a member.  How they track that, he wouldn’t say.   I’m pretty sure they consider me a member.  Goldstein was aware that I signed up for their email list this week.  I told him that I noticed that shortly after I signed up that the the number changed from 85,000 to 86,000.  “I promise you, Art, we’re not counting you as 1,000 members.”

Goldstein finally acknowledged, sort of, that the membership claim is based upon a combination of their email list of 70,000 plus the 17,200 facebook friends they have, less a fudge factor to eliminate overlaps. Given that there is a facebook plug in on the GSE page, the fudge factor should probably be more than 1,200.

Even if GSE’s membership numbers were accurate, they would be representing less that 1% of New Jersey’s population.

The number of same sex couples who have committed to each other in the form of civil unions is a more reliable indicator of just how big this “civil rights” problem is.

According to Daniel Emmer, spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, 5,790 couples have been joined in civil unions since 2007 when the legislation designating the unions become effective.  That’s 11,580 people, statewide, that this issue impacts directly, if we generously assume that none of those unions have been dissolved by divorce.  Do they call it divorce?

One might conclude that Goldstein’s political skills are remarkable.  He has managed to make his small, be it 11,580 or 86,000 people, constituency’s concern the top priority of our state government during a time when our economy is anemic, municipal governments are making significant changes to balance their budgets and our urban schools are not educating their students.  Unemployment and foreclosures are not our top priority. Another generation of minority students are not getting educated, and Steve Goldstein has managed to make same sex marriage the most important issue of the State Legislature.

Or has he?

Goldstein has been played by the Democrats before.  Jon Corzine, while he was governor got Goldstein to agree to back off the same sex marriage issue during the 2008 presidential election cycle and the 2009 gubernatiorial election cycle.  Corzine made passionate speeches before gay audiences about how important their rights were.  He was blowing smoke.

Are the Democratic leaders of the legislature playing Goldstein again?   I think they are.   

The Democrats and their special interest donors want nothing to do with Governor Christie’s agenda for this year.  They want to raise taxes, not lower them.  They don’t want to reform education.  They don’t want to reform the civil service system so that municipalities can lower their costs and taxes.

The Democrats don’t want Christie to be an effective spokesman for Mitt Romney, especially if Romney wins the GOP presidential nomination.

That’s what this is about for the Democratic leadership. Avoiding Christie’s agenda and changing the public conversation.  It’s not about civil rights and benefits for Goldstein’s small constituency.

Whether or not it’s really about civil rights for Goldstein and GSE is another question which will be the subject of a future post.

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Gingrich Preparing for New Jersey Primary. Romney’s Lead in Florida Restored

Buoyed by his stunning victory in South Carolina, New Gingrich is preparing for a nomination process that could extend into the summer.

Calls have gone out to conservative activists throughout New Jersey looking for grassroots networks to get out the vote for the former Speaker of the House in the Garden State’s  June presidential primary. 

The Gingrich campaign is advertising on cable television in New Jersey.

But the Gingrich campaign may be getting ahead of itself.  After leading the polls in Florida immediately after his South Carolina victory, Gingrich has fallen back to second place, behind Mitt Romney, in the Rasmussen Poll conducted last night.

According to Rasmussen, Romney has restored his lead in Florida back to where it was before Gingrich’s South Carolina win on Saturday.   Romney is supported by 39% of likely voters to Gingrich’s 31%.  Rick Santorum is favored by 12% and Ron Paul has the support of 9% of those expected to vote on Tuesday.  Only 7% are undecided.

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Sarah Palin and Christie’s underwear

Yes, there was a GOP presidential debate last night.  Mitt Romney tried to go after Newt Gingrich. Gingrich brushed off the shots, calling them lies, and referred the national audience to his website for his rebuttals.

The entertainment value has been on the under-card;  the battle among the front runners’ surrogates.  Chris Christie called Newt Gingrich an “embarrassment to the party” and an “influence peddler.”  Sarah Palin responded by calling Christie a “rookie” with his “panties in a wad.”

Palin went on during her appearance on Fox Business to call Christie an embarrassment, citing his use of a State Police helicopter to attend his son’s baseball game last June.

Christie doesn’t think much of Palin.  He kept her out of his 2009 gubernatorial campaign and let it be known to 2010 Republican congressional candidates that she was not welcome in New Jersey if the GOP candidates wanted his help on the trail.

But Christie can’t restrict Palin on the national stage and he can’t respond to her in-kind.  Gender sensibilities prohibit Christie from commenting on Palin’s underwear or taking another personal shot at her.   A woman can get away with taking a shot like that against a man, but not the other way around.  Palin, and Gingrich, know that.

For his own political future, and for his present role as a Romney surrogate, Christie needs to come up with a way to neutralise counter-punches coming from Palin.  He needs to do so in a way that increases his standing with both women and men, while diminishing Palin’s.

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Rasmussen: Gingrich leads Romney in Florida, 41%-32%

A telephone survey conducted Sunday of likely voters in the Florida GOP primary has Newton Gingrich leading Mitt Romney, 41%-32%, according to Rasmussen Reports.

Two weeks ago Romney lead by 22%.

Romney is leading among those who have already cast their votes by 11 points.  Gingrich leads by 12% among those who have not yet voted.  14% of likely voters have already cast their ballot.

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Romney’s Profitable Past

A National Review Editorial

Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman seem to be engaged in a perverse contest to be the Republican presidential candidate to say the most asinine thing about Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm at which he served as chief executive, helped turn around a number of failing businesses, and, in the process, produced magnificent profits for his investors and for himself. Mitt Romney ran a firm that invested in struggling businesses, made money, and never asked for a bailout — and Romney’s rivals apparently expect Republican voters to regard that as a liability.

We are largely immune to the charms of the CEO who promises to sweep into Washington and run the government like a business, mainly because the government is not a business. At the same time, private-sector expertise and experience is an invaluable thing in a chief executive, and Romney has nothing to regret on that front. Would that we could say the same thing of his tin-eared declaration that he, too, once feared getting the dread pink slip. Suffice it to say that the multimillionaire/CEO/governor son of a multimillionaire/CEO/governor does not fear losing his job in quite the same way as the typical American worker does.

Newt Gingrich’s risible super-PAC factotum has gone to the length of producing a feverish little film about Romney’s tenure as a “corporate raider” at Bain. Governor Perry, for his part, told a Republican audience: “If you are the victim of Bain Capital’s downsizing, it is the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain — he caused it.” To appropriate Governor Perry’s favorite adjective, that is the ultimate in populist pandering, or something close to it.

Huntsman’s private-sector experience consists of having served as an executive at the firm owned by his billionaire father. Gingrich and Perry have between them about eleven minutes’ worth of relevant private-sector experience — Perry being subsidized by the federal government to farm cotton, Gingrich subsidizing himself by farming his political connections — and therefore may not know (or care) what a private-equity firm such as Bain does. (Gingrich might consider asking his friends at leveraged-buyout firm Forstmann Little, where he was on the board.) Bain is involved in, among other things, leveraged buyouts, meaning that the firm and its investors borrow money from banks to acquire companies, usually firms that are in trouble but believed to be salvageable. These firms generally are bought on the theory that they represent fundamentally sound underlying business enterprises that are for one reason or another performing deficiently, usually because of incompetent management. Strong, thriving companies rarely are targets for leveraged-buyout acquisitions — if things are going well, there is no incentive to sell the company. If the firms are publicly traded, they often are taken private, their stocks delisted from the exchanges, and then reorganized. Once the company has been returned to profitability, it is taken public again or sold to a private buyer, in the hopes of turning a profit on the deal.

As you can imagine, companies that are buyout targets often are in very poor shape, and reviving them is no small thing. Many of them go into bankruptcy. Product lines are discontinued, retail locations are closed, assets are sold off, and, almost inevitably, jobs are lost. Some never recover. When the restructuring is successful, reinvigorated firms expand, add locations, develop new products, and create jobs. That is the creative destruction of capitalism. Staples has 2,000 stores instead of one store because of a Bain investment. And, as Herman Cain is well-positioned to appreciate, Burger King was severely underperforming when Bain and a group of franchise owners acquired it from corporate parent Diageo in 2002. The restructured burger chain, which went public a few years back, is now valued at more than $3 billion. Household names from Dunkin’ Donuts to Guitar Center have been among Bain’s projects.

Bain’s business is high-risk and high-reward. Romney made a pot of money — by investing in real businesses, which, it bears noting, employ many thousands of real Americans. Governor Perry likes to brag about the jobs created in Texas during his tenure: Perhaps he should subtract from that admirable sum those positions at companies in which Bain invested, for the sake of his intellectual integrity.

Romney also is being roasted for saying that one of the things he prefers about the private sector is that when it comes to the incompetent or the unsatisfactory, “if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” Choice — including the choice to fire a non-performing employee, or to fire your bank if you prefer another one — is the essence of the free market. In education, health care, and any number of other spheres of American life, more choice desperately is needed. An education system in which incompetent teachers could be routinely fired would be a real improvement over the current regime of tenure and “rubber rooms” — and Romney has nothing for which to apologize in connection with that remark, nor for taking on the thankless task of explaining the goodness of profits to an Occupy Wall Street heckler. Huntsman mocked Romney for the remark — but whoever the next president of the United States is, he should be provided with a very long list of people in the federal bureaucracies who need firing. If Huntsman does not have one, he has not thought hard enough about the issue.

Wall Street has its share of miscreants, and they should be recognized as such when appropriate. But to abominate Mitt Romney for having been a success at the business of investing in struggling American companies, connecting entrepreneurs with capital and producers with markets, is foolish and destructive. Republicans ought to know better, and the fact that Gingrich et al. apparently do not is the most disturbing commentary on the state of the primary field so far.

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Santorum, After Iowa

By Robert Costa, National Review Online

Des Moines, Iowa – One hot August night in Ames, Rick Santorum stood on the mat-covered basketball court at Iowa State University’s Hilton Coliseum. As pop-country songs played softly over the arena’s loudspeakers, he huddled with his wife, Karen. Few people noticed him, and his handlers, if he had any, were elsewhere. Reporters breezed past the couple, hustling to chat with big-name strategists working for Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty.

A couple steps away, under a cavern of Klieg lights, Sean Hannity of Fox News bantered with Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman, who was widely expected to sweep the upcoming straw poll. Santorum, surveying the scene, scowled. As he waited for Bachmann to finish the interview, he tapped his foot, like a backup player itching to get into the game. Once again he had participated in a Republican primary debate, and once again he was a bench-warmer.

Minutes after the televised spar, here he was, in a post-debate “spin room” stuffed with political junkies, and he was ignored – an also-ran, a B-list pol waiting to appear on cable. The proud, boyish-looking former Pennsylvania senator was miffed. “This is unbelievable,” he told Karen, shaking his head. “Two questions in the beginning, and I had to wave my hand to get them.”

Five months later, on a bitterly cold January morning in central Iowa, Santorum’s summer doldrums have largely evaporated. All week, as he has greeted burly voters, many of them decked in Carhartt jackets, he has been swarmed by hundreds of media types – print reporters, network producers, camera-toting Swiss bloggers – out in force to cover every move of the man who, quite suddenly, has shaken up the GOP presidential scramble.

But Santorum’s sustained buzz in Iowa’s small diners and Pizza Ranch restaurants is not due in any way to his celebrity or his charm. His usual outfit – single-color, slightly pilled sweater-vests over a pressed white shirt – is the look of the ill-at-ease soccer dad, not the confident frontrunner. His remarks are always delivered rapid-fire, are frequently testy, and are too often focused on long-forgotten legislative yawners. Regardless, Iowans have flocked to him at the eleventh hour, partly because they’ve soured on Bachmann and Gov. Rick Perry, and partly because he is the last alternative to Mitt Romney left, the nice-enough guy who has visited all 99 counties.

That’s just fine with Santorum, who tells me that he is confident that Republicans will nominate him, a “reliable conservative,” rather than “settle” on Romney. But as Iowans prepare to caucus, Romney’s well-organized and lavishly funded campaign looms over the Pennsylvanian’s upstart effort – the Death Star to Santorum’s X-wing fighter. Whatever the outcome tonight, the former Massachusetts governor will be a formidable competitor in the months ahead, as will Texas congressman Ron Paul, who has the money and ground game to stay in the hunt. And the rest of the field, should they choose to carry on, will give Santorum headaches, knocking him as they fade.

Of course, such a scenario depends on Santorum finishing in Iowa’s top tier, near or above Paul and Romney. The latest polls hint at this happening, but in this tumultuous primary season, most every reporter is wary of trusting any last-minute temperature-taking of the conservatives among the cornfields. Still, Santorum looks poised for a good night, and should he pull it off the real question becomes: What’s next?

To get some answers, I recently spoke with John Brabender, Santorum’s own Karl Rove – the senior strategist who has been with him since his first House race in 1990, when he toppled Democrat Doug Walgren, a seven-term incumbent from the Pittsburgh suburbs. Brabender tells me to keep an eye on seven factors as the Iowa HQ closes and the plane for Manchester is fueled.

Santorum will make a play for the Granite State: “We’re not like these other campaigns that look at New Hampshire, surrender, and say ‘We can’t be competitive there; we’re going to the South.’ We think South Carolina is extremely important, and we’re the only ones who’ve won a straw poll there. But we think that to be a legitimate presidential candidate, you have to, at the very least, be willing to compete in each region of the country,” Brabender says. “And that includes the Northeast. We’re not expecting to walk into every place and feel like we have to win, but by going to New Hampshire, it lets us continue a dialogue with the country. That’s where the press is, that’s where people are paying attention, and we want to show we have national strength.”

Santorum staffers are prepping for the long haul: “We knew this day would come,” Brabender says. “There is this perception that the senator, duffel bag in hand, has been wandering around Iowa, but behind the scenes, there is a lot going on.” In coming days, many of the top Iowa field staffers will be shifted to new roles in other early primary states, taking the turnout strategies and outreach techniques they honed in Iowa to South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Florida. “We’re not an expensive campaign, not a huge-bureaucracy campaign,” so there is flexibility in terms of personnel, he says. Regarding payroll, “we don’t need to bring in the same amount as other campaigns.”

New hires will begin in the finance department: “We’re probably going to make a few small hires,” Brabender says, and they will mostly be money raisers, “due to the uptick in donations that has really picked up in recent weeks.” Beyond that, “you’re not going to see some wholesale expansion. The biggest mistake we think we could make right now is simply trying to become the other candidates, running the same type of model that’s outdated. You can be sure we’re not going to do that.”

Santorum, more than ever, is at ease: Even Santorum’s confidants acknowledge that he can become frustrated and flustered at times. Republicans saw this side of him during the early stages of the primary, when he would complain about the lack of attention. Now that he’s ticked up in the polls and spent countless days crisscrossing Iowa, he’s “in the zone,” Brabender says. The candidate is peaking at the right moment. “He’s hitting his stride,” Brabender tells me. “The crowds are getting bigger, and when that happens, he feeds off of it. More than the typical candidate, he finds a way to ride that kind of energy, and you see him doing that right now.”

Santorum is comfortable as an outsider: When he lost his 2006 reelection bid by 18 points to lackluster Democrat Bob Casey Jr., Santorum’s political career nearly ended. He went from being a member of the Senate GOP leadership to a political nobody. Five years later, as he surges in the polls, Brabender says that loss is shaping Santorum’s perspective in innumerable ways, but most importantly in how it buoys his ability to speak about issues as both a former insider and a Beltway outsider. “He thinks it was actually beneficial for him to get out of Washington for a while,” Brabender. “It turned out to be a huge benefit as he began to look at a presidential run, since he came into this with fresh eyes, not as someone in a position of power.”

The family is “all in” after Iowa: Santorum’s large, growing family is slowly coming back into the spotlight, Brabender says, and his wife and children joined him on the trail in Iowa on Monday and will be with him all day today. In coming months, look for the older Santorum children to continue to show up at their father’s side, supporting him as he stumps. “Their son, John, delayed going to college this year to be part of the campaign, and their daughter Elizabeth is taking a year off from college to be part of the campaign, playing significant roles.”

The inner circle remains the same: “It’s not a big group,” Brabender says. “Hogan Gidley works at my firm, and he’s the communications director. He directs a small communications team. You have Mike Biundo, who’s from New Hampshire; he’s the campaign manager. You have Nadine Maenza, who’s the finance director and who’s been with the senator since the 1990s. There is also Mark Rodgers, Santorum’s former chief of staff, who works in a senior advisory role. And unlike many campaigns, we keep Rick and Karen as part of the strategic team.” There is also, he claims, little drama. “So many of us have been with Rick for many years, and there’s nothing like you’ve read on Politico about other campaigns and their infighting. We mostly spend our time looking over historical polling data for Santorum, seeing what we can apply to this race.”

“We all started together in Pennsylvania,” Brabender says, commenting on Santorum’s senior team. “And just as Rick grew, we all grew in sophistication, but none of us has ever lost our roots. At 4:15 p.m. on Sunday, you can be sure that we were all finding a place to watch the Steelers game.” Later tonight, they’ll all be tuned to the same channel, this time watching the caucus returns. On Sunday, the Steelers beat the Cleveland Browns. In a few hours, Brabender expects to be cheering once again.

– Robert Costa is a political reporter for National Review.

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Independence Hall Tea Party PAC Becomes First Tea Party To Endorse Mitt Romney

Philadelphia, PA (January 2, 2012) — The Independence Hall Tea Party PAC, a tri-state (DE, NJ, PA) regional group, announced today that its 27-member Board of Delegates has voted overwhelmingly to endorse Mitt Romney for President.

The Independence Hall Tea Party PAC is the first Tea Party group in the nation to formally endorse Mitt Romney.

“Over the past several weeks, a consensus has been building among our Board of Delegates that Mr. Romney is the most electable Republican candidate,” said PAC President, Don Adams.  “We, as a Tea Party PAC, have set winning the White House as our number one priority in 2012.  We believe Mr. Romney is the one

candidate who can win the Republican nomination and defeat President Barack Obama in November.  

“Mr. Romney is the only Republican candidate who has consistently polled even or ahead of President Obama in national surveys.  He puts a number of 2008 blue states in play, including Michigan and New Hampshire.  He also appeals to large numbers of independent voters.” 

“Mr. Romney, a devoted family man, is an incredibly talented, well-rounded individual with in-depth knowledge and experience in both the private and public sectors of the economy,” said PAC New Jersey Vice President, Bill Green.  “Ultimately, we believe Mr. Romney is a man of principle who, once elected, will lead our nation back to prosperity.”

PAC Delaware Vice President, Kevin Street, said, “His vision of a strong America, one built on the foundations of free enterprise and meritocracy, is most compatible with the principles of the Tea Party movement. 

“Mr. Romney has stated time and again that he believes in a limited role for the Federal government–emphasizing that the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution delineates between the powers of the national government and that of the states.”

“Mr. Romney will pursue a policy of energy independence, lower taxes, and less government spending.  He has promised to secure our borders and redirect our foreign policy,” added PAC Pennsylvania Vice President, Sean Carpenter.  “Under his presidency, the United States will no longer prostrate itself before other nations.  We believe in a strong America–an America that is respected for its economic vibrancy, its military strength, and its constitutional values.”

PAC Co-Founder, Teri Adams, said, “We realize that a number of fellow Tea Partiers are not yet where we are in supporting Mitt Romney for President–and we respect their varied positions. 

“However, we felt compelled to make an endorsement in light of a counter-productive effort to stop Mitt Romney among some disparate elements on the right–often based on a religious intolerance of Mr. Romney’s Mormon faith. 

“We also think the notion that the Tea Party will support a 3rd party candidate after Mitt Romney becomes the Republican nominee, a notion most often advanced by the mainstream media, must be discredited,” Ms. Adams said.

“It discounts the good sense of millions of Tea Party folks nationwide who have come to realize, or will eventually realize, that the only way to defeat President Obama, whose policies are an anathema to conservatism and the Tea Party Movement, is to rally around his strongest opponent–Mitt Romney–the man who, we believe, will become the next president of the United States.”

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2012 Predictions

Serena DiMaso will be elected Monmouth County Freeholder at the Title 19 convention of the Monmouth GOP Committee on January 14.   Bob Walsh will withdraw during his speech before the convention.

Bill Spadea defeats Donna Simon and John Saccenti at a Title 19 convention of the 16th legislative district to fill the assembly seat vacated by the death of Peter Biondi.  After recounts and law suits, the November special election for the seat is declared a tie between Spadea and Democratic Princeton Committeewoman Sue Nemeth.  Another special election is scheduled for January of 2013.

Joe Oxley will be named Township Administrator and In House Attorney for Wall Township.  The appointment will forward a statewide trend of municipalities hiring either attorneys or engineers as their administrators as a cost saving measure.   Oxley is reelected GOP County Chairman by acclamation.  Senator Jennifer Beck will give the nominating speech.  Christine Hanlon will be Vice Chair.

Middletown will get a new Parks and Recreation Director.  It won’t be Linda Baum or Pam Brightbill.

Jim McGreevey is ordained an Episcopal priest.

Jon Corzine remembers where he put the $1.2 billion.

Senator Joe Kyrillos will be the GOP nominee for U.S. Senator, defeating Anna Little and Joseph Rudy Rullo in the primary. 

Congressman Steve Rothman defeats Congressman Bill Pascrell in the Democratic primary for the 9th Congressional District nomination.  In the only surprise of the primary, former Bergen County GOP Freeholder Anthony Cassano, who had agreed to take one for the team in the 9th, was defeated when the Bergen County Tea Party Group organized a write-in campaign for Anna Little.  Little was on the ballot as a U.S. Senate candidate.  Having lost the Senate nomination to Joe Kyrillos, Little accepts the nomination, asks Kyrillos to host a fundraiser for her, and promises to move into the district if she wins.   She doesn’t.

Maggie Moran defeats Vin Gopal and Frank “LaHornica” LaRocca in a close election for the Monmouth County Democratic Chairmanship.

James Hogan of Long Branch is the GOP nominee for Congress in New Jersey’s 6th Congressional District.  Frank Pallone is reelected by 8%.

Jordan Rickards of North Brunswick  is the GOP nominee for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District.  Rush Holt is reelected by 15%.

On August 28, the second day of the Republican National Convention, the National Weather Service warns that Hurricane Chris is heading towards the Jersey Shore.  Acting Governor Kim Guadagno gets on TV and says, “Get the heck off of the beach please.”

Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee for President of the United States.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will be the Vice Presidential nominee.

President Obama nominates Vice President Joe Biden to be Secretary of State.  Biden submits his resignation as VP effective upon both houses of congress confirming his successor.  President Obama nominates Hillary Clinton as Vice President.   Speaker of the House John Boehner refuses to schedule confirmation hearings for the VP nomination on the constitutional grounds that their is no vacancy in the office.   Obama makes them both recess appointments.  Clinton is nominated for VP at the Democratic National Convention and Secretary of State Biden spends October in China.

Despite losing their home states of Massachusetts and New Jersey, the Romney-Christie ticket wins the electoral college by one vote, 270-269.   The winning vote comes from Maine, one of two states that awards electoral votes by congressional district.  Romney-Christie lose Maine 3-1 but win the election.  Obama-Clinton file suit to challenge Maine’s method of awarding electoral votes.  Romney-Christie counter with a suit in Nebraska, which they won 4 electoral votes to 1, using the same arguments that Obama-Clinton use in Maine.  The U.S. Supreme Court decides both cases for the plaintiffs, 5-4, and determined that in all future presidential elections that electoral votes are awarded on a winner take all basis nationally.  Tea Party leader Dwight Kehoe calls for the impeachment of the Justices who voted affirmatively, claiming that they don’t understand the 10th Amendment.

Robert Menendez defeats Joe Kyrillos for U.S. Senate by 1%.

U. S. Senator Frank Lautenberg resigns.   In one of his last acts as Governor before ascending to the Vice Presidency, Chris Christie appoints Kyrillos to Lautenberg’s Senate seat.

What do you think will happen?

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