Jeff Bell wins the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate

With 94% of the voting districts reporting statewide, Jeff Bell is leading Rich Pezzullo  by 3,200 votes in the race to take on Senator Cory Booker in November.

Save Jersey called the race for Bell.  Bell has 38,959 votes, 29%, according to The Associated Press.  Pezzullo had 35,733, 27%.

Establishment favorite Brian Goldberg has 33,194 votes, 25%.  Murray Sabrin has 20% of the vote, 26,249.

Bell defeated the last Republican U.S. Senator from New Jersey, Clifford Case, in 1978 GOP primary and lost the general election to Bill Bradley, a Rhodes Scholar and famous NBA basketball star.  This year he will take on Booker, a Rhodes Scholar and famous social media star.

Bell did not participate in any of the Republican County conventions this year. He has won the nomination without any county “Party Lines” on the primary ballot.

Bell sent out mail that Republican primary voters are used to receiving and he advertised MMM.

Follow Jeff Bell on twitter.  He has 175 followers to Booker’s 1.47 million.

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In GOP U.S. Senate Primary: Write-in Joe Kyrillos

By Art Gallagher

Sen. Joe Kyrillos and Mayor Fred Rast greeting voters in Atlantic Highlands last year. photo by Art Gallagher

Several MMM readers have asked  me to endorse of a U.S. Senate candidate to take on Senator Cory Booker.  I can’t endorse, or vote for, any of the four candidates who are on the ballot this Tuesday.

I’m writing in Joe Kyrillos on Tuesday. If this post goes viral, Joe Kryillos could be the U.S. Senate Republican nominee on Tuesday night.  That’s how bad the U.S. Senate primary campaign has been.  Booker would then have a fight on his hands.  Share this post.

None of the four candidates on the ballot can make Booker break a sweat this fall.

None of the candidates on the ballot have raised enough money for a county freeholder race, never mind a statewide race for U.S. Senate.  Booker has spent over $12 million on his re-election bid since the first of the year. He had $2.9 million in cash on hand as of May 14.

State Senator Joe Kyrillos, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2012, has refunded more money to his federal donors this year that any of the current Republican candidates have raised.

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Four Feisty GOP Foes Battle for Chance to Challenge Booker

Four Feisty GOP Foes Battle for Chance to Challenge Booker (via NJSpotlight)

As rising political star Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) prepares for an uncontested primary, the four Republicans auditioning to oppose him remain far from the spotlight. They are not complete unknowns. One was prominent in politics long ago. Two have been…

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Dispatches from Somewhere Else

By Murray Sabrin, PhD

So here I am, running for the United States Senate, to be a member of the body that approves Justices to the Supreme Court and treaties with foreign powers, only to find that the vetting process resembles those ad hoc committees formed to screen prospective tenants in a down market high rise.

Vetting process, what vetting process, my academic friends ask?  They remind me that 100 years ago, the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution established the direct election of Senators by popular vote.

Not so fast, this is New Jersey, and New Jersey isn’t like the rest of America.

You see, New Jersey has never quite warmed up to the idea of holding an unimpeded popular vote on anything.  First, there is the filter of the party primary, but as this is New Jersey, the party bosses go one step further, they have something they call “the line”.

The party bosses get to assemble the actual government ballot in a way that benefits the candidates they select.  Then they go another step further, by actually labeling their candidate as the “approved” Republican candidate.  Try doing this to an official ballot in the rest of America and you will end up in jail.  But New Jersey really isn’t America, it is somewhere else.

The “line” is a thumb on the scale that gives an advantage to one candidate over others and what is worse is that it uses a government ballot and a government polling place to deliver that advantage on behalf of a political boss.  And all this electoral corruption is paid for by the taxpayers!

This year I entered the so-called “selection” process with open eyes.  My supporters include some very experienced people who told me up front that Governor Christie’s people would never allow someone who supported Ron Paul to be the nominee.  They told me that the Governor still wants to run for President and that he fears a challenge from Senator Rand Paul.

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Burry and Rich Are Renominated by Monmouth GOP

Freeholder Director Lillian Burry and Deputy Director Gary Rich took a first ballot victory over Howell Councilman Bob Walsh at the Monmouth GOP Convention this morning.

The unofficial results are:

Gary Rich 294

Lillian Burry 227

Bob Walsh 199

In the race for the U.S. Senate nomination, there was no first ballot winner. Murray Sabrin and Rich Pezzullo qualified for a second ballot which is now being taken.

The first ballot Senate numbers were are follows:

Rich Pezzullo  164

Murray Sabrin 105

Brian Goldberg 72

Robert Tukevage 44

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Brian Goldberg Wins U.S. Senate Nod From Ocean County GOP Convention

Brian Goldberg

Brian Goldberg, a businessman and political newcomer, won the endorsement of the Ocean County Republican Committee for U. S. Senate at the party convention in Toms River this evening.

Goldberg won a first ballot victory with 108 votes.  Rich Pezzullo, a businessman from Freehold received 25 votes.  Ramapo College Professor Murray Sabrin and former FBI Agent Robert Turkavage each received 5 votes.

Goldberg will have the party line on the ballot in Ocean County for the June 3 primary.

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Cory Booker finally speaks out on critical issue facing the nation–his March Madness bracket picks

By Scott St. Clair

How special that The Star-Ledger has all the time in the world to grill Sen. Cory Booker on his NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket picks and hold him accountable for his “gut thing” upset prediction of Stephen F. Austin over VCU. After all, didn’t New Jersey voters elect him to waste his time and their money this way?

Booker thinks his job consists of sending out marginally obscene Twitter messages, regaling Senate colleagues with how he drove to Hawaii and now gracing us with his round ball wisdom.

Maybe he’s bucking to win Warren Buffett’s $1 billion prize for the perfect March Madness bracket? Hope he wins – and then retires.

On issues facing the nation, he’s MIA. War or peace, Ukraine, excessive federal spending, the National Debt, the mass exodus of people from New Jersey because the place is too damned burdened with taxes to be affordable – where is he?

And how about answering questions that stem from the state comptroller’s scathing report on rampant corruption under his nose and on his watch while he was mayor of Newark? When will The Star-Ledger find time to grill him on that?

On them all he’s nowhere, that’s where. Care to ask him?

Scott St. Clair is the Communications Director for Murray Sabrin for U.S. Senate 2014

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Ron Paul Endorses Murray Sabrin for U.S. Senate

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul endorsed Ramapo College Finance Professor Murray Sabrin for the New Jersey GOP U.S. Senate nomination, Sabrin’s campaign announced today.

In a letter to Sabrin expressing his endorsement, Paul said that the professor recognizes the dramatic overreach of ObamaCare will impact all Americans for decades to come.  Paul cited Sabrin’s opposition to NSA spying on American citizens.

“I have known Murray for 30 years, and he is a

true champion of liberty. I am proud to endorse

his campaign for U.S. Senate in New Jersey.”

“I’m honored and humbled to have the support of my friend, Ron Paul,” said Murray, “and I know his endorsement sends a strong message throughout New Jersey that I’m in this race all the way and in it to win.”

“America and New Jersey cannot afford Cory Booker in the Senate for a full, six-year term given his support of job-killing taxes, environmental regulations that will cost almost 8,500 New Jerseyans their jobs over the next 10 years and, of course the increasingly problematic Obamacare. We can’t afford to let Cory Booker pay attention to the nation’s business in the same way The New York Times recently exposed he failed to pay attention to the city of Newark’s business when he was mayor. The hard working people of New Jersey deserve better, and I will give that to them when I’m elected to the United States Senate.”

The Sabrin campaign said they are proud of Paul’s endorsement not only because of their shared principles, but because of the access to Paul’s grassroots fundraising apparatus that raised millions of dollars during the former congressman’s presidential campaigns.

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Sabrin Filed Ethics Complaint Against Sweeney For Lobbying

Murray Sabrin, PhD raised questions about Senate President Steve Sweeney’s potentially conflicting roles as a labor leader and state legislator months before he considered running for U.S. Senate.  If his ethics complaint is politically motivated, the complaint itself was not made to boost his Senate candidacy. But the fact that he is shedding a public light on it now, over three months after he first raised the issue, is an effort to raise his public profile to support his candidacy.

But if Sabrin thought his efforts against Sweeney would help him garner support with the GOP establishment for the Senate nomination, he is mistaken.  Former Acting Govenor/Senate President Don DiFrancesco, still a power player in the establishment, defended Sweeney in the Chasing New Jersey report (video below) that brought Sabrin’s complaint to public light.

Sabrin says that Sweeney’s employment as General Vice President of the International Association of Iron Workers, where he earns over $200,000 per year, is a conflict with his role as Senate President because he lobbies senators that he overseas.

DiFrancesco told Chasing New Jersey’s Sibile Marcellus that Sweeney is “not lobbying the legislature, he’s in government relations.”

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Chirp Chirp Chirp. Where are the GOP U.S. Senate Candidates? Congressional Candidates?

© Jim Urquhart / Reuters

New Jersey’s Comptroller issued a scathing report yesterday alleging that Newark’s Watershed Director stole millions of dollars during the Booker Administration.

The report included an referral to the Attorney General for a criminal investigation and was sharply critical of Cory Booker, the former Newark Mayor who is now a U.S. Senator, completing the term of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg.

Not a peep out of Murray Sabrin, Brian Goldberg, Rich Pezzullo or any of the other candidates for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate whose names I don’t know.

Yesterday’s news that HUD is preventing victims of Superstorm Sandy from rebuilding their homes is another layup that Republican candidates for federal office, challengers or incumbents, missed.

Joe Kyrillos stepped up about HUD prolonging the agony for New Jersey residents with the strongest statement I’ve heard from him in the eight years I’ve been covering New Jersey  politics.  How about someone who is actually running for office this year stepping up and getting from free media?

Can we get a Republican who wants to be on the ballot this year grow some balls please?

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