Atlantic City Conservative Attorney Will Challenge Christie In GOP Primary

Atlantic City Attorney Seth Grossman will kick off his campaign to deny Chris Christie the GOP nomination for governor this morning outside the Revel Casino and in Newark across from Red Bull Stadium this afternoon.

The former Atlantic County freeholder and Atlantic City councilman who was arrested with Steve Lonegan for trespassing outside of one of Governor Jon Corzine’s Town Hall meetings in 2008 wants the State to refuse to pay bonds that were not approved by the voters and to cap public pensions at $50,000 per year per retiree. He says New Jersey is in the same mess it was in three years ago when Christie took office, but now its a bi-partisan mess, not just a Democratic mess now.

Grossman told MMM that he has raised $5,000 for his endeavor thus far.  He hopes to raise $15,000 by the end of this week to open an office.  If he can raise another $45,000 by the end of February, he hopes to hire a campaign manager and appeal to national conservatives to who are upset with how Christie embraced President Obama after Superstorm Sandy for the rest of the $388,000 he will need to qualify for State matching funds for the primary.

In a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released this morning, 64% of New Jersey voters, including 87% of Republicans, say that Christie deserves to be reelected.  The Governor has raised well over $2 million for his reelection campaign and will not take State matching funds for the primary.  Christie will not be in New Jersey for Grossman’s announcement.  He is in California for a fundraising tour including an event at the home of facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

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Geraldo Rivera Considering Running For U.S. Senate from New Jersey

Wikipedia photo

Television personality Geraldo Rivera announced on his radio show this morning that he is considering seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2014, according to The Hill.

“I mention this only briefly, fasten your seatbelt,” Rivera said on his radio  show. “I mentioned this only briefly to my wife … but I am and I’ve been in  touch with some people in the Republican Party in New Jersey. I am truly  contemplating running for Senate against Frank Lautenberg or Cory Booker.”

“I’m not going to drill this out, because obviously I’ve got commitments to Fox  and to here at the radio program and I’m really having a great time,” Rivera  added. “But I figure at my age, if I’m going to do it I’ve got to do it. And  there doesn’t seem to be any Republicans ready to work against or run against  Corey Booker, the popular Newark mayor.”

Riviera is a former Monmouth County resident and the former owner of The Two River Times.  He currently lives in Edgewater, Bergen County.

The Hill says Rivera could face a tough primary should he seek the nomination.

Rivera could face a tough primary challenge, however, with reports suggesting  that Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick of Westfield, state Sen. Joe Kyrillos  of Monmouth County and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno are all weighing bids for the GOP  ticket.

Don’t count on that.  If Rivera is willing to spend his own millions on a Senatorial run, the NJ GOP would clear the decks for him, barring another televison personality with millions to spend, like Lou Dobbs, getting into the race.

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Conservative Conundrum

By Art Gallagher

Paul Mulshine wrote a blog post last week wherein he wittingly or not shed light on the puzzle of New Jersey’s conservative ideologues.

Mulshine was tauting a post by the blogger formerly known as Manly Rash that suggested that NJ GOP Chairman Jay Webber should be replaced because he canceled a meeting of the State GOP Committee.  Conservatives have been upset that the NJGOP has not adopted the GOP’s 2008 National Platform, particularly its pro-life planks. 

The various NJ Tea Parties and Steve Lonegan’s Americans for Prosperity had planned to demonstrate at the scheduled meeting in order to gain support for various proposed resolutions before the committee,” Support for the Governor’s reforms at the DRPA, Joining the lawsuit against Obamacare, Stopping the implementation legislation for Obamacare in New Jersey, Support for New Jersey Citizens’ right to privacy when flying (TSA pat-downs), and Repealing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which is New Jersey’s own version of the Obama administration’s “Cap and Trade” energy tax,” according to Rash.

Webber said he canceled the meeting because he and other members were busy in Trenton with the legislature in session.  The ideologue conservatives adopted a conspiracy theory that Webber cancelled the meeting to silence them.

This conservative blogger supports each of the initiatives that Rash wrote of and supports the pro-life plank of the National GOP platform.  This conservative blogger also supports Jay Webber and Governor Chris Christie.  The latter has earned me the RINO label from some.  I’ve even been nicknamed Arlen.

Mulshine says, conservatives are supposed to stand on principle.  He says Webber violated principle when threw his support to Chris Christie in the 2009 GOP Gubernatorial primary over Steve Lonegan.   The principle of “Lonegan was perhaps the cheapest skinflint ever to run for office in this great state. He really meant to cut state government.” 

The principle that Webber, Christie, and even Senator Mike Doherty who has earned the Loneganites scorn, are guilty of violating  is the principle of irrelevancy. The cutting your nose off dispite yourself principle.

Yet Mulshine surprised me in his blog post.  Despite his nearly constant criticism of Christie for not fulfilling all of his campaign promises in 11 months, Mulshine wrote this line that demonstrates that he can occassionally see beyond his blinders:

“Webber, despite his conversion, is a huge improvement on Tom Wilson, the prior chairman, who agitated for driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. And Christie, despite his flaws, is a huge improvement over Jon Corzine.

But this is just another reminder that the New Jersey Republican Party has a long way to go.”

My apologies to Tom Wilson.

The New Jersey Republican Party does have a long way to go.  However, it has come further in the last year under the leadership of Christie and Webbler than any observer could have predicted.   Had Lonegan been the GOP nominee in 2009, a battle that Mulshine and many other ideological conservatives keep fighting 18 months after they lost it, Jon Corzine would still be governor.  Much of the progress the GOP made this year, in New Jersey and nationally, would not have happened.  More importantly, much of the progress New Jersey made this year would not have happened.

The conundrum of conservative ideologues is that they are more likely to be right, “standing on principle” and lose as they watch life get worse than they are to work with those they agree with on most issues and win.

It’s easier to be right and be a wind bag than it is to win and do the hard work of correcting decades of damage while in the minority.  Rash says leadership is standing on principle.  Yet, thanks in large measure Christie’s work this year, Democrats in Trenton are adopting smaller government principles.  Which is more effective leadership?  Going down in defeat while being right  and then wind bagging or having your political adversaries shift their agenda?  I’ll take the latter.

As we head into 2011 with the entire State Legislature up for reelection, ideologues have a critical choice to make.  Based upon history one might expect them to undermine the progress by targeting otherwise “safe” Republican legislators in primaries with more ideologically pure opponents.  All that would accomplish is to put safe seats at risk.

The smarter and more difficult choice would be to work with, rather than against, those they agree with most of the time to pick up Democratic seats in the legislature.  The ideologues would serve New Jersey better by focusing their criticism on potentially vulnerable Democrats and shifting their focus, even if only temporarily, away from RINOs.  

If the “hard right” can move public opinion in New Jersey to the right, as was done nationally this year, RINOs and Democrats will follow.

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