There’s little hope for Republicans anyway if they don’t win a legislative chamber this year.
Vin Gopal’s ambitions are bigger than winning Democratic control of Monmouth’s county and municipal governments. He wants to make sure New Jersey never again has another Republican governor or U.S. senator.
“Once we turn Monmouth County blue, a Republican will never win statewide,” Gopal said last night at the annual Monmouth County Democrats Annual Chairman’s Ball, according to a report on PolitickerNJ.
State Senate President Steve Sweeney was on hand to boost Gopal’s plan of taking over Monmouth County from the bottom up.
“Build the party, bring as many people as you can to strengthen this organization, … and then once you create it you can win, there’s no reason why not,” said Senate President Steve Sweeney, who was invited to speak at the Monmouth County Democrats Annual Chairman Ball.
“It’s the effort that you put in and you’ve got to build from the foundation up,” he said, explaining first it’s the councils and then the freeholder boards.
“No Republican can win statewide if we can win this county,” Sweeney said. “It’s just a matter of attitude, energy and focus, and that’s what I’m seeing out of this county.”
Unless New Jersey Republicans win at least one chamber of the legislature on November 5, it is unlikely that a post Chris Christie Republican will be elected statewide for the foreseeable future anyway or that Republicans will ever control the legislature again.
If Republicans can’t pick up seats this year when they have a hugely popular governor cruising to a 30 point win on the top of the ticket, when will they? Not until there is another Jim Florio or Jon Corzine in Drumthwacket, or a Democratic version of Richard Nixon or George W. Bush in the White House, if even then.
Christie is going to be reelected by huge margins.
Concerned about the potential impact on the Bayshore region’s economy of a prolonged closure of the Sandy Hook Gateway National Recreation Area, Senator Joe Kyrillos (R- Monmouth) has introduced a resolution calling on the federal government to make reopening Sandy Hook a priority.
“Sandy Hook sustained enormous damage during Hurricane Sandy along with the homes and businesses of Bayshore residents,” Kyrillos said. “But there is more devastation in store if this economic engine for our region is not restored and reopened in time for the 2013 tourism season. The Sandy Hook Recreation Area is the source of millions of dollars of economic activity every year and an affordable summer getaway for tourists from near and far who will lose out on a treasured summer tradition if it is not reopened. We cannot afford to lose the economic activity generated by Sandy Hook as we seek to rebuild our shoreline.”
Sandy Hook Gateway National Recreation Area is federally owned property that is maintained and operated by the National Park Service.
Governor Chris Christie told an audience at the Brookings Institute this morning that the U.S. economy will make Europe look like a picnic if our national leaders continue to play politics with the economy and look only as far as their own terms, rather than tell voters the truth.
Christie was also critical of New Jersey’s Democratic Legislature for failing to provide tax relief in order to make New Jersey more competitive with its neighboring states.
The Governor said that New Jersey voters have a sense of humor as evidenced by electing a conservative Republican governor while retaining a Democratic legislature. “I think they just wanted to see what would happen,” Christie said.
Christie’s entire address to Brookings can be viewed here.
Trenton, NJ – Determined to reverse the path chosen by Democrats in the legislature to impose an $800 million tax hike on New Jersey residents, while holding middle-class tax relief hostage, Governor Chris Christie today called for a special session of the state legislature Monday.
In a letter to Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, Governor Christie noted the fundamental choice confronting Democrats in the legislature:
“Continue to move forward by letting people, and not government, enjoy more of the earnings produced by their own labor, or take a step back to repeat the days where taxes are the answer to each and every challenge,” said Governor Christie.
Yesterday, for the third year in a row, Governor Christie signed into law a constitutionally balanced budget that delivers on key priorities for the people of New Jersey without raising taxes – despite attempts to inflate spending and raise taxes.
“That budget, which contained billions of dollars in spending, failed to address the single issue that strikes at the heart of our shared interests, and our continued prosperity. Lowering the tax burden imposed on every New Jersey resident is a matter of unique and critical public interest that demands our immediate and full attention,” the Governor wrote to the legislative leaders.
Beginning with his budget address in February, Governor Christie sought to reach agreement on tax relief and, for a time, received numerous commitments from legislative Democrats to not raise taxes – only to have those commitments pulled back in favor of a massive tax increase. The Governor said in his letter today that he seeks to address both houses of the legislature to communicate his objections to bills which together betray those promises.
The Governor closed his letter to Senate President Sweeney and Speaker Oliver by noting the impending celebration Wednesday of Independence Day. It was 236 years ago that the forefathers recorded in the Declaration of Independence that they had united against the “history of repeated injuries and usurpations” imposed by government, including the imposition of taxes “without our consent.”
“Today, our citizens deserve the same opportunity to decide whether a new direction, embodied in the recommendations I will share, is needed to end the cycle of tax increases that has paralyzed our State’s growth, and stunted our citizens’ progress,” the Governor said.
“When you convene this Monday at 11:00 a.m., I will ask for the opportunity to address your members on the two paths that face all who are fortunate enough to serve as elected representatives.”
If you want to understand what rule by liberal judges looks like on the state level, you need only look at New Jersey, which is teetering on bankruptcy though it remains one of America’s wealthiest states. ~ Steven Malanga, writing in City Journal
If you want to understand how, despite being one of the wealthiest states in the country, New Jersey is teetering on the brink of fiscal disaster, read Steven Malanga’s The Court That Broke New Jersey.
If you want to know why no governor or state legislature can reduce New Jersey’s oppressive property taxes, read Steven Malanga’s The Court That Broke New Jersey.
Malanga traces the roots of New Jersey’s tyranical Supreme Court all the way back to Arthur Vanderbilt, the first Chief Justice under the 1947 state constitution. In his opinion in Winberry v. Salisbury, Vanderbilt layed the foundation for judicial tyrnany by ruling that the court, not the legislature, has the power to make rules for the state judiciary.
That ruling set New Jersey’s judiciary apart from the court systems in most other states—as well as from the federal judiciary, which ultimately derives its authority from Congress. Some critics have even argued that Winberry violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that every state must have a republican form of government. “Under the doctrine of Winberry v. Salisbury,” wrote New Jersey lawyer Anthony Kearns in a 1955 ABA Journal article, “we can only conclude that laws of practice and procedure are exclusively in the hands of men who are not elected.”
Malanga clearly lays out how New Jersey’s Supreme Court has taken over the state’s education policy and funding with no improvement in urban education to show for the $40 billion that has been wasted as a result of the Abbott decisions. He lays out the history of how the court usurped local zoning power with the Mt. Laurel decisions and COAH. He connects the dots in explaining how those two extra-constitutional power grabs have resulted in massive wealth redistribution, with no societal benefit, and an oppressive system of goverments.
Malanga stressed the importance of Christie’s promise to reshape the court with judges who will interpret the constitution rather than relating to it as a “living document.” However, he is not optimistic because of “…a Democrat-controlled legislature that’s often happy to dodge responsibility for heavy spending by letting the court mandate it.”
Hat tip to InTheLobby for bring this important article to our attention.
