In a remarkable interview with NJ.com,6th district congressional challenger gives insight into her transformation from a rising GOP star to a fringe candidate.
“I had been a mainstream Republican candidate, but unfortunately I was not allowed to be myself. I am a traditional lady – I am pro-life, I am Catholic, and I am proud of it,” Little said. “Any political party, if it’s top-down driven, they want you to fit their mold. I don’t fit anybody’s mold. With the Tea Party people, I can be me. And I just want to do the right thing.”
Anna Little in her Woodbridge campaign office during her NJ.com interview. Photo credit: Mark Bonamo/NJ.com
The obvious implication is that those who didn’t “allow” her to be herself don’t want to do the right thing. That’s her ethos. On the wall next to her desk in her campaign office is her slogan,
“NEW JERSEY & POLITICAL CORRUPTION: PERFECT TOGETHER.”
Little was a mainstream candidate. A good one at that. In early 2006 the Monmouth GOP County Committee, suffering from the aftershocks of Operation Bid Rig, tabbed the little know Highlands Councilwoman and her “do the right thing” message to complete Amy Handlin’s seat on the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders when Handlin was sworn into the State Assembly.
During her fall campaign to defend the seat, then GOP County Chairman Adam Puharic, a proud pro-life Catholic, called Little “a Rock Star.” Against an anti-war, anti-Bid Rig tide, Little was a rare Republican victor on election night of 2006. Within weeks the proud pro-life Catholic Puharic was plotting to get Little off the Republican ticket the following November.
Puharic and the Monmouth GOP did send Little packing from the Freeholder Board one year after she emerged like a Rock Star. The Highlands GOP welcomed her home an nominated her for mayor after the incumbent unexpectedly resigned his candidacy. The Highlands voters welcomed her home with a victory. Three years later, rather than run for reelection Little ran for Congress. She narrowly won the Monmouth County portion of the 6th district in a huge pro-Republican tide election. But she lost Highlands. Republicans swept every ballot position in Highlands in 2010, except the top one…Little’s. Highlands voted for Frank Pallone in 2010 rather than their incumbent mayor.
If you don’t support Anna Little unconditionally and give her what she wants when she wants it, you’re either corrupt or stupid. That’s her message. Her lack of mainstream support has nothing to do with her being pro-life, Catholic or a traditional lady. There are many pro-life, Catholic, traditional ladies thriving politically in the mainstream NJ/Monmouth GOP.
The list of former Little supporters who have mysteriously become corrupt or stupid is long and growing. It is not an accident that those who know her best, the voters of Highlands and the Monmouth GOP who nominated an unknown political neophyte instead of Little in the congressional primary, have withdrawn their support.
And it’s not because they are corrupt or stupid.
It is, in large part, because she says they are corrupt and stupid when they dare to question her.
As some national polls show President Obama widening his lead in his race for another term, much has been made about the sampling weights that pollsters use. Analysts on the left insists the polls are accurate. nalysts on the right say the polls are inaccurately favoring Obama by assuming his supporters will come out on election day in the same numbers as they did in 2008.
But its not just weighting that reveals a pollster’s bias. The way the question is asked also makes a difference.
In a Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press poll about the 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial race released this morning, pollster Patrick Murray asked if voters were “bothered” with how Governor Chris Christie interacts with his critics and detractors.
Thinking about Chris Christie’s style and not his policies, does the way he speaks to or about people who disagree with him bother you personally or not bother you? [If BOTHER: Is that a lot or just a little?]
63% of respondents said they weren’t bothered by Christie’s style. 23% said they were bothered a LOT and 11% said they were bothered a LITTLE. Given the way Murray asked the question, one could conclude that 74% of New Jersey voters are indifferent about Christie’s style.
In his narrative of the poll, which sets the tone for how much of the lazy lefty media covers it, Murray highlights his spin on Christie’s style.
“NEW JERSEY ON CHRISTIE’S STYLE: ‘MEH!’ ” is Murray’s headline. His opening sentence:
Governor Chris Christie’s job approval rating has ticked up a few points in the latest Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Polland few New Jerseyans are particularly bothered by the way he deals with people who disagree with him.
Notice the use of the word few.
Christie’s numbers are the highest they ever been in a Monmouth poll. 55% of registered voters approve of the governor’s performance. 36% do not approve.
Yet Murray spins the results to read that a few people like him better and a few people are bothered about how he talks to people who don’t agree with him. The few who are bothered take top billing over the fact disclosed but not reported that Christie’s numbers are better than ever in Murray’s poll.
To their credit, PolitickerNJ cut through Murray’s spin and covers the poll results very well. They reported the real news of the poll results; New Jersey’s sagging economy is not hurting Christie’s popularity with voters and that of potential Democratic challengers in 2013, only Newark Mayor Cory Booker and former acting Governor Richard Codey have sufficient name recognition to be considered credible candidates for governor next year.
What if instead of asking if voters were bothered by Christie’s style, Murray asked if they liked his style? If Murray had done that, the headline would be:
Over at NJ.comStar Ledger columnist John Farmer tells a tale of a dinner party he attended where he asked his fellow Caucasian guests (and hosts presumably) if they believe President Obama was born outside of the United States and if they believe he is a Muslim. Most of the guest at the party that took place in a “pretty typical” “slightly upper-middle class neighborhood” admitted to believing that Obama is a foreign born Muslim, so said Farmer in the piece, After nearly four years of Barack Obama, is white America still uneasy with a black man in the White House? Most of the commenters at NJ.com think the column is fiction.
How could Obama even have become president if white America was uneasy with a black man in the White House?
After four years, more Americans of all races are uneasy with that particular black man in the White House! Herman Cain or Allen West would not make me uneasy. Condoleeza Rice wouldn’t make me uneasy. Colin Powell’s uneasiness makes me uneasy, not his skin color.
Farmer’s column is likely the an early indication of how the race card will be played by the left stream media in conjunction with the Obama campaign over the next four + plus months.
What will happen is “white guilt” isn’t working according to polling data come October? What will the lefties do if Mitt Romney chooses a black running mate?
Assemblyman Gilbert Wilson, D-Camden, has sponsored legislation that would compel genetic parternity testing of all infants at birth, according to a report on NJ.com. The cost of the test would be born by the parents or the insurer.
While Wilson said the measure applies to mothers and fathers alike, “mostly this should be geared towards the father because with the mother, of course, there is no doubt.”
The problem is not limited to guests on angst-ridden television talk shows, said Wilson, a Democrat from Camden County who goes by the nickname Whip.
“I’ve heard different stories about fathers who are raising children and paying support for a child and come to find out years later that it wasn’t their child,” he said. “It’s a devastating thing to find out.”
Wilson said the bill would allow men who turn out not be a child’s father to seek reimbursement for support or other expenses they have incurred raising the child.
Our liberal friends at Blue Jersey called the bill “man-centered, not kid-centered. Shame.”
It seems to me that the legislation is truth centered but nanny state centric.
The bill doesn’t seem to have much of a chance of becoming law according to the NJ.com piece.
Wilson might have a shot of getting Republican support for the bill if it granted either parent named on a birth certificate the authority to order such a test at his/her own expense….if they don’t already have that right.
Snooki won’t be cavorting along the Jersey shore of the Hudson River anytime soon.
The birthplace of the Chairman of the Board and baseball doesn’t have to worry about Snooki and JWoww filling the vacancy created by Jon Corzine’s departure, thanks to Mayor Dawn Zimmer telling MTV that a spinoff to the show that made Seaside Heights an international destination will not be filmed in her city, according to a report on NJ.com.
The press is vetting Govenor Chris Christie’s nominees to the State Supreme Court.
NJ.com, The Star Ledger’s website, posted an article this morning about the family business of nominee Phillip Kwon. Kwon’s mother owns a liquor store in Mt. Vernon, NY that made a $160,000 settlement with the New York U.S. Attorney’s office over $2,000,000 in allegedly “structured” cash bank deposits. “Structuring” is the practice of spreading out cash deposits in order to avoid the $10,000 trigger that requires the bank to report the deposit to the IRS.
There is no evidence or allegation that Kwon had anything to do with the business or the transactions. There was no admission of liablity in the settlement.
Star Ledger columnist/blogger Paul Mulshine reports that Bruce Harris, the African-American gay Mayor of Chatham that Christie nominatied to the Court along with Kwon this week, wrote an email to state senators, including Joe Pennacchio, asking that they support the same sex marriage bill that was before the Senate during the lame duck session of 2009.
Harris’s email said, in part (with emphasis added):
The New Jersey Supreme court has determined that our relationship is entitled to the equal protection guarantees of the State Constitution. The New jersey Civil Union Review Commission determined that civil unions do not provide the equality the State Constitution mandates.(Please take a few moments and visit www.gardenstateequality.org. which has two short videos that provide sad examples of the failures of the civil union law.)
Mulshine points out that there is no equal protection clause in the State Constitution. Mulshine quotes conservative Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll regarding “originalists” interpretations of the State Constitution:
“No originalist can tell me there’s an equal protection clause in the constitution. No originalist can tell me there’s a right to a thorough and efficient education or a right to affordable housing.”
As much as Christie has done, and is attempting to do, to reform New Jersey’s government, there is nothing more important he can do that make sure conservatives, “orignalists,” are seated on the Supreme Court. The State Supreme Court will be his legacy.
I hope that Christie is not using the same standard that former Governor Christine Todd Whitman used to populate the Court, i.e., appointing friends and senior staffers or making “diversity” appointments for political gain.
The activist State Supreme Court, with the consent of the Legislature and six governors/acting governors, have destroyed New Jersey’s economy over the two decades.
Governor Christie needs to make sure his nominees have the “right stuff.” Hopefully Kwon and Harris do.
Harris said we would recuse himself from cases involving gay marriage. Now that he is going to be a Justice, if confirmed, he needs to brush up on the State Constitution.
As for Kwon, the news of his mother’s business with the feds is interesting but does not qualify him.
The question the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the press, should ask, is what does qualify Kwon and Harris.
Is being the Governor’s long term trusted colleague enough? Is being Black and gay enough?
Maybe it is. But similar standards did not serve us well with Whitman’s Court.
If all press is good press, then Anna Little’s fledgling U.S. Senate campaign got a boost this morning when The Star Ledger’s PolitFact gave her claims about Senator Robert Menendez’s spending and borrowing record a “MOSTLY FALSE” rating on the TRUTH-O-METER.
Little avoided the “PANTS ON FIRE” designation the Ledger gives for completely false claims, but earned the newly created Hot Pants designation from MMM.
What is most surprising about this morning’s PolitiFact post is that it has been up at NJ.com for two hours and it doesn’t have any comments from Rullo supporters, yet.
If all press is good press, then Anna Little’s fledgling U.S. Senate campaign got a boost this morning when