Garden State Mess - The Sequel

Democrat Mikie Sherrill appeared to be buckling to fierce competition from Republican Jack Ciattarelli in the New jersey gubernatorial campaign, but Ciattarelli may have given her an issue.  Donald Trump flat-out canceled funding for the in-progress Gateway project connecting New York and New Jersey with a new and badly needed rail tunnel.  Despite pledging his support for Gateway, Ciattarelli has been complacent toward Trump throughout the campaign, and his support for Trump has hurt him with regard to Gateway.

The only trouble is, the campaign is still close and Jack's still got a shot.

How is this possible?  Because even though many commuters in northern New Jersey rely on passenger rail to get to Manhattan, many more drive cars on the area's multi-lane highways.  And obviously, this issue doesn't affect anyone in southern New Jersey, where Sherrill needs to shore up support in an area where Jack has a lot of backing.  Even if many people's jobs are affected by the termination of the funding for Gateway, it has no relevance to the bulk of New Jersey voters. 

Sherrill still has leads ranging from five to eight percentage points in polls, but some private polls forecast a much closer outcome - which should surprise no one, given that Jack almost unseated Governor Phil Murphy in 2021.   Many Democrats, particularly minority voters, have doubts about Mikie's bona fides as a leader because of her centrist positions, and some Hispanics are interested in what Jack has to say.  To be fair and honest, not every poll should be taken seriously, such as a poll from KAC showing Sherrill barely ahead of Ciattarelli - by two or three points.  That's KAC - K (as in Kelly) A (as in anne) C (as in Conway).  That's right, it's a polling firm founded and run by Kellyanne Conway, the New Jerseyan who got Trump elected to the White House in 2016.  

Speaking of Trump, Sherrill has made him, or tried to make him, an issue in this gubernatorial campaign.  The only problem with that is that Trump doesn't have as big an effect on New Jerseyans' lives as one might think.  He certainly has an effect on New Jerseyans' ability to afford food and shelter, thanks to his tariffs, but Ciattarelli has been pounding away on the affordability issue as something that has nothing to do with Trump - smart, considering that affordability has been a problem in New Jersey for years, during Democratic presidential administrations and Republican presidential administrations, and a problem that Governor Murphy, like any of his recent predecessors, hasn't been able to solve.  As for Trump's various desecrations of the White House or his bombing of fishing boats in the Caribbean, none of that has an effect on property taxes in this state.

This election will be decided for good in two weeks.  As a Republican, Ciattarelli has been persistent in his desire to be governor.  This is his third try, a testament to the GOP's tolerance for its failed candidates to try again if they want to, and the third time may be the charm.  But if he wins, we lose.  He'll take New Jersey out of the northeastern states' health cooperative, he'll end clean-energy programs, and he could make New Jersey the first state to ban same-sex marriages since they became legal nationwide in 2013.  If Mikie Sherrill wins, she'll do none of that, and she'll concentrate on expanding educational opportunities for children and meet the crisis of unaffordable electrical power head-on.  But don't expect her to make another try for the governorship in 2029 if she loses two weeks from today.  Democrats, as noted here repeatedly, don't let losing nominees get a second try, and not only will she be denied another try for the New Jersey governorship - she'll likely be primaried in June or defeated next November if she stands for a fifth term for the U.S. House of Representatives.   She'll politically be a dead woman walking.  I'm not one of those people who will, if she loses to Jack, look on the so-called bright side by saying she'll still be my congresswoman.  In this political climate, there is no bright side to losing.

Again - New Jersey will lose if Sherrill does.  Vote for her on November 4 - or during early voting, which starts this Saturday, October 25.

Garden State Mess

The election for governor of New Jersey was supposed to an easy win for the Democratic candidate, U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill, against Republican former state Assemblyman and 2021 Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli.  But you may recall that I noted that Ciattarelli is a lifelong New Jersey and an Italian-American - two qualities that are potent assets in a state populated by lifelong residents who wear their Jerseyness on their sleeves and heavily populated by Italians, who have largely defined what it means to be from New Jersey.  Sherrill is neither of those things, and on top of all that, she represents a party that still hasn't gotten its act together on issues such as law enforcement and immigration while still - still - relying on consultants and party elders on how to deal with the economy, despite the fact that these consultants and party elders are usually wrong.

Now Jack is turning on the heat with a relentless campaign attacking Sherrill on pursuing policies in Washington that inhibit affordability in the cost of living while being supportive of outgoing Democratic governor Phil Murphy's more unpopular policies on energy and the like.  Sherrill, despite her reputation in Washington as a bad-ass, is acting less like the Jersey girl she isn't and more like the nice lady that she appears to be.  That's not what you want in hardball New Jersey politics, which as rough and tumble as local politics can possibly get except for out on Long Island.  Also, she lives in Montclair, a genteel suburb known for its restaurants and its performing arts festivals, while Jack - as I shall refer to him because I'm part Italian and I'm trying to forget he's Italian - comes from Raritan, a working-class town so tough, its local hero, Marine Corps Sergeant John Basilone, who took on a numerically superior Japanese force in the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II and survived (he perished at Iwo Jima), has a bridge named after him.  A bridge over the Raritan River?  No - a bridge over a traffic circle!  Now that's tough! 

And Jack is showing his mettle.  He's pretty much running the sort of campaign that Trump has run, and Trump most likely taught him everything he knows.  Sherrill has been coming across as a lackluster candidate, drawing comparisons to the lackluster presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris, and we all know how that turned out!

Even Sherrill's attempt to play up her status as a Naval Air Force veteran has fallen flat, with too many people complaining about how she spends too much time talking up her military service and not enough time on the state's current issues - and when she does talk about the issues, it's in the same milquetoast manner of recent one-hit-wonder and fly-by-night failed Democratic candidates for office ("I'm working on my to-do list!" - Kamala Harris).  Jack is running as a change candidate after an eight-year Democratic administration in an effort - which, from all accounts, is working - to neutralize Sherrill's efforts to tie Jack to Trump.  That may explain why Jack's internal polling and an Emerson College poll show the campaign to be a dead heat.

However, things just got messy.  As if to undermine Sherrill's military service and turn an asset into a liability, the Trump regime has released U.S. Naval Academy records showing that Sherrill was not allowed to take part in the graduation ceremony for the class of 1994 at the U.S. Naval Academy because she knew that some of her classmates cheated on final examinations and did not report them.  Sherrill supporters are quick to point out that she herself didn't cheat and showed honor by not reporting, or "ratting on," her peers.  Huh?  It's the U.S. Naval Academy, not a Mafia organization like the Nassau County Republican Committee!  As someone who is expected to be true to the virtues of honesty and integrity, she had every right and every obligation to report her peers for something that could get one court-martialed in the service. 

But get this.  Jack and Trump also doled out personal information about Sherrill, including her home address, her Social Security number, her parents, her life insurance policy, and possibly her dental records, her car payments, her credit card number, and maybe even secret, classified evidence that she and Olympic swimming icon Janet Evans are twins separated at birth.

And just to underscore how vicious this campaign is getting, New Jersey MAGA voters are beginning to refer to Sherrill as "Rebecca Hedberg," Rebecca being her given name (she gets her nickname from her middle name, Michelle) and Hedberg being her husband's surname, the suggestion being that Mikie Sherrill is an inauthentic character being played by one Rebecca Hedberg.  (There is a Rebecca Hedberg on Instagram, but it has nothing to do with my congresswoman.  This Rebecca Hedberg is a mom in Sweden.)   And on top of that, American Principles Project, a conservative political action committee, American Principles Project, is going to flood our airwaves with an ad to scare voters about transsexuals.

The Sherrill campaign is also trying to fight back against Jack for his comments about the need to desegregate New Jersey public schools during their debate last weekend, in which he said we're only debating desegregation because black-majority schools are faring worse than white-majority schools and we would not be having this conversation were it the other way around. Jack could have stopped there, but he went on to say that if you desegregated Newark schools tomorrow, the Newark district's test scores wouldn't go up.  Well, he's right about that, mainly because there are no white kids in Newark to integrate with the black kids in the first place.  And sadly, those quips might help him more than hurt him.  Nothing scares white New Jersey voters - not even transsexuals - except for the prospect of racially integrating schools.  Why do you think white folks moved out of Newark to begin with?

Jack is the latest in a series of New Jersey goombah politicians who use race as a weapon to mobilize white voters and general and white ethnic voters in particular.  It was the modus operandi of Anthony Imperiale, a Newark councilman and state legislator, who ran a vigilante group in the North Ward of Newark and urged white residents to arm themselves to protect their homes from blacks.  Imperiale famously led the fight against a black-oriented affordable-housing project in the city and had many a tumble with black activist Amiri Baraka, the father of the current mayor, over it.  (It was quashed but Mayor Ras Baraka revived the plan.)  More recent Republican governors have had their own embarrassments over race - Christine Todd Whitman,  the whitest governor New Jersey has had in the past thirty years, was once photographed patting down a black man in a photo opportunity during a police arrest - but Jack is a MAGA Republican, a Republican who would allow Trump to send state militiamen from Southern states to patrol New Jersey's black-and-brown-majority cities to restore "law and order" (one of Imperiale's slogans), a Republican who would restrict abortion access (like his fellow New Jersey paysan Sam Alito), and a Republican who would likely get rid of DEI programs in this, one of the most diverse states in the Union.  The trouble is, too many white folks in New jersey like what he's selling.

But maybe not enough of them.  It turns out that that Emerson College poll has skewed rightward over the years, and Sherrill has consistently led Jack in polling averages.  The caveat is that Jack was way behind Governor Murphy when he ran against him in 2021 and ended up almost defeating him.  Also, in Jack's favor, neither party has won at least three gubernatorial elections in a row in New Jersey since the 1960s.  Up to now, the campaign has been uncharacteristically civil in a state known for expressions like, "Fuhgeddaboutdit!" and "If ya not from the ghetto, stay the f**k outta the ghetto!"  But with recent developments - yo, the gloves are really off now.

Ugh.

New Jersey: On To November

Well, the suspense is long since over.  Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill won the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial nomination after breaking through among Democratic voters in the final days of the primary campaign.  And, as expected, Giachino "Jack" Ciattarelli won the Republican gubernatorial election going away.

One thing is for certain: New Jersey's 57th governor will be known primarily by a nickname.

But who will it be?  Many people assume that Sherrill should have an easy time in the general election campaign because of Trump and Ciattarelli's association with him.  But Jack's got a shot.  As I noted before, he's a lifelong New Jersey resident and an Italian-American, while Sherrill is neither.  Also, many people are tired of Democratic machine politics and the high cost of living, which would give any Republican gubernatorial candidate an advantage.  Sherrill can present herself as a Trenton outsider who can bring some fresh thinking to state government, which was the angle of the campaign of former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Gottheimer - like Sherrill, a U.S. House member - but the irony is that she's a Virginia native who has likely never eaten a calzone in her life, which means she's enough of a cultural outsider to turn off many a New Jersey voter.

Trump, of course, remains an albatross around Ciattarelli's neck, and Sherrill, one of those middle-aged Democratic women in the U.S. House known as the Bad-Asses, has the chops to make sure it stays there.  But first she has to make sure her Democratic base is united.  Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop came in second and third, respectively, and they as progressives got more votes combined than Sherrill did as a moderate.  However, if Gottheimer and former state senator Steve Sweeney, both moderates, hadn't been in the primary campaign, Sherrill would likely have won those votes and outpolled both progressives.

To be fair, being a Jersey boy in the truest sense of the term might not be enough for Ciattarelli to pull out a win.  Part of the reason he's the Republican nominee for governor of New Jersey yet again is because of how close he came to defeating Governor Phil Murphy.  Mikie Sherrill is a politician of a less genial and more vicious nature than Murphy is.  She knows how Ciattarelli is weak on many issues by having stands on them that are unpopular with New Jersey voters.  All of this means one thing - this election can go either way.

Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick

Republican New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli conceded to Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Friday.  And despite his obvious disappointment about the outcome, Ciattarelli made it clear that he let the vote count play itself out, even though he thought voting rules in New Jersey allows the counting process to go on too long.  He also made it clear that there was no fraud, there were no indications of irregularities, and there was no mathematical way he could win the election even when all of the votes are counted.  One can only hope that Ciattarelli's graciousness will inspire other Republicans to pull away from Trump and his accusations of fraud.  His fellow New Jersey Republican Chris Christie has already made the case that the party put Trump and his rants about the 2020 election behind them.

Christie, a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, may or may not have a political future, but Ciattarelli just might have one.  He'd hoped to succeed Murphy as governor of New Jersey, and he might yet do that; he's already made it clear that he hopes to run for the governorship again in 2025.  (Murphy will be term-limited.) And given how close he came to winning this time and the goodwill he won with his concession speech, he's very much a favorite.         

Murphy's Law of Reassessment

The past week and change has caused me to look at the aftermath of the 2021 elections again, especially the gubernatorial election in New Jersey.

As you may recall, I mildly criticized Governor Phil Murphy for winning by less than the polls indicated he would.  Well, I was apparently too harsh on him, even if professional pundits continue to be.  As of this writing, Murphy has won 51 percent of the vote, and he leads Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli by 2.8 percentage points. His vote count has only gone up since last Tuesday.  A clear majority of New Jersey voters obviously want him to have another term. The last time a Democratic governor of New Jersey was re-elected, the top song in the country was "You Light Up My Life."  It was that long ago (1977, for the record).  And also, when you remember that there were four key races this year - this, the New York City mayoral election, the California gubernatorial recall election, and the Virginia gubernatorial election - the Democrats won all but one of them. 

Three out of four ain't bad, but you'd never know that from TV commentators not named Rachel by their mothers or named Maddow by their fathers.  You'd also never know how historic it was that Murphy was the first re-elected Democratic governor since Brendan Byrne (who won re-election the same year that Ed Koch was first elected mayor of New York City - again, 1977 was that long ago).  And so the takeaway is that the Democrats got shellacked, largely on the basis of  Republican wins in local races in New York State that no one cares about nationally and on the fact that the Democrats lost control of the Virginia House of Delegates - never mind that they still control both houses of the New Jersey legislature.

In no way am I suggesting that the Democrats don't have to worry about messaging or responding to voters' concerns in 2022; that's still a big deal. So is the presence of "progressives" who want to take money away from police departments when Eric Adams, the biggest winner in the Democratic Part this year, won the mayor's office in New York City by pledging to defend the police rather than defund them.  (He's an ex-cop.)  But the lashes the Democratic Party took last week were more from a wet noodle than a cat of nine tails.

However, the election in New Jersey is still a concern, because Jack Ciattarelli still won't concede to Murphy, despite being behind him by a larger percentage of the vote than Terry McAuliffe ended up behind Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin in Virginia - and McAuliffe has already conceded.  In no other major election this year has a losing Republican refused to concede, mainly because they lost by a lot.  But by losing by only less than three points, Ciattarelli has remained adamant about waiting it out until the last vote is counted - and then he might ask for an expensive recount.  And Ciattarelli supporters are already making charges of fraud and vote rigging, though the candidate has not endorsed these charges.

I was afraid of this.  The first Republican challenge to the results of an election after President Biden's inauguration is taking place not in California or in New York City but in New Jersey.  New Jersey, a state whose residents are known for their hard-handed, hard-edged belligerence.  We have rappers from Essex County who could scare the hell out of South Bronx rappers, and I'm just talking about the sista rappers.  "The Sopranos" played like a documentary about the state, and in some ways, it is.  The unofficial state motto is an expletive.  Our largest city, Newark, is nicknamed Brick City.  We're so tough, we made a state park out of a rail yard.  And a lot of our bad-asses voted Republican in this election.  So, you can imagine how scared we should be if Ciattarelli supporters descend on Trenton to disrupt Governor Murphy's re-inauguration.

Jack should concede now, if he doesn't want a demonstration in Trenton in January 2022 to make January 6 look like a church social.  This is dangerous. 😱   

Election Inspection

The Democrats look like they could go back to going full Whig.  After the election returns this past Tuesday, how could you not come to that conclusion?

Terry McAuliffe's nomination for a second nonconsecutive term to oppose Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin (above) was one of those classic bad ideas that was plausible enough that no one would challenge or question such a preposterous idea.  McAuliffe got the nod to run again not so much for his record as governor from 2014 to 2018 but because of his position in Democratic insider politics and his fundraising ability.  Also, he's a friend of the Clintons.  And he seemed to feel as entitled to the governor's mansion in Virginia as the Clintons did to the White House.   But he screwed up in saying that parents did not have a say in how children were educated - revealing his ignorance of elected school boards - giving Youngkin a perfect issue to run on.  And when Youngkin responded in kind by suggested with a campaign commercial that Toni Morrison's "Beloved" shouldn't be taught in AP literature (though the ad did not mention the book by title), McAuliffe couldn't even use it to his advantage.   President Biden was chastised by some pundits by deflecting blame for the Democrats' loss in Virginia from his inability to get his agenda passed; McAuliffe's foibles as a candidate suggest that Biden was right.  He was such a lousy candidate he took the Virginia Democratic Party down with him; it appears that the party lost control of the lower house of the state legislature.  Two of the new Republican members took part in the January 6 insurrection.

(By the way, if you go back to my post from this past Monday and make a sentence from the first word of each sentence in it, you'll see that I called Virginia right.)

Biden certainly didn't have anything to do with the surprise result in New Jersey, where Phil Murphy won re-election as governor by far less than expected.  Murphy ran on his progressive record and didn't shy away from his policies but he failed to enunciate his accomplishments as much as he should have and he completely ignored the issue his Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli hammered away on repeatedly during the campaign - property taxes.  It turns out a lot of people still care about that!  Murphy, relatively speaking, was one of the big winners among the Democrats this past Tuesday.  He stays in office with most of his agenda in place and he's in a position to secure his legacy, and he is now the first Democrat to win a second term as governor of New Jersey since Brendan Byrne in 1977.  But he should have won by more.

The disappointing results Democrats had in Virginia and New Jersey were local, but nationally they still have a problem.  Republicans blame the Democrats' losses on the Democratic agenda.  Listening to them, you'd think nobody in America wants paid family leave, expanded Medicare coverage, or universal nursery school.  (Hey, I just called Joe Manchin a nobody!)  Well, it makes perfect sense that voters rebelled against the Democratic agenda - because a lot of voters thought the Democrats wanted to rename schools named for Founding Fathers in honor of black nationalists, teach "critical race theory" in those same schools, tear down statues of Jefferson and Washington, and, oh yes, defund the police.  Because even when they talk about paid family leave, Medicare dental coverage and all those other nice things, they still can't articulate their agenda in clear-cut language, and what they do say gets drowned out by so-called "woke" members of the Squad.  So it makes sense the the biggest winner among Democrats, New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams, is an ex-cop who would rather defend the police than defund them.  (Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, his Republican opponent, is a cat lover and has sixteen cats at home; that was the only thing I liked about him.)     

Oh yeah, it's so obvious that woke-ism is so out of place in These States - even in our major-league cities - that Buffalo mayor Byron Brown was re-elected as a write-in candidate after losing the Democratic nomination to a self-described socialist!  

But the muddled message wasn't the only issue - so was the fact that the Democratic Congress was supposed to deliver the goods and spent much of the past year arguing with each other.  In the end, they were the only people who were "woke" on Tuesday.

The Democrats still have a chance to cut their losses in the 2022 midterms, if they prove they can govern and pass legislation that will help the people.  Last night, they got off to a good but troubled start; the House finally passed President Biden's infrastructure bill, which now goes to the White House for the President's signature.  But distrust remains over the reconciliation bill, and there's a long way to go to get that settled.  Moderates, however, have committed themselves to voting on it ,later, so maybe we can still build back better.  And maybe get voting rights legislation passed.  Or, we could end up seeing a Republican Congress in 2023 passing a whole new round of tax cuts.  

And by the way, speaking of voting rights . . . voting rights were expanded in Virginia and New Jersey, and look what happened. 

Oh yeah, congratulations to Michelle Wu for becoming the first elected female mayor and mayor of color of Boston. 

Does Ciattarelli Know Jack?

It looks like New Jersey Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, 59, will win the Republican nomination to run for Governor of New Jersey in the primary election a month from today.  And I'm beginning to wonder if he has a chance against incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy.

Ciattarelli is mainly focusing on Governor Murphy's handling of the COVID pandemic and charging that his policies have put numerous small stores and eateries out of business.  I've seen this firsthand.  In the area where I live, several such places have gone out of business due to COVID - including a couple of restaurants that had only been in business for a couple of years.  In my father's old neighborhood, which has a small business district near the house he used to live in as a teenager, there was a delicatessen that had been in business since 1926.  It survived the Depression, stagflation, and the financial crisis.  I imagine that my father and his brothers must have frequented it and gotten a sandwich there every now and then.  Last year, it closed for good due to the pandemic.  And there's no guarantee that any of these businesses will be replaced.  It would be suicide to try to start any new business these days not just because of COVID but because of pre-COVID trends favoring big-box stores and online shopping.

Ciattarelli rightly points out that such businesses provide a sense of community and continuity, and they provide jobs for the little guy - and the business owners are little guys (and gals) themselves who contribute to the local economy.  The economy and the community, in fact, are one and the same.  Without one, you can't have the other.  Our small towns were already in dire straits before the pandemic, and the ones that were making out better were the towns that focused on "destination economies" - economies that rely on local arts and entertainment attractions, restaurants, specialty shops and the like.  When the COVID pandemic ends, many of these same "destination economy" towns, like Morristown or Red Bank in New Jersey,  won't be a destination for anyone. You'll be able to stand in the downtown areas of one of these "destination" towns on a bright spring Saturday afternoon and see fewer people about than you would standing on the boardwalk in Atlantic City on a Monday morning in January. 

Ciattarelli has three strikes against him, though, and any one of them could tag him out.   First of all, he's running for governor of Democratic New Jersey as a Republican.  Second, his pitch seems to express more concern for business owners than employees, making him sound he cares more about livelihoods than lives in the middle of a pandemic, no matter how focused he is on small businesses as opposed to big business.  (A small-business owner himself, he's known for being hostile toward unions.)  Third, no one blames Murphy for their favorite burger joint or clothes boutique going out of business; his approval rating on handling the pandemic now stands at 80 percent.

Let's see what happens.