Let It Go

As noted back in June, the 57th governor of New Jersey will be someone who prefers to go by a nickname.  Tomorrow we find out which person that is - Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill or Giacchino Michael "Jack" Ciattarelli.

Yeah, I voted last week - for Mikie Sherrill, of course, but the New Jersey gubernational campaign has been the most nerve-racking and most depressing one this year.  The MAGA Republican Ciattarelli has a shot, as I've noted before, and Sherrill, as a moderate Democrat, can't even get respect from her own supporters, who wish a more progressive nominee could have won the June primary.

So Jack, despite the consistent leads Mikie has had in the polls, could still win tomorrow.  I don't really care now.  Let it go.  I'm going to turn sixty this week, and I have much more personal concerns to think about at a time when America has run off the rails.  And it has, big time.  While people who need food assistance have been snapped off SNAP by the shutdown, Trump had a "Roaring Twenties"-themed party at Mar-a-Lago with free-flowing booze and free-flowing women.  To ensure that people on food stamps can't get around their benefits, the government has forbidden grocers who participate in the SNAP program to offer food to beneficiaries at a discount.  (They think of everything, don't they?)  And after having given CBS's "60 Minutes" a chance in the first weeks of its fifty-eighth season, I checked the on-air program guide last night to find that last night's episode had an "exclusive" interview with Trump.  Having seen excerpts of the "interview" that Norah O'Donnell conducted with the White House squatter, I came away feeling like I'd seen the sort of pseudo-interviews MTV would have back in the early eighties with rock stars, who would give perfunctory answers to equally perfunctory questions.  O'Donnell seemed to have more in common with Martha Quinn than with Martha Raddatz.  (You have to be of a certain age to get that reference.)

Again, I don't care.  It is what it is, and not only that, it ain't what it ain't.  I no longer want to take part in changing America - I haven't wanted to for awhile, really - I prefer to change my own little corner of it.   That's why I continue to clear-cut an invasive bush from the community park in my neighborhood, with hopes of getting new trees planted there in the spring.  It's why I plan to add other features to the park in 2026.  And I'm also taking more care of myself and my cats than taking care of what I can do for my country.  Because quite frankly, I will ask not what I can do for my country, as the answer is . . . nothing.  I need to tend to routine medical examinations, one of which I'm slightly overdue for, and I have to take care of the house and get someone to clear the snow this coming winter.  I may even have to get a landscaper if I can't even keep up with my own gardening.

My mother always told me not to worry about things I can't control, which, had I listened, would have made me the most worry-free person in America.  Now that there are things I have control over, I want to focus on those concerns and nothing else.

Who will be the next governor of New Jersey?  At this point, why should I care?

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.