Primary Day

The primary election in New Jersey for Democrats and Republicans to choose their gubernatorial nominees for the general election in November is today.  Usually, it's on the first Tuesday after June 1 but Governor Phil Murphy, who is term-limited and cannot run again, signed a bill moving it back one week this year because June 3 coincided with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, a holiday Gentiles usually don't know exists and one even Governor Murphy himself hadn't heard of before.  Shavuot doesn't allow Jews to go out and vote or do anything else.  If a similarly restrictive obscure holiday that was celebrated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or the Nation of Islam, or the Rastafarians, coincided with primary day, Governor Murphy would have moved the election back a week for that too.  He's that kind of guy.

Be that as it may, no one knows who's going to win the Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey.  There are six candidates, each one getting about 17 percent, of one-sixth, of the vote in various polls - with no clear front-runner - while 2021 Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli should win the 2025 GOP gubernatorial nomination going away against two token opponents.    

What? Jack Ciattarelli is getting a second bite at the apple after having lost the governorship in an election as close as the 2024 presidential election, yet Kamala Harris is persona non grata now?  How is that possible?  Because Ciattarelli is a Republican.  It's Republicans who get to try again after losing a close election.  Democrats get sent off to internal exile.  Also, Ciattarelli is Italian, and, well, it is New Jersey. Yo! 

I am torn about the candidacy of Democrat Mikie Sherrill, because while I think she would be a good governor, I want her to remain my congresswoman.  I have no opinion of the other candidates, except that all of them would make a better governor than Ciattarelli, who has the support of Donald Trump.  However, I am not voting for anyone today, because . . . I don't vote in primaries. New Jersey has a closed primary that does not allow independents like myself to vote as an independent. I refuse to register as a Republican because they are the party of fascism. But I also refuse to register as a Democrat because I am one of the overwhelming majority of voters who have a low opinion of the party, and also because, as Groucho Marx once said, I would not like to join any club that would have me as a member!

Let's see what happens.

Governor Hobbs

The surest sign that democracy in America got a second wind is that Kathleen Marie Hobbs - call her Katie - has successfully been installed as Governor of Arizona.

As you will recall, her opponent in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election was former TV anchor Kari Lake, who refused to concede the election and sued to have the results overturned, or something to that effect.  Lake is the only Republican also-ran form the 2022 midterm elections to challenge the results of the vote, and for awhile it looked like what happened in Washington on January 6, 2021 would be replicated in Phoenix on January 2, 2023. But Inauguration Day in Arizona came and went without incident, and Governor Hobbs has gotten right to work.  And that is the last we will ever hear of Kari Lake.

Oops!  Correction: Lake is now a front-runner for Kyrsten Sinema's U.S. Senate seat.

The pro-democracy faction won the 2022 midterms, but that was just a battle.  The war goes merrily on. 

Keystone Kops

Crazy things are going on in today's Pennsylvania primary elections.  On the Republican side, a racist black female conservative - she sounds like a Jerry Springer guest - has thrown a monkey wrench into things in the Senate nomination contest, while on the Democratic side, a tough guy with bad fashion sense and a heart of gold could beat a mainstream Democrat for their party's U.S. Senate nomination.

Kathy Barnette has surged in the polls for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania for the state's open seat, mainly for being farther to the right than even Donald Trump, bashing Muslims and gays while using her own circumstance - she's the result of her mother's rape - as an argument against all abortions.  Trump likes her and thinks she has a future but doesn't think she's ready for prime time now.  His choice is New Jersey resident (shh! - don't tell anyone! 😀) Mehmet Oz, a daytime TV show who says he's a doctor, though hedge-fund manager David McCormick is running a close race with him and could easily win the nomination by being more like Trump than Oz.  Now Barnette has made it a three-way tie in the polls, which means the election results could be unavailable for days.

On the Democratic side, Conor Lamb, a moderate congressman from the Pittsburgh area who looks so much like a senator that he could get away with wearing a toga, is well behind in the polls, with Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, a Bernie Sanders-style progressive so causal he campaigns in sweatshirts and gym shorts, in the lead.  Lamb, a former Marine and a former assistant U.S. attorney,  has a dream candidate's resume in his favor . . . and that's all.  Pennsylvania Democrats have decided that a safe choice is no longer desirable, simply because they believe that a Senator Lamb could go to Washington and fail to get anything done because of the way the Senate "operates" these days.  Fetterman is seen as a fighter who will fight for core Democratic values.  Lamb is seen as someone who lives up to his surname.  

Independent commentator and Pennsylvania resident Michael Smerconish worries that Pennsylvania voters will be turned off in the fall by the possibility of extreme Senate candidates in a state where only registered party members can vote in primaries and independents have to stay home, and some Republicans are looking forward to a potential Oz-Fetterman race, thinking Oz can win such a match because of middle-class familiarity with the not-so-good doctor.  I'm not sure about that. Fetterman is a working-class hero who always talks about how blue-collar voters and the middle class constantly get screwed by the system, making him a populist at a time when populism is, well, popular.  He can sell progressive populism because he's a regular guy, not some coastal intellectual or some social-media-happy showhorse.       

Fetterman has one thing against him.  He suffered a stroke a few days ago.  How that plays into today's voting remains to be seen.  One thing I'd like to note; former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley has supported both Fetterman and Lamb in earlier elections, Fetterman for his previous U.S. Senate run and Lamb for his first U.S. House run.  O'Malley is neutral this time, mainly because he can't be bothered with any political campaigns other than his wife's bid for Maryland Attorney General.  

The gubernatorial primary is more straightforward.  Far rightist state senator and 2020 election result denier Doug Mastriano is a shoo-in for the Republican nomination while Pennsylvania Attorney Josh Shapiro is running for the Democratic nomination unopposed.  Both sides agree that Shapiro will likely win the governorship in a landslide in November if Mastriano is his opponent. 

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.         

Sarah For WHAT?

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is running for Governor of Arkansas.

Also, shingles can be prevented.

Her biggest qualification for the job is having been Donald Trump's press secretary.

I don't think I need to go on any further . . .

Louisiana 2019

After being forced into a runoff by Donald Trump and state and national Republicans when he failed to win a majority in Louisiana's nonpartisan open primary, incumbent Democratic governor John Bel Edwards won a second term.  And because his Republican challenger (I could tell you his name, but that's irrelevant) was his only opponent, that means that Edwards was re-elected with a majority.

Once again, Trump tried to make a state gubernatorial election about himself and his agenda, and once again the voters rejected him.  Trump's popularity in Louisiana actually made the election close, but enough of the voters realized that they shouldn't vote for a Republican for governor just to please Trump.  They'll gladly vote for a Democrat if they feel that the Democrat is on their side and is governing the state effectively.

Edwards is no liberal despite his party affiliation. He's pro-life, and he also supports gun rights, as do most Louisiana residents.  But he's also been a very effective governor, having expanded Medicaid and having been responsive to natural disasters such as hurricanes  which Trump's environmental policies will make common and more dangerous occurrences of in the Pelican State for decades to come.  This is how a Democrat wins an election - by being responsive to the people.  And though Louisianians are deeply conservative, the country at large is more politically balanced and more reasonable, and Democrats need a pragmatist presidential nominee who doesn't go too far in one direction or the other - especially when we're in no position to try any progressive, European-style social democratic experiments (again, we were in such a position in 2016, but not now) - and that bodes well for anyone who's running for President as a Democrat in 2020 who wants to take a more cautious approach.    

And we'll need a cautious approach, given the ongoing appeal of Trumpism. The victories of Edwards in Louisiana and Beshear in Kentucky merely treated symptoms of Trumpism.  The disease goes merrily on.

California Brownout

Possibly likely to buy the governorship of California on November 2 is Republican Meg Whitman, the former EBay executive who made it possible to buy just about anything online - including old Volkswagen print ads (thanks, Meg!) - but can't leave well enough alone. She hopes to bring her smarmy, pro-business conservative politics to Sacramento, and history appears to be on her side. Republicans have won five of the last seven non-recall gubernatorial elections in the Golden State, and her Democratic opponent will be former governor and current state attorney general Jerry Brown. But because Brown has a lot of goodwill among the state's older voters and has a united party behind him in an increasingly multicultural Democratic state, he could be in a good position to return to the governor's office.

And once again, he'd be succeeding a professional actor. Sorry to see you go, Arnold, I thought you'd be an embarrassment to California, but you've proved me wrong.

Right now, Brown is behind by only one point in the latest Rasmussen poll out of California, despite Whitman's heavy advertising; many people still have little sense of who she is. To be fair, some people may have little sense of who Jerry Brown is anymore; did you know he married his longtime girlfriend in 2005? Did you know he even dated after he stopped seeing Linda Ronstadt in the seventies? Fortunately, Brown doesn't have to do much to re-introduce himself to the people of California; the Brown names is a pretty good brand in California, and he's done a lot over the years to build up its brand equity. He has a flair for explaining the issues, and he's always willing - eager, in fact - to listen to voters. He's likely to be outspent by Whitman in the short term - she's a billionaire with deep pockets - but, as an excellent article in the August 2, 2010 issue of Time demonstrates, he's still a formidable candidate.

Run, Jerry, run. :-)

Christie Wins

Noted reckless driver Chris Christie won the New Jersey governorship last night in a tight race with incumbent Jon Corzine. Christie was helped by the dislike many people had for Governor Corzine and has perceived ineffectiveness in handling the state's budget problems despite the fact that the mess he inherited had been in the making for the previous decade.

Christie scares me. In addition to his egregious traffic violations - which he neatly avoided severe prosecution from - he is pro-life and a supporter of supply-side economics, hardly the Eastern establishment Republican type that previous New Jersey Republicans like Clifford Case and Tom Kean represented. His health care proposals, especially involving insurance reform, are barbaric, and he still has no definitive plan on how to help the state's municipalities lower property taxes (to be fair, neither did Corzine, but he was making some progress by slowing the rate of increase).

I'm afraid that Christie will create a bigger mess in Trenton than the one the previous Christie - Christine Todd Whitman - created when she cut taxes and program funding but raided state pension programs to keep the budget balanced and thus still let spending run amok. And for all of her posturing on the environment and her later stint as director of the Environmental Protection Agency, her environmental record was atrocious, in one case allowing Merill Lynch to built a huge office complex in a rural area outside Trenton rather than in the city, which would have saved land in the country and helped Trenton's tax base. Perhaps Chris Christie will be a delightful surprise like Arnold Schwarzenegger proved to be in California, but I'm not holding my breath.

Nor I am holding my breath on health care reform. President Obama wanted a reform bill on his desk by August, and later he allowed the possibility of signing it by December in time for Christmas, but now we'll be lucky to have health care reform by Martin Luther King Day. Harry Reid, the milquetoast Senate Democratic leader, admitted that Senate passage of a bill might have to wait until after the first of the new year. World peace, apparently, is the only thing that can't be done by 2010.

I'm one of those 47 million Americans who can't afford health insurance and who would benefit from a government-run optional plan, so I don't have to rely on employers for coverage. Right now, I'm possibly going to have to take a job with bad hours and possibly low pay - which has nothing to do with my career ambitions - because my mother is concerned that I won't have health insurance otherwise. This is exactly the kind of situation I thought I'd find myself in now if Obama had lost the 2008 election.

The Republicans in the House, meanwhile, have offered proposals for health care reform, and while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has dismissed the gesture as too little, too late, it's better late than never and I do find a little in the little proposals to support. I can and would support the Republican proposal for consumers being able to buy insurance across state lines and their initiative to lower premiums, but I cannot support their proposal to drop employer mandates and cap expansions on Medicaid.