Tag: Jeff Bell

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We Could Use a Lil’ Voodoo,Right Now Mr. Senator!

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We Could Use a Lil’ Voodoo,Right Now Mr. Senator!
Sep. 08 Cory Booker

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Cory Booker (D-Twitter) launched his U.S. Senate reelection campaign last week, Save Jerseyans, but the man who prides himself on being a post-partisan and supremely hip leader chose to rely on some antiquated hyper-political rhetoric.

Specifically? For starters, he accused the GOP nominee Jeff Bell of peddling “voodoo economics.”

This is objective truth; it’s not up for debate. Booker’s buddy President Obama hasn’t come close to touching it. We’re all intimately aware that the former mayor of Newark didn’t perform too well during his time at the helm of New Jersey’s largest city.

The precise details of Reagan’s success, placed in contrast with the current Democrat regime, are even more stunning. Paul Kengor of Fox News recently did a great job of breaking it down:

Real income for a median African-American family had dropped 11 percent from 1977-82; from 1982-89, coming out of the recession, it rose by 17 percent. In the 1980s, there was a 40 percent jump in the number of black households earning $50,000 or more. Black unemployment under Reagan in the 1980s actually fell faster than white unemployment. The number of black-owned businesses increased by almost 40 percent, while the number of blacks who enrolled in college increased by almost 30 percent (white college enrollment increased by only 6 percent).

There were likewise impressive numbers for Hispanics, who saw similar to higher increases in family income, employment, and college enrollment. The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the 1980s grew by an astounding 81 percent, and the number of Hispanics enrolled in college jumped 45 percent.

Liberals often decry the income gap between men and women. Well, under Reagan, women went from earning 60 cents for every dollar a man earned to 71 cents, and their employment and median earnings outpaced their male counterparts. Women enrolled in college in record numbers.

Moreover, the youth of the 1980s certainly got off to a stronger start than my contemporaries:

The peak period of youth unemployment for 16-24 year olds under Reagan was 1982, when it was 17.3%. Reagan reduced it to 10.9% by 1988. Under Obama, the peak for that same group was 19.1%. By 2013, the number was 16.3%.

The unemployment data for 16-19 year olds is even more pronounced. Under Reagan, it fell from 24% in 1982 to 14.8% in 1988. Under Obama, it declined from a high of 25.9% in 2010 to only 22.9% in 2013. The numbers for black Americans aged 16-19 are even stronger in Reagan’s favor. They fell from 49.4% in 1982 to 31.9% in 1988—a vast improvement. Under Obama, they declined from 43.0% in 2010 to only 38.8% in 2013.

So call it whatever derisive term you’d like, Senator. We could use a little “voodoo” right now. You and your president could, too, with the Senate on the line.

– See the full article  more at: https://savejersey.com/2014/09/cory-booker-jeff-bell-voodoo-economics/#sthash.5zrCyl58.dpuf

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Cory Booker and big bucks: Perfect together

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Cory Booker in Ridgewood , by Boyd Loving

Cory Booker and big bucks: Perfect together

Sharpen your pencils, boys and girls. Here’s a little quiz:

Last spring the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission that removed the limit on total campaign contributions by an individual.

In response, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker issued a news release that included the following sentence:

“This ruling further concentrates power in the hands of the very wealthy and enhances their ability to dramatically influence elections.”

Here’s the question: Was Booker praising the court’s decision or panning it?

After last week, I’m not sure. On Thursday, the Democratic candidate for re-election released his financial statement for 2013. The report offers further proof that Booker has as much talent as anyone on the American political scene when it comes to taking money out of the hands of the very wealthy and depositing it in his own pockets.

We already knew that Booker was among the very best at getting campaign contributions. He ranks No. 2 on the Center for Responsive Politics “Who Raised the Most?” list for senators, with a staggering $16,171,449 raised in the current cycle. The top three types of contributors were big law firms, big investment firms and big real estate interests.

https://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/08/cory_booker_and_big_bucks_perfect_together_mulshine.html#incart_river#incart_hbx#incart_best-of

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The Most Interesting Candidate in the World

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The Most Interesting Candidate in the World
Column: Jeff Bell and the Republican future

BY: Matthew Continetti
August 15, 2014 5:00 am

Jeff Bell was a reform conservative before it was cool. He’s spent his career arguing with a risk-averse Republican establishment. He pushed Ronald Reagan to embrace the supply-side doctrine of tax cuts before deficit reduction. He spent the 1990s warning the GOP that its tax policy favored investment capital over human capital, corporate interests over working families. He designed a family-friendly flat tax that reduced payroll taxes, increased the child tax credit, taxed capital gains and regular income at the same rate, and ended business expensing. Payroll tax relief and a generous child tax credit are elements of today’s reform conservatism. Bell was there first.

Bell’s career has been a mix of thought and action. He was born and raised in New Jersey, and graduated from Columbia University. He fought in Vietnam. He was an aide to Richard Nixon and to Ronald Reagan, and was active in the conservative movement more generally. In 1978, he upset liberal Republican Clifford Case in the New Jersey Senate primary, losing to Bill Bradley in the general election. He’s the rare political consultant whose views of the world are more expansive than those expressed on Morning Joe.

https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-most-interesting-candidate-in-the-world/

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Is Booker hearing footsteps?

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Jackson: Is Booker hearing footsteps?

AUGUST 10, 2014, 6:00 PM    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, 2014, 11:39 PM
BY HERB JACKSON
RECORD COLUMNIST
THE RECORD

Sen. Cory Booker last year saw what ignoring a little-known opponent can do. He was slammed for not winning a special election by the landslide his celebrity and overwhelming financial advantage suggested was possible.

Now he’s running again, and a new poll shows him under the 50 percent mark that signifies a safe incumbent. And that’s with virtually unknown and underfunded Republican opponent Jeff Bell trailing by just 10 points.

So once again, Booker faces questions about expectations.

The Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed Booker would receive 47 percent of the vote and Bell 37 percent if the election were held now. The poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, meaning Booker’s true support could be as low as 44.1 or as high as 49.9.

Bell, the surprise winner of June’s low-turnout primary, who also won an upset in the June 1978 Senate primary, is almost within striking distance — even though 77 percent of voters haven’t heard of him and his latest disclosure report shows his campaign $46,000 in debt, while Booker’s campaign has $3.5 million to spend.

The poll’s findings caught the attention of some national political writers who were focusing on other states in this year’s Senate races, but there is also historical evidence that a truly competitive race from Bell could be just a mirage. Summer polls, taken before candidates start advertising and voters pay attention, have been off the mark before.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/jackson-is-booker-hearing-footsteps-1.1065293#sthash.Bi1g1E2n.dpuf

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Don’t Give Booker a Pass

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Don’t Give Booker a Pass

Why are Republicans so soft on “Cory”?

By Eliana Johnson, National Review Online

https://www.nationalreview.com/article/384952/dont-give-booker-pass-eliana-johnson

Cory Booker may be the most puzzling man in the Senate. We don’t know where he lives. We don’t know whom, if anyone, he lives with. And he’s been caught in lie after lie about his heroics. Yet, this enigma of a man has emerged as the king of odd-couple bromance, using selfies and Instagram posts to burnish his stardom even as he appears surprisingly vulnerable in his upcoming bid for reelection.

But Booker is less popular in New Jersey than he is in Washington. He is polling below 50 percent in his matchup against Bell, a policy wonk and virtual unknown in the state who has received little support from the national party. Though he was expected to breeze to reelection, a Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday has Booker ahead by just ten points, 47 to 37 percent.

Many of Booker’s fiercest ideological opponents, however, are riding the Booker juggernaut rather than going in for the kill. Cory Booker can be beaten, at least the polls suggest so. So why are they so eager to cozy up to him, so hesitant to take him on?

Take Rand Paul, with whom Booker appeared last week on PBS, CNN, and MSNBC. They were touting their proposal for reforming the country’s criminal-justice system. Paul was one of the few Republican stars who campaigned energetically against Booker last year, but at a cocktail party hosted by Politico’s Mike Allen, they discussed the origins of their “bromance” and joked about co-starring in a reality show. This is the same Rand Paul who has knocked leaders of his own party for being insufficiently conservative, but there he was, arm-in-arm with a man who represents the blue-state liberalism he spends most of his time denouncing.

New Jersey’s junior senator is popular in Washington. His Republican opponent, former Reagan official Jeff Bell, even got a chilly reception from Ted Cruz, according to a source who attended the meeting the two had – the same Ted Cruz who precipitated the confrontation over the government shutdown last year. Cruz, according to the source, grilled the staunchly conservative Bell about why he hasn’t raised more money and asked him, pointedly, “How do you think you can win?” (Cruz’s office describes the conversation as a “fairly standard” one that it has with lots of candidates, and it is true that the latest Federal Election Commission filings show that Booker has nearly $3.5 million cash on hand while Bell has $0.) Cruz was spotted breaking bread with Booker in March, and Booker later gushed about their “great intellectual discussion.”Booker has spent much of his nine months in office charming his colleagues, partly by photographing himself with them. He’s in the midst of a campaign to take selifies with each of his fellow senators. In the pictures he’s posted to his Instagram account, he’s praised Senate majority leader Harry Reid as a “profoundly kind, caring, compassionate, and decent man” and South Dakota Republican John Thune as a “valued colleague and friend who challenges me on issues in constructive ways.” You get the idea.

It’s Booker’s second statewide race in a year, and it’s the second time polls have shown him unexpectedly vulnerable. “It’s been surprising both times,” says John Weingart, associate director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. Last year, Booker was expected to trounce long-shot candidate Steve Lonegan in October’s special election, but after national media began for the first time to scrutinize his record, he stumbled on the campaign trail.

The New Jersey Republican party didn’t put up much of a fight. “The refusal to expose Cory Booker is frustrating,” says a Republican operative who has worked on campaigns both nationally and in New Jersey. “In 2013 the state GOP appeared to be on lockdown, refusing to go after both Cory Booker and Bob Menendez.” Even without that sort of institutional opposition, Booker saw a 30-point lead narrow to an 11-point win on Election Day.

https://www.nationalreview.com/article/384952/dont-give-booker-pass-eliana-johnson

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In Senate race to watch, Jeffrey Bell is running against Janet Yellen

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In Senate race to watch, Jeffrey Bell is running against Janet Yellen

Why isn’t the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee coming in for Jeffrey Bell in New Jersey? He’s in a remarkable political fight, running surprisingly close to the incumbent, Cory Booker, despite having zilch in his campaign account. Yet he can’t get his phone calls returned by the national GOP. This is all the more amazing because Mr. Bell is framing a national issue — the failure of the Federal Reserve to create jobs. It’s almost as if Bell’s real opponent were not the glad-handing Booker but Janet Yellen, the Fed chairman. (Lipsky/The New York Post)

https://www.nysun.com/new-york/in-senate-race-to-watch-brjeffrey-bell-is-running/88806/

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U.S. Senate candidate Bell says his focus is economy

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U.S. Senate candidate Bell says his focus is economy

With less than 100 days until the November election, recent polls have shown Republican candidates coming on strong. U.S. Senate Republican candidate Jeff Bell told NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams that he has been a man for big ideas and that his campaign is focusing on the economy. (Williams/NJTV)

https://www.njtvonline.org/news/video/u-s-senate-candidate-bell-says-his-focus-is-economy/

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Matt Rooney of The Save Jersey Blog interviews NJ Senate Candidate Jeff Bell

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Matt Rooney of  The Save Jersey Blog interviews NJ Senate Candidate Jeff Bell
Aug. 05 
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Jeff Bell dropped by my law offices on Monday, Save Jerseyans, en route to participate in the organized protest of Harry Reid’s Cherry Hill fundraiser for Donald Norcross.

I could talk to this guy for hours. He’s an unapologetic public policy wonk and rich depository of political knowledge going back to his years with the Reagan campaign. We did our best to drill down on a few important issues at play in 2014, the state of the race itself, the contrast between Bell and the incumbent Cory Booker (D-Twitter), and how he hopes to win this classic David v. Goliath struggle…

The NY Post says he’s surging. The most recent public poll shows him in single-digit territory. All we can say for sure is that the 2014 cycle is no time to count any good Republican out…

– See more at: https://savejersey.com/2014/08/jeff-bell-cory-booker-interview-matt-rooney/#sthash.pXwr92HE.dpuf

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Jeff Bell’s surging senate race against Cory Booker

jeff_bell_theridgewoodblog.net

Jeff Bell’s surging senate race against Cory Booker

In his Senate run against Cory Booker, Republican Jeff Bell is doing nothing the experts tell you a candidate should do — and everything they say you shouldn’t. But here’s the extraordinary thing: He continues to close the gap against a man who is supposed to be “unbeatable.” (The New York Post)

https://nypost.com/2014/08/03/jeff-bells-surging-senate-race-against-cory-booker/

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Reader Says Booker turned out to be a massive disappointment.

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Reader Says Booker turned out to be a massive disappointment.

Newark, run by Sharpe James, was the Zimbabwe of America. Despite what seemed like massive obstacles, this bright and seemingly inteligent man took on the James machine and finally took over. Hope for Newark, right? Not so fast. The unthinkable happened and Newark’s terrible statistics actually got worse. Then, we entered an alternate universe. Booker’s abysmal performance as Mayor was completely ignored, and he was picked up on the national radar, heading for bigger and brighter things. The man is an empty suit with a good media personality.

We get the policians we deserve.

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Shock Poll Bell Closes Bookers lead to 7pts and leads with Independents

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Shock Poll Bell Closes Bookers lead to 7pts and leads with Independents
July 28,2014
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, The New York Times and CBS News released a poll yesterday that shows Jeff Bell within striking distance of incumbent Cory Booker, who is ahead by just 50 to 43 percentage points. Even more interesting Bell is leading among independent voters by eight points. You can read about all the Senate polls taken here:https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/upshot/republicans-senate-chances-rise-slightly-to-60-percent-.html?rref=upshot

The stunning result follows the first poll of likely voters taken by Rasmussen in early June, which had Bell down 13 points and tied with independents. What’s remarkable is that Jeff Bell’s midsummer polling surge has come with no advertising or any other mass voter contact.

It seems New Jersey voters are simply dissatisfied with the job that Cory Booker’s done in Washington and are looking to replace him with someone who has a different approach to the job.

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NJ Senate Candidate Jeff Bell Releases his Tax Returns ask Cory Booker to do the Same

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NJ Senate Candidate Jeff Bell Releases his Tax Returns ask Cory Booker to do the Same 

“I’ve been open and transparent by releasing my tax returns. It’s time for Sen. Booker to do the same.” Jeff Bell 

https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/07/republican_us_senate_candidate_jeff_bell_releases_tax_returns_urges_booker_to_do_the_same.html

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Cory Booker can be beaten

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In the March Monmouth/APP poll, 55% of NJ voters said Booker deserves to be reelected.  Today, only 44% say the former Newark Mayor deserves his own six year term in Washington. 

Cory Booker can be beaten

Senator Cory Booker’s support for reelection took a sharp drop since March, according to a Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press pollreleased this morning.

In the March Monmouth/APP poll, 55% of NJ voters said Booker deserves to be reelected.  Today, only 44% say the former Newark Mayor deserves his own six year term in Washington. Booker was elected last October to fill the remainder of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg’s term.  He faces off with Republican Jeff Bell in November.

Booker would beat Bell easily if the election where today, 43%-23%, but 15% say they would vote for a third party candidate and 17% are unsure. But the vast majority of voters, 82%, don’t know enough about Bell for express a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him.  The GOP nominee for U.S. Senate against Bill Bradley in 1978, Bell scored a surprise victory in the GOP primary for Senate last month. Of those who do know enough about Bell to express an opinion, the overwhelming impression, 2-1, is favorable.

Perhaps the worst indicator of support for Booker is his favorability rating.  While net positive by a significant 43%-14% margin, 43% said they have no opinion of Booker. That is a stunningly high number for a man who was elected to the U.S. Senate last fall, served as mayor of New Jersey’s largest city for over seven years, has over 1 million twitter followers and who has spent over $12 million on his reelection effort since the first of the year.

https://www.moremonmouthmusings.net/2014/07/02/booker-can-be-beaten/

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“Cory Booker’s scary big lead”

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Cory Booker

New York Post Editorial Page

Below is an editorial in today’s New York Post, accessible here. 
 

“Cory Booker’s scary big lead”


Normally, Cory Booker would be feeling pretty confident, given his 20-point lead over GOP challenger Jeffrey Bell.

But a closer look at the latest poll numbers suggests Booker may have a rougher ride to re-election than anyone anticipated.

That’s because the New Jersey senator’s support clocks in at just 43 percent. The same poll, by the Monmouth University-Asbury Park Press, has more than a third of voters saying it’s time for a change, though Booker’s been in office only eight months.

Fully 15 percent — including one in eight Democrats — say they would vote for a third-party candidate. This, even though the same voters generally approve of Booker’s job performance. In other words, his support remains strikingly soft.

Some of this, no doubt, reflects the general defensiveness of Democratic senators up for re-election this year. But some also suggests voters have concluded Booker’s been more hype than substance. Newark, for example, just elected one of his harshest critics to succeed him as mayor.

Granted, challenger Jeff Bell, a Reagan speechwriter-turned-tax-reform-activist, last ran for office in 1982. On top of this, statewide Republican candidates — particularly conservatives — historically have faced an uphill climb in Jersey.

But another conservative, Steve Lonegan, lost to Booker last fall by just 11 percentage points, a much closer margin than people expected. And that was without any help from the Republican National Committee.

If Bell can make his case for the middle class — and get the financial support he needs from the national party — he may make this race competitive yet.