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Bell, Booker and Candle

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Bell, Booker and Candle
By Post Editorial Board
June 22, 2014 | 7:55pm

Sen. Cory Booker has everything going for him in his re-election race against former Reagan speechwriter Jeff Bell.

Booker has a war chest of $2.9 million, against a mere $76,000 for Bell. Booker is a Democratic incumbent running in a mostly blue state where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by 700,000. And according to a recent Rassmussen poll, 39 percent of New Jerseyans don’t even know who the heck Jeff Bell is.

All Bell has going for him is his conviction, which is that government is making it harder for working people to support their families.

In short, he’s a free-market, traditional values, pro-immigration conservative who thinks its high time someone took this message to the people of New Jersey.

So here’s the question: Despite all Booker’s advantages, why does the latest poll show his support at under 50 percent?

Rassmussen’s recent survey of likely voters puts Booker’s support at 48 percent, against 35 percent for Bell. That’s a 13 percentage-point difference, which is the same percentage who say they are undecided.

Bell, of course, remains a long shot in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the US Senate since 1972. Ironically, the Republican who won that seat was Clifford Case, the man Bell beat in the Republican primary back in 1978 — only to lose to Democrat Bill Bradley in the general election.

https://nypost.com/2014/06/22/bell-booker-and-candle/

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So Who is Jeff Bell

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So Who is Jeff Bell

Jeff Bell has worked at the highest levels of American politics and public policy for over forty years. In 1978, at age 34, he became the New Jersey Republican Party nominee for U.S. Senate when he defeated four-term incumbent Clifford Case. As the first major candidate to win on the theme of tax cuts, he produced television ads for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign using the same message. He later worked as an advocate for the bipartisan Tax Reform Act of 1986 with Jack Kemp and Bill Bradley, the man who defeated him in the 1978 general election.

A graduate of Columbia University, Jeff went on to serve in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, where he was an intelligence advisor to the South Vietnamese infantry during the Tet offensive. Upon returning home, he joined the national presidential campaign staff of Richard Nixon in 1968 and later went to work for Ronald Reagan in 1974. He developed Governor Reagan’s first proposals for federal tax and spending reduction when Reagan ran for president in 1976. During the 1980 campaign, Jeff was elected from New Jersey as a Reagan delegate to the Republican national convention.

From 1988-2000, Jeff served as president of Lehrman Bell Mueller Cannon Inc., an economic forecasting and consulting firm. From 2000-2010, he was a principal of Capital City Partners, where he worked on promoting comprehensive immigration reform, the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiatives, and combating human trafficking, among other issues. In 2009, he was among the co-founders of the American Principles Project, a public policy organization dedicated to advancing conservative ideas derived from the principles of the American founding. As Policy Director, he headed its monetary reform initiative aimed at renewing sound money by restoring the dollar’s value in gold. He resigned from that position in February 2014 to run for U.S. Senate.

Jeff is the author of two books, The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism (2012), for which he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh, and Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality (1992). His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Weekly Standard, National Review, and various other outlets. He has served as a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy Institute of Politics, visiting professor at the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University, the DeWitt Wallace Fellow in Communications at the American Enterprise Institute, and as a board member of the American Conservative Union and Campaign Finance Institute. From 1978 to 1980, he served as the president of the Manhattan Institute.

Jeff and his wife Rosalie have been married since 1983 and have three sons and one daughter ranging in ages from 19 to 28 as well as a one-year-old granddaughter.

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Booker campaign ready for another battle; challenger Bell says right issue can spur an upset

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Booker campaign ready for another battle; challenger Bell says right issue can spur an upset

JUNE 4, 2014, 2:18 PM    LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2014, 11:19 PM
BY HERB JACKSON AND MICHAEL PHILLIS
STAFF WRITERS
THE RECORD

Democrat Cory Booker made a strategic decision before last year’s special U.S. Senate election not to engage his Republican opponent Steve Lonegan, and the conservative firebrand savaged the carefully polished image Booker had built during two terms as Newark’s mayor.

Though Booker won by 11 percentage points, the margin was seen as a disappointment.

This year will be different, Booker’s campaign manager, Brendan Gill, said Wednesday.

“We don’t want to just win, want to win decisively,” Gill said. “We want to make sure, as we have been, that Cory is paying close attention to issues in the state and spending lots of time in |the state.”

Instead of facing the hard-charging Lonegan, Booker will square off for a full six-year term against the more policy-focused Jeff Bell, who won Tuesday’s primary without the support of any of the county Republican organizations, just as he did in 1978 when he defeated Sen. Clifford Case, a moderate, in that year’s primary.

Bell, 70, moved back to New Jersey in February after 30 years in Virginia, where he worked for think tanks and advocacy groups, because he couldn’t persuade policymakers to take up what he sees as the solution to the nation’s economic problems: a return to the gold standard in setting the value of the dollar.

“The congressmen I was talking to and federal candidates were afraid and unwilling to take up the issue, so I felt that there was a chance that even with limited resources, that I could communicate the issue to average voters,” Bell said Wednesday.

Unofficial results showed Bell won 30 percent of the total vote against three opponents who also struggled to get attention.

“It is possible, if you have the right issue in the right year, to upset the incumbent U.S. senator of New Jersey,” he said at a news conference in Freehold, where he was endorsed by second-place finisher Richard Pezzullo.

“In order to get this fight going, I’m going to throw all of my support behind Jeff Bell,” said Pezzullo, who had refused to concede Tuesday night as unofficial tallies showed him with about 35,000 votes to Bell’s 42,000.

Brian D. Goldberg and Murray Sabrin, who finished third and fourth, respectively, also called Wednesday for the party to unite.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/second-place-finisher-endorses-bell-in-senate-race-against-booker-1.1028840#sthash.XCDNAAV0.dpuf

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Senate Candidates Spar in Wyckoff

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Senate Candidates Spar in Wyckoff
May 27th 2014
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Wyckoff  NJ, Jeff Bell , Brian Goldberg , Murray Sabrin  Candidates for Senate ,looking to unseat Cory Booker  spoke at the Larkin House in Wyckoff last night hosted by the West Bergen Tea Party.

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Jeff Bell focused on Restoring Middle Class Prosperity , saying there was now NO Future for our grandchildren.

America was founded on the idea that hard work gets you ahead. But that social contract has withered away owing to dysfunctional government policy that favors the wealthy while necessitating huge budget deficits to provide a safety net large enough to support those left behind. Despite advances in technology that have improved the standard of living, it has become harder for working people to support a family and for young people to establish a career. The next U.S. Senator from New Jersey must be a tireless advocate for solutions that restore the middle-class prosperity that was once a hallmark of this nation.

The most important hindrance to middle-class prosperity is the condition of the U.S. dollar. Since 1994 it has lost over one-third of its value, and lost 10 percent in the last five years alone since the Federal Reserve began its “Quantitative Easing” program of creating new dollars. The effect of rising prices is felt everywhere: at the grocery store, the gas pump, in medical costs, and school tuition.

Instead of serving the people, our money serves the federal government, whose trillion-dollar borrowing is the main cause of the Fed’s money creation. To restore the money supply in the hands of the people, we need a dollar whose value is backed by gold. Read my specific plan to do that. The gold standard, which stabilized the dollar under various iterations through most of U.S. history, is the proven way to encourage stable long-term prices and preserve limited government. This is why the Constitution in Article I, Section 10 directs Congress to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof.”

While Washington has gotten free financing from the Fed, families planning for college, retirees living on a fixed income, and everyone else hoping to earn a decent return on their savings rather than speculating in the markets have fallen behind. It is a travesty that our monetary policy has deprived seniors, parents, and savers in billions of income so Congress can rack up more debt.

This is the direct result of the Fed’s policy of near zero interest rates, now in its sixth year. The suppression of interest rates below the market level has also broken down the traditional banking system, in which small businesses borrow from their local banks. The total value of all small bank business loans is approximately half of what it was when “zero interest rates” was adopted. Now, neighborhood standbys like hair salons and restaurants are forced to seek alternative forms of credit like cash advance loans that often come with 50 percent effective interest rates.

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Brian Goldberg focused on his electability saying  his “positive message” and business experience could lead him to defeat Booker. He questioned whether Booker, who once lived by choice in a Newark housing project, can relate to the average Garden State resident.

Promoting the concept of Empowerment, not Entitlement, Mr. Goldberg brings a positive message to the race.

Goldberg said as a businessman,he has practical experience in the areas that matter most to NJ voters.He’ll combine that experience with his business experience to seek Win-Win solutions to the nation’s biggest challenges, providing NJ with a new voice in Washington.

Murray Sabrin focused on his back ground and how he arrived in America with his parents and older brother on August 6, 1949. His parents were the only members of their respective families to survive the Holocaust.

Rather than submit to the authoritarian regime of National Socialism, Murray’s father led a group of 241-armed partisans in Poland, and included the famed postwar Nazi hunter and writer Abba Kovner. The tragedy and triumph of Murray’s family has taught him to revere human life and hold dear those freedoms in our Bill of Rights — especially the right of citizens to protect themselves under the Second Amendment.

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Murray Sabrin became a U.S. citizen in 1959 at age 12, and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1964. He has a Ph.D. in economic geography from Rutgers University, an M.A. in social studies education from Lehman College and a B.A. in history, geography and social studies education from Hunter College.

His personal experience allowed him to see the dangers of big government  and make him what he called himself New Jersey’s foremost defender of economic freedom and individual liberty. For three decades he has been fighting to end harmful government intrusion into our lives. 

Like the other two he focused on how the U.S. economy is experiencing the worst recovery since the end of World War II.  Despite trillion dollar budget deficits under President Obama and the Federal Reserve’s unconscionable money printing known as Quantitative Easing, which has dropped interest rates on savings accounts to virtually 0%, America’s real unemployment rate is more than 20%, according to some economists.  In other words, the federal government’s fiscal and monetary policies have not “stimulated” the economy.

America’s free enterprise system has been replaced by crony capitalism–bailouts of Wall Street and politically connected firms, and subsidies to inefficient businesses. We need to return to a free market economy across the board so we can enjoy the fruits of a prosperity based on real savings and investments.

He then spoke on NSA spying ,and IRS Targeting and the growing threats to our Constitutional rights Saying the real threat to our rights is from the Obama administration, and he will work tirelessly in the United States Senate to repeal every law that infringes on the American people’s constitutional rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

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GOP candidates seeking Senate nomination speak to Bergen Republicans

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GOP candidates seeking Senate nomination speak to Bergen Republicans

MAY 13, 2014, 10:35 PM    LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2014, 11:06 PM
BY MICHAEL PHILLIS
STATE HO– USE BUREAU
THE RECORD

All four Republican candidates vying to be their party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate introduced themselves and answered questions before the Bergen County Republican Organization on Tuesday evening.

Whoever becomes the Republican nominee will face off against Democratic incumbent Cory Booker, who gained the late Frank Lautenberg’s seat in a special election  last year. Booker  won by double digits and has access to funding at the national party level.

Before about 60 people, candidates emphasized different points, but the general focus was on the economy. Each candidate was given five minutes to introduce themselves to the audience before a short question-and-answer session.

Ideas ranged from downsizing the federal government to strengthening the military and creating jobs. The target wasn’t on each other but focused on Booker.

“What is Cory Booker’s program for economic growth?” asked one of the candidates, Jeff Bell. “I do have an answer. His program is the same as President Obama’s for economic growth: nothing.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/gop-candidates-seeking-senate-nomination-speak-to-bergen-republicans-1.1015242#sthash.85QnAls4.dpuf