>thttps://www.northjersey.com/news/bergenpolitics/Republican.html
Republicans pound their chests with pride, and even tear up on occasion, when preaching the virtues of free market competition — except when it comes to intraparty politics.
Mere mention of a primary this year in the governor’s race or in the North Jersey contests for the state Assembly and the free-marketers suddenly shudder in fear and disgust. It means forcing calcified incumbents to get off their cash hoards and defend themselves. It means forcing the party operatives to take sides.
It means — God forbid — giving voters choices.
Joseph Caruso, a Lyndhurst businessman and party operative chafing at conventional party wisdom, says he’s startled by all the fuss he has caused by pursuing a challenge against the incumbents in the Assembly’s 40th Legislative District.
“Should insiders hand-pick who is best, or should the voters make the decision? I don’t know what the problem is,” said Caruso, who lives in Wayne.
Caruso has rankled party regulars who believe his candidacy is part of a complicated two-county strategy to knock Assemblyman Scott Rumana out of his other political job, the Passaic County Republican Party chairmanship.
Critics say Caruso is being propped up by a cabal of Passaic County hardliners aligned with Peter Murphy, the former GOP party boss and determined Rumana foe. Caruso strenuously denies the charge.
Party officials also fear that a 40th District primary could force Rumana and running mate David Russo of Ridgewood to needlessly spend money that would better be spent waging war on Democrats in November. Caruso served as the Bergen County Republican Organization’s finance chairman last year, helping it stockpile cash. Now he threatens to indirectly drain the very fund he helped build.
“They create dissension,” said BCRO Chairman Bob Yudin, who has tried, unsuccessfully, to dissuade Caruso from running. The district includes parts of Essex, Passaic and Bergen counties.
Yudin says primaries only “make sense” when there is a
vacancy or if an incumbent “does something egregious,” like get indicted. Challenging “popular incumbents &hellip is not conducive to party building.”
The Internal Party Argument sounds sensible, at first. Yudin and other chairmen are cobbling together campaigns on shoestring budgets in a Democrat-dominated state. State party coffers are nearly empty. And past party squabbles, particularly in Bergen, have left the party in disarray. And why should the Bergen organization waste its resources on what is essentially a Passaic County turf battle?
All this might be true, but why should Republican Party voters be denied choices because the insurgent’s motives are suspect or because he doesn’t fit nicely into the statewide strategy? Legislative primaries in New Jersey are lame, low-turnout rituals. Incumbents generally yawn their way through them, flecking off the occasional gadfly with little effort. Voters stay home because they generate little interest.
Caruso is a member of the conservative wing of the party who believes the New Jersey GOP has become too liberal, too amorphous, too much like generic Trenton pols. “Where, for instance, are the Republican rallies to overturn the socialist edicts of the Council on Affordable Housing that even many Democrats think is a disastrous idea?” Caruso railed in a recent release.
Personally, I don’t think this kind of rhetoric will sway too many voters in the 40th, but who really knows unless it’s tested on the trail? If Rumana and the laundry list of party officials who endorsed them believe they represent the GOP base, then, in theory, they have nothing to worry about. The cost will be minimal. Will they really waste that much money? And what better way to test Caruso’s claim to independence than a vigorous Jersey campaign fight?
A similar impulse to minimize the competition in the governor’s race surfaced at a recent meeting of county chairmen in Princeton.
GOP officials asked the four Republican candidates not to run slates of local candidates in counties where they failed to win the party’s endorsement. Former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie agreed to the idea and so did Brian Levine, the mayor of Franklin Township in Somerset County. But former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan and Assemblyman Rick Merkt refused.
“I’m not going to unilaterally disarm,” Lonegan said. “If the establishment Republicans are trying to rig the system against me, then I intend to beat them.”
What Lonegan didn’t say is that he probably won’t get many of the counties to support him anyway. But he remains a curiosity in this race, a wily self-promoter who can deliver a sound bite and raise money.
His attacks on the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce train to Washington as the “tax and spend” express (and a similar salvo from Merkt), led Christie to snub — and criticize — the same trip. It became Christie’s first position of the campaign, brought about by old-fashioned competition.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/bergenpolitics/Republican.html
