The New Jersey GOP’s Secret Senate Race Weapon
By Peter Roff
Democrats – and most Republicans – expect that the party will keep the seat held on and off since the 1980s by the late New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the upcoming special election. GOP Gov. Chris Christie certain seems to believe it which is probably why, having determined the law required him to schedule a quick election, he picked a Wednesday in October – giving the special election a $24 million price tag – just two weeks before he must face the voters in his regularly scheduled bid for a second term.
If he hadn’t, Christie might have been on the ballot at a time when the Senate race was energizing Democrats to turn out, making his expected path to an easy win as bumpy as the north end of the Jersey Turnpike.
All that’s fine with former Bogota, N.J. Mayor Steve Lonegan, the former leader of the New Jersey chapter of Americans for Prosperity and the GOP’s best chance to win a Senate race since Jeff Bell ousted incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Clifford Case in the 1978 primary.
[See a collection of political cartoons on Congress.]
Despite losing the GOP primary to Christie four years ago Lonegan is a force to be reckoned with. Legally blind, he was for 12 years the mayor of Bogota, which gave Barack Obama better than 65 percent of the vote in the last election. For 11 of those years Lonegan also had working control of the city council, which allowed him to author and pass tax cutting measures, reduce the size of government, and put into place a law requiring any city budget that increased spending by more than the rate of inflation to be ratified by a vote of the people in this overwhelmingly Democrat community.
Lonegan has compiled an impressive political resume, leading two successful statewide campaigns against big spending ballot measures – which is a nice contrast with his opponent in the GOP primary, Dr. Alieta Eck, whose experience in politics seems not to go much beyond this speech to the extremist John Birch Society. Lonegan’s network is formidable, turning in 7,000 signatures to get on the ballot in just about 36 hours when only 1,000 were required – an indication that his political base, inspired by his Chris Christie-style plain speaking, is highly energized and ready to go.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2013/06/21/steve-lonegan-could-score-a-surprise-victory-in-the-new-jersey-senate-race
Lonegan was the true conservative and small-government candidate in the primary against Christie. Christie then out-flanked Lonegan and painted him as extreme.
After securing the primary win and defeating Corzine, Christie went on to bash everyone in his path with Alinsky-like tactics as so prominently used by the Obama campaign. He did most of his ham-handed political schtick in the first year so he had time to politically recover.
Last fall, when Hurricane Sandy had finished ravaging the Jersey Shore, Christie was singing Springsteen’s “Sandy” along with his new bud, The President, and gave Obama the perfect backdrop just a week before Election Day to show that our chief executive was compassionate. Obama surged past Romney and never looked back.
Since then, Christie’s moves to tack to the left to pander for votes is outright embarrassing. New Jersey has yet to shake off the effects of the long recession and his cozy relationship with the Democrat Party is distancing him from broad GOP support which he’ll need to run for president in 2016.
Even democrats acknowledge the Christie juggernaut as the support for candidate Barbara Buono has been lukewarm, at best. Christie can then pad his resume with a 2nd term win in November.
What we are witnessing is a long-term plan to help no one except the Governor himself. If anyone benefits from his actions, it’s because it was part of his own personal agenda. When asked about 2016, he plays coy but it’s almost certain that he’ll change his tune sometime in 2014 with the 2013 election long over.
In the meantime, the citizens of New Jersey get the bipartisan shaft from another shameless governor with Presidential aspirations.