(I think population-weighted New Jersey looks only slightly more developed than a 6 week fetus. - promoted by jmelli)
This is one of a series of cartograms I've been posting over on Kos. Some people there suggested that I cross-post it here. The maps are distorted so that each district is the same size.
First, an update on my $5,000 Blogging Scholarship contest; I'm at 46% currently, with my nearest opponent at 18% in a field of ten. While my chances of winning are strong, every vote counts, so head over to http://www.scholarsh.... to help me earn this distinction. You can also read more about why I deserve your support at http://www.dailykos..... (although the headline is inaccurate, in that I goofed on the prize).
As for today, I got up early to take part in the canvassing for Linda Stender's campaign for Congress (http://www.lindasten...)in NJ-07. Hopefully, she's my next Congresswoman.
Yesterday at 10AM I was warm and cozy, sleeping in my bed on a cold October morning at Drew University (Madison, New Jersey). I was dreaming peacefully about a Democratic landslide in November, with Democrats picking up 35 House seats and 7 in the Senate, and Bush being forced to resign, and Al Gore was somehow Vice-President again, so...
Then my phone rang. It was Chip, the Morris County Democratic Campaign Coordinator. I had forgotten to set my alarm for earlier. Oops.
"Hey Stephen, do you want to go to some rallies today?"
"(Yawn)Sure, what time?"
"I'll pick you up in a few hours."
So began my day at the rallies.
Mike Ferguson, R-NJ7, is well known in political circles for being a bit distant, not spending much time in the district or meeting with everyday folks. It's helped him stay fairly unknown to most of the voters, and he uses that to define his image through taxpayer funded mailings and meetings in front of supportive groups.
But the truth is that Mike Ferguson is presenting an image 180 degrees away from his reality. He wants us to believe he supports the troops, but he voted against allowing service women in Iraq to have safe abortions in military hospitals. He wants us to believe he is a family friendly politician, but he voted to slash funding for catching dead-beat Dads and to increase the cost of student loans. He wants us to believe he cares about the environment, yet has a 17 percent rating from the bi-partisan League of Conservation Voters. He wants us to believe he opposes privatizing Social Security, but supports using Social Security funds in private Wall Street accounts.
Ferguson has been able to obscure his positions for six years, helped out by a favorable redistricting and a lot of out-of-state money from people like Tom DeLay and Bob Ney. But now the time for a fair election where the public knows the truth about the candidates is at hand.
Therefore, I am challenging Mike Ferguson to a series of four debates – one in each county New Jersey's 7th Congressional District represents. That's Hunterdon, Middlesex, Somerset and Union Counties.
I sent Congressman Ferguson a letter last week with the challenge, and have yet to hear back from him. We've only got a little less than seven weeks to go, and Ferguson is wasting time in the hopes that he can avoid getting in front of the voters.
You can help. Please call his campaign at (732) 560-4700 and tell them you want four debates so the voters know who they are voting for.
just got back from Parsippany, New Jersey, a somewhat Republican town in the rolling hills of Morris County, New Jersey. The occasion was a fundraiser on behalf of one of the Democratic candidates for Freeholder (essentially a County Commissioner) and a good friend of mine, Dana Wefer (http://www.danawefer...). Dana is a 24-year old Democrat with spunk, courage and unflagging energy who has been challenging the GOP-dominated county government for over a year. In 2005 she ran well against an entrenched incumbent; in 2006 she's running with two exceptional Democrats to capture three Freeholder seats (the first time since 1973 that it would be the case). Also in attendence were Tom Wyka (http://www.tomwyka.c...), our NJ-11 Congressional candidate, NJ Democratic Chairman Joe Cryan and many others. P
A full roundup of what took place, who said what, and some good news from the Garden State about the future of progressive politics is in the extended body. Enjoy!
To my fellow Jewish Kossacks out there, a belated Shana Tovah. I hope all of you have a sweet and successful 5767 - and that it starts off with a Democratic landslide in November!
As I've said before, I'm now enclosed in the rolling hills of Morris County, New Jersey, where I'm attending Drew University. Morris County is usually a Republican bastion, but times are changing. In recent years the Democrats have been slowly, but steadily improving their county-wide performance, as well as winning local races across the county. One of those looking to turn Morris County blue is Tom Wyka (http://www.tomwyka.c...), a Parsippany IT Project Manager and Democratic activist. I spent last Sunday with him and his family, driving across Morris County and connecting with the grassroots.
Now that I'm firmly embedded in the rolling hills of Republicanville...err, Morris County, I've had plenty of time to examine the political scene is this neck of New Jersey. Drew University is a wonderful place, but the forces outside of it are just as important as the ones inside, and like a moth to a candle flame I am continuously drawn back into politics. And that's a good thing.
Here in Morris County there is a great Congressional candidate in Tom Wyka (http://www.tomwyka.c...), and three great Freeholder candidates (read about them at http://www.morrisdem...). One of them, 24-year old Dana Wefer (http://www.danawefer...) ran in 2005 and ran well against an entrenched incumbent. Now, with two of three seats up for grabs in 2006 being vacated, she stands an excellent shot at victory.
(this is a chance to participate in Linda's election -- write some letters to the editor about this! - promoted by huntsu)
Mike Ferguson opposes women's right to choose to have an abortion, going so far as to say it would be a "great day for America" if a Constitutional Amendment were passed making it illegal.
He would even support a law that would require a woman to carry to term a pregnancy caused by rape or incest, making it a crime to do otherwise.
Our friend Vicky, who is from Clark, recently asked the question that everyone should ask Mike Ferguson about making abortions illegal: "What's he gonna do? Put them in jail?"
And that is not sarcasm, but a very serious question about Mike Ferguson's radical position. If he succeeds in his mission to make abortion a crime, then he will succeed in making the women who have abortions criminals. Is he going to put them in jail?
(Stender is taking the campaign to Ferguson. Help her out! - promoted by huntsu)
I want to thank the netroots for being so generous to me and my campaign. In the last week the Netroots endorsement alone raised more than $7,000 from more than 400 people. That's amazing! I keep telling our volunteers that it doesn't take a lot from any one person, but it takes a little from everyone. This is a perfect example of that message.
New Jersey's 7th district is a hard nut to crack for a Democrat. We've been trying for quite a few years, and redistricting in 2001 didn't make it any easier for us. Our campaign knows that we are going to get out-spent by Mike Ferguson, but there is no way we are going to get out-worked.
In addition to the netroots pushing our message on the blogs and raising money for us (almost $20K now on ActBlue alone!), we have a team of grassroots volunteers making calls, going door-to-door, writing letters to the editor and basically working their tails off every day of the week. It is a powerful combination that will, I believe, spell victory on November 7.
Mike Ferguson tries to hide from his constituents. He rarely appears in public when he can't control the crowd, spins his constituents on issues like drilling in ANWR and Social Security, and won't answer questions he doesn't like. He has been able to hide his voting record and right wing positions for years, but the public is catching on and asking, Why, Mike, Why?
Today my campaign is launching a new website to help people answer that question on any number of issues.
People want to ask Mike why he backs the President's "Stay the Course" strategy in Iraq, and they can find out on Why, Mike, Why?
People want to ask Mike why he opposes embryonic stem cell research that could cure diseases and repair injury, and they can find out on Why, Mike, Why?
People want to ask Mike why he supports a constitutional amendment to ban abortion and let the government make medical decisions for women, and they can find out on Why, Mike, Why?
Also, if you find the site helpful please spread the word as much as you can.
And if you have questions about the website or my campaign, you can always call us at 908-322-1996. The same number works great to volunteer!
With best wishes,
Linda Stender
P.S. We also hit doors today with a new mail piece on stem cell research that's on the site too. We're going to keep updating this as we move towards election day with our campaign materials, more information on Ferguson and what folks can do to help.
No, this is not the blog post our candidates must read! Over at mydd.com, the Courage Campaign and mydd.com commissioned a poll to find out why Francine Busby lost in the CA-50 special election. Yes, even as Bush sank to new lows in popularity and the Republican incumbent went to jail, yet another Republican won the seat. Our challengers, like Busby, face Republican districts. Yet now we have actual data on what the voters were thinking and why the Democratic message failed in what should have been favorable circumstances -- not the opinions of TV pundits, loser consultants, or amateur bloggers. Click through to find the summaries, advice and links to all the data. Businessmen, scientists, advertisers, you name it would never dream of running multimillion dollars projects without checking their ideas against data -- why should Democratic politicians be differeny?
I'll give you my super-brief summary. Voters are smart enough to want change but don't believe you will bring it unless you show them. You must "Pick a fight, any fight" and show that you will bring "military oversight."
In sum, whatever fights you pick, whether specific local issues or national ones, our poll shows that accountability regarding Bush, Congressional Republicans and your opponent is crucial to building the credibility you need in order to break through with a majority vote in November. Democrats, Independents and even many Republicans want this to occur. Do it.
Anyway, now go to mydd.com and read for yourselves. Then come back to bluejersey.
Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake", but it became part of popular legend anyway. Likewise, the Morris County Republican Freeholders may not have said, "Let them eat furniture", but they might as well have said so to their constituents following their recent actions.
You see, Morris County (and the rest of New Jersey as well) suffers from very high property taxes. Even so, the Morris County Freeholders (equivalent to County Commissioners), all 9 of whom are Republicans, have kept $25 million in surplus funds rather than spending it on reducing property taxes. This funding, according to the Freeholders is for protecting their AAA bond rating, while other counties keep their rating with far less revenue. But now we know why they're keeping the money: new conference room furniture!
So many people have been asking me what they can do to help Senator Bob Menendez get elected this November. Nearly every time I meet someone new, they express to me just how important they see this election as being. And they're right. The contrast in this race could not be more clear -- Bob opposed the Iraq War, Junior supports it; Bob has led the fight against Social Security privatization, Junior's expressed support for it; etc, etc. One candidate will stand up to the Bush agenda, while one will help enable it.
In this day and age of he said/he said reporting, it's all too common for reporters and pundits to draw false equivalences between candidates, declaring a pox on both of their houses. We've seen it most prominently of late in reference to Jack Abramoff, with reporters failing to draw a distinction between Republicans taking Abramoff's money and Democrats taking money from the Indian tribes who Abramoff has worked for. It's created a story where none previously existed.
Well, even though I think New Jersey's reporters tend to be better than that (you know... home team bias), the same dynamic can be found in this morning's Star Ledger editorial on the Senate race. The Ledger's editorial board, in asking the two major party candidates to 'try the high road,' draws a clearly false equivalence between the conduct of the Kean and Menendez campaigns.
(Join us tonight for a debate open thread, with commentary from Rep. Frank Pallone and Rep. Rush Holt.)
Yesterday's televised debate between Senator Menendez and Tom Kean, Jr. exposed a massive gap between the two candidates. While the Senator displayed a strong command of the issues and the ability to discuss them, Kean, Jr. proved why people say he's just too junior for Jersey. He stumbled over his words, froze up in front of the camera, and garbled his way through his well-rehearsed comments. It wasn't pretty and, even though it might have worked for Bush, it wasn't endearing.
And despite being very publicly smacked down by both the New York Times and Star Ledger for attempting to mount a Swift Boat attack on Menendez, he stupidly stuck to his talking points, spouting the same easily debunked ad hominem attacks. I guess for Kean, Jr., stay the course isn't just for Iraq anymore.
Tonight, there's another televised debate between the two, live at 8PM on NJN. Junior originally tried to weasel his way out of it, claiming a conflict with Senate business, but Majority Leader Dick Codey gave the kid a hall pass to go all the way across Trenton for the debate. Here's hoping he'll stay off of Route 1.
Here at Blue Jersey, there will be another open thread to discuss the debate, this time hosted by myself on behalf of the campaign. It should be a pretty fun forum, with two Blue Jersey favorites -- Congressmen Rush Holt and Frank Pallone -- joining us for some running commentary. Should be a fun night!
All of us here at the Menendez campaign have been pretty fed up with the petty attacks against the Senator, from NJ GOP chairman Tom Wilson's Ann Coulter-isms to Kean, Jr.'s own vague and unfounded personal attacks. Now, there are a few options for responding to this kind of Rove-style campaign. You can ignore it. You can send out surrogates to protest. Or you can confront the tactics, head on. Senator Menendez insisted on the latter.
My record is clear, and I will not stand by another minute and let my opponent malign me or my service to the people I have represented throughout my career. Tom, you may be playing with George Bush’s campaign playbook, but you’re on the field with a different kind of Democrat....
One week ago, his state party chairman stooped to the lowest form of politics, and said that if I had my way, the terrorist Zarqawi would still be alive to murder innocents in Iraq and plot attacks against our country. And Tom Kean, Jr.? No, rebuke, no apology, not a word.
That’s not a campaign of courage, that’s a campaign of cowardice.
You have to earn the right to talk about honesty and integrity and frankly Tom, when it comes to ethics and character, you have no standing to lecture anyone.
What was Kean's response to the speech? Well, even though he was supposed to be sitting on the stage with Senator Menendez, he chickened out and waited outside until the Senator was done speaking. He then went up to the podium and delivered the same canned speech he'd been planning all along, with absolutely no response to the Senator's comments. After Kean, Jr. spoke, reporters tried to get him on the record. No such luck. As Josh Gohlke of the Bergen Record put it, Kean and his crew "stampeded down a carpeted hallway and into an elevator."
Several reporters managed to keep up, blurting out questions the candidate was determined not to answer.
Did he care to respond to Democratic candidate Robert Menendez's scathing speech just a few minutes earlier in the same ballroom? Was he, as Menendez charged, a lightweight armed only with empty attacks?
The Kean contingent stampeded down a carpeted hallway and into an elevator. The reporters and questions squeezed into it with them. Kean kept repeating a few slogans.
"I'm proud of both my record and my vision for the future of the country," Kean reiterated, this time with finality, as everyone spilled back out of the elevator and he hurried off. "Thank you very much!"
After talking for a few minutes, the reporters realized they had entered and exited the elevator on the same floor. So ended a strange episode in a campaign that is reaching impressive levels of absurdity, given that it's only June.
When the only impressive aspect of his campaign is the new level of absurdity he's been able to reach, Tom Kean, Jr.'s got to be wondering what he's doing in this race at all. The Beltway Republicans think they're going to win this race the same way they've won races all across the country -- shoveling fear and smear. Welcome to Jersey, Rove. It's not going to work this time.
This is an incredibly exciting week for all of us here at the Menendez campaign. While we've been hard at work for some time now, we're just starting to work at the new headquarters in New Brunswick and are "officially" launching the campaign today with two events in North and South Jersey. Even though New Jersey's considered a "blue" state and Senator Menendez has something of an incumbency advantage, this race is far from over. The rightists have been crowing, for example, over poll numbers that indicate a tight race, or even a lead for Kean Jr.
However, the polls they've been citing have largely been from partisan Republican firms like Strategic Vision and Rasmussen. In fact, the GOP's clamoring for bona fide good news in this race has even caught the attention of Media Matters, which has repeatedlycriticized the partisan Republican Beltway media for pushing absurdly pro-Kean Jr talking points. Meanwhile, truly independent polling forms like Quinnipiac have shown Senator Menendez in the lead.
As I wrote in my farewell post at MyDD, I couldn't be more proud to be working on this campaign. Bob Menendez's performance in the Senate has impressed me to no end. Unlike some newcomers who too-cautiously refuse to stick their necks out to stand up for the people who voted them into office, Senator Menendez has yet to shy away from a fight. While the Republican leadership hemmed and hawed when it was announced that the Bush administration had approved the sale of American port operations to a corporate holding of the United Arab Emirates, Menendez stood up and said no. Just recently, when a majority of the Senate (including a majority of Democrats) voted to confirm Michael Hayden, the man who orchestrated the illegal wiretapping of American citizens, to head the CIA, Menendez stood up once again and said no.
