Big Trouble For Democrats In New Jersey

-by Jersey Jim

Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker-- one of a cohort of rightwing Republican ideologues elected to Congress, state legislatures and governorships in 2010 (largely as a result of apathy among progressives who have been disappointed by the Obama Administration)-- had good reason to expect little trouble getting his anti-public employee legislation through the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. But it didn’t quite go off without a hitch.

There were demonstrations for days in the state capital-- not only by the Wisconsin Education Association and the public sector unions within the AFL-CIO, but also by private sector unions. Even the Green Bay Packers supported the demonstrators. And the Democrats in the state senate left the state for a period in order to avoid being rounded up by state police. They wanted to deny the Republican leadership the super-quorum needed to pass a bill dealing with state finances.

On the other hand, New Jersey’s Chris Christie, elected a year earlier (because New Jersey holds all elections for state offices in odd-numbered years), could have been expected to encounter opposition from a legislature with both its chambers nominally controlled by Democrats. But in fact, Christie had little trouble getting the legislature to pass a bill to make public employees pay more for their health insurance, to gut their collective bargaining rights, and to eliminate cost of living adjustments for the state’s retirees. There were some demonstrations in Trenton, but nothing like those in Madison. And several Democrats in the legislature-- fully one-third of those in the state senate, and nearly one-third of those in the Assembly-- defected and voted with the GOP, handing Christie a victory.

Christie claims that other Republican governors were soon calling him to ask how he did it. It was simple. There’s a deep rift in the New Jersey Democratic Party, and Christie merely exploited it with the help of his nominally Democratic allies. There’s also an equally deep rift in organized labor in the state. And those divisions make a GOP takeover of the Assembly, the Senate or both a possibility this year.

Christie and his Democratic allies in the legislature picked the ideal time for this assault on New Jersey labor. By mid-June, the state’s late primary elections were already over-- as was the deadline for independents to file nominating petitions for the November elections. And the school year was just ending, making it difficult for the New Jersey Education Association to cultivate grassroots opposition from parents.

The Dems who voted for the bill, derided as Christiecrats, are all controlled, directly or indirectly, by South Jersey party boss George Norcross. Six of the eight turncoats in the Senate, and 10 of the 14 in the Assembly, are from South Jersey. All sixteen have ties to Norcross. The other six defectors all have connections to Joseph DiVincenzo’s Essex County machine. But it would be a mistake to think of the Essex machine as an independent entity. It’s more like a semi-autonomous satrapy within the Norcross political empire. (For background on the relationship between the Camden and Essex machines, see Chris Christie's Democratic helpers and The rise of the Chris Christie Democrats.)

George Norcross also has operatives inside the AFL-CIO. His brother, District 5 state senator Donald Norcross, is president of the Southern New Jersey AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, as well as assistant business manager of IBEW Local 35. And Steve Sweeney-- the senator for District 3 and president of the state senate, as well as a childhood chum of the Norcrosses, is an official of the Ironworkers Union. Their influence within the building trades conference, and their dominance of the AFL-CIO’s South Jersey Regional Council, helped hold down the size of the Trenton demonstrations in June.

But that influence is a double-edged sword, because it’s rending the labor movement here.

Last month the South Jersey AFL-CIO Council announced its endorsements for the November elections of all the Christiecrats whose districts include any parts of Camden, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem Counties. The building trades leadership also threatened to walk out of the state AFL-CIO Conference on Political Education (“COPE”) meeting in Trenton on August 4 if the state organization didn’t endorse all the Christiecrats-- and they made good on that threat last week.

Less than a week after the New Jersey Education Association, the largest non-AFL-CIO union in the state, refused to endorse Sweeney, Norcross et al., the state AFL-CIO followed suit. Delegates from the building trades stormed out of the conference, and were still yelling like petulant children about the rejection of the Christiecrats outside the meeting hall more than an hour later.

“We have our teabaggers in labor, and they spoke very clearly,” said Don Norcross. Likening public sector union members to teabaggers sounds hyperbolic to most of us-- but not to Norcross, who’s so far to the right on this issue that the middle of the road looks like the far left to him, and militant unionists look like the mirror image of the teabaggers.

But that’s all perfectly consistent with the views of George Norcross. After being a behind-the-scenes power broker for years, George has recently been granting interviews to promote his next two projects: bringing charter schools to the city of Camden (a position that has put him and his minions in the NJEA’s crosshairs), and replacing the city’s police force-- and that of every municipality in Camden County-- with a single county-wide police force.

George Norcross is neither a friend of labor nor a true Democrat, and his influence is undermining both labor and the Democratic Party in New Jersey.

So far, only one Christiecrat, a senator, is being challenged by a Democrat running as an independent on the ballot-- and there are no announced write-in candidates challenging the rest of the Christiecrats. If enough disaffected union workers and progressives stay home in November, the GOP could conceivably take over the state legislature.

A small fledging group is trying to find write-in candidates, but how will they fund a campaign?

New Jerseyans can only look on with envy today as Wisconsinites go to the polls today to recall some of the teabagging Republicans in their legislature!