Midterms in New Jersey: "It’s All About Stopping Trump"

The video above is how most New Jersey voters got to know Jim Keady. Now he's running for Congress, in the district Republican Chris occupies.

Chris Smith (R-NJ) is an anti-Choice fanatic; other than that, though-- and I emphasize FANATIC-- he seems as much a moderate Democrat as a Republican. His voting record is a lot like New Jersey Blue Dog's Josh Gottheimer. He's been representing the 4th district since 1980. The district is mostly made up of Monmouth County but includes some of Ocean and some of Mercer as well. It starts on the east side of Trenton heads northeast to Middletown, Red Bank and Neptune and southeast to Manchester Township and Lakewood. It was Trump's (and Romney's) best-performing district in New Jersey, largely because of a huge community of very right-wing Orthodox Russian Jews (and human organ traders) in Lakewood. The district has the worst PVI in the state, R+8, a point worse than it was in 2017.

Nationally, June 5 is a huge primary day. Going to the polls to pick candidates for November will be some states with incredibly important contests-- New Jersey, as well as California, New Mexico and Iowa. In NJ-04 there are two Democrats competing--Jim Keady, a proven progressive Berniecrat, and some right-of-center carpetbagger the DCCC is pushing, Josh Welle, who seems to be running a campaign that says, "I'm just like Chris Smith" but without the anti-Choice fanaticism. The only political contribution I could find for Welle was when he was still living in Arlington, Virginia a few months ago and he contributed to right-wing Democrat ("ex"-Republican) Joseph Kopser in Austin, Texas.

Dan Jacobson, a former Democratic Assemblyman now publishes the TriCity News in the district and he posted a recent OpEd he wrote about the NJ-04 race , calling out the notoriously corrupt Monmouth County Democratic Party machine. They had a convention last weekend and endorsed "endorsed a boring establishment candidate-- a carpetbagger who just moved up here from Virginia-- to run against Republican Congressman Chris Smith." Jacobson wasn't surprised and he wasn't happy.

Fiery progressive Jim Keady, a former Asbury Park Councilman, came up short. Yet he still showed significant support among the delegates. Now he will take on the machine by running in the June Democratic primary against organization-backed candidate Josh Welle, a mutant who’s decided this is his time to be a Congressman.

(Hilariously, this Publisher was barred by the Monmouth County Democratic Chairman from voting at the mini-Convention, even though I was eligible to do so as a former Democratic Assemblyman back in 1990-91. Apparently, I haven’t been a loyal enough Democrat, as-- shocking!-- I’ve publicly endorsed some Republicans in these pages, while skewering some assholes who are Democrats. Hey, now I know how the Bernie Sanders people felt!)

Although conventional wisdom says Smith is unbeatable in this Republican district, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added it to its list of targeted races. For there is an outside shot to win.

At least for now, I am a Democrat in good standing-- as the Monmouth County Democratic Party by-laws would describe me since I voted in the last two Democratic primaries over my revulsion at our Jackass-in-Chief. In reality, though, I’m a right-of-center voter. I tend to vote a bit more Republican.

Not now. I’m not voting for any Republicans. We need at least one house of Congress in Democratic hands to investigate Trump and expose him for the fraud he is. The end game for this voter is for Trump not to be on the ballot again, so people like me can vote for a Republican if we so choose. In other words, so the country has a sane choice.

That means contesting every seat in the House of Representatives with even a remote chance for the Democrats. That now includes Chris Smith’s seat. On social issue, I agree with Keady on everything, but on economic issues we part ways. He was a Bernie Sanders guy before people around here even knew who Bernie Sanders was. I think all that left-wing shit they espouse-- while wonderful if it could work-- is economic nonsense. Just ask the next Venezuelan you meet.

But that’s not important now. It’s all about stopping Trump. And Keady is clearly the best choice for this long-shot race precisely because he is a Bernie Sanders progressive. The best way to beat Smith is for an unprecedented turnout among Democrats. Keady can fire them up. Meanwhile, organization-backed candidate/carpetbagger Josh Welle says flat out that his strategy is to win over moderates and Republicans. I say it won’t work. Welle may be a Navy veteran — thank you for your service-- but he’s a pretty lackluster campaigner. Seems like a typical ambitious politician to me, who’s typically uninspiring. Too canned.

Keady is a total animal who’s been consumed with progressive social justice issues since I first met him almost 15 years ago. He’s the real deal. By running in the primary, Keady will now get to put his theory to the test about his ability to uniquely boost Democratic turnout.

In New Jersey, it is extremely rare to win a primary without party organization backing. Josh Welle will now appear in the “organization” column on the Democratic primary ballot. The few people who bother to vote in such primaries blindly go down the organization column, as there’s rarely a serious challenger.

Keady, though, has some things going for him. This is a Republican district which means there’s even less Democrats there than usual. The turnout will be particularly light with no other high profile Democratic primary fights on the ballot, like for President or Governor. Keady can potentially reach this relatively small number of voters. And as a rule, the relatively few Democrats in a heavily Republican area like this tend to be the more hard-core believers in the party.

A Bernie Sanders progressive, running against a triangulating moderate like Josh Welle, can appeal to those true believing Democrats who’d vote in a primary. I’m not saying Keady can pull it off. Right now, it’s likely he won’t.

But it’s also not impossible. In fact, I’ve always thought Keady’s path to victory — and flipping this seat for the Dems-- is to indeed lose the Monmouth Democratic Party convention, and then beat the party organization in a stunning primary upset.

That would be a big deal in the political community in the state, and the national progressive movement. That will attract Jim Keady a lot more attention and support than just winning the party endorsement and cruising though the primary. Local supporters will be even more fired up. In other words, if Keady’s theory is right that his brand of progressive politics can trigger an epic Dem turnout in this district, he has the chance to prove it by winning a huge upset in the Democratic primary.

New Jersey Town Halls

Republican Christopher Smith was elected to Congress 37 years ago, in 1980, age 27. He had been a Democrat but switched parties in 2 years earlier and ran against crooked Democrat, Frank Thompson, who had been convicted of taking bribes in the Abscam scandal. The Democrats have coveted taking the district back ever since-- but have been highly unsuccessful in ever getting anywhere near doing so. His reelection bids have attracted over 60% since 1984. Last November, he beat Democrat Lorna Phillipson 206,137 (63.7%) to 108,373 (33.5%), rolling up large margins in all 3 counties that make up the districts-- Monmouth, Ocean and Mercer. He only spent $661,899 on his campaign.

Smith's last public town hall with his constituents was in 1992-- that's a quarter-century ago. When a friend of mine in Trenton Gardens decided to organize an impromptu town hall in front of Smith's house he had to call it off because Smith lives too far from the district-- in Herndon, Virginia. No, really, his family is so-much part of Virginia that Smith was able to request and receive in-state tuition privileges, saving the family $20,000 per year. In 2006 he spent a total of exactly 7 days in New Jersey. He spends more time traveling abroad than he does in New Jersey.

Fact is, the Democrats have lusted after all 3 Republican-held districts in South Jersey for some time. (They hold the 1st district in the Philly 'burbs, but with an extremely corrupt, right-of-center fake-Dem, Donald Norcross, most Democrats would rather not claim political kinship to. The 2nd district (PVI is D+1) is held by Frank LoBiondo, the 3rd (R+1) is held by Tom MacArthur. Neither of them are bothering with town hall constituent meetings either. Yesterday there was a Citizens Townhall for MacArthur at the DeMasi School in Marlton and one for Smith at the Monmouth County Library in Manalapan. Neither MacArthur nor Smith showed up. Saturday there's a demonstration planned for LoBiondo at his district office in relatively remote Mays Landing (population 2,135) at noon. Obama won LoBiondo's and MacArthur's districts both times he ran and lost Smith's district both times. The DCCC has been willing to recruit and finance candidates-- usually terrible ones-- against LoBiondo and MacArthur in the past... but that may not be as automatic in 2018. Trump won all 3 Republican-held South Jersey districts in November.

• NJ-02- 50.6% to 46.0%, 5 points better than Romney had done
• NJ-03- 51.4% to 45.2%, 4 points better than Romney
• NJ-04- 55.8% to 41.0%, a point and a half better than Romney

The DCCC is looking north towards Leonard Lance's 7th district and perhaps even Rodney Frelinghuysen's 11th district instead, districts they never seriously consider. Hillary beat Trump in the 7th CD-- 48.6% to 47.5%-- and almost tied him in the 11th-- 48.8% to 47.9%. Frightened, Lance scheduled 2 town halls this week.

MacArthur’s staff is, repeating alt-fact GOP talking points that paid, out-of-district protesters are the only ones in Burlington and Ocean counties who have a problem with MacArthur carrying Trump’s water on such things as the racist travel ban. Not only is that ridiculous, it's also utterly offensive to the people he purports to represent. All three are cowering in Trump’s corner and steadfastly refusing to do their jobs and absolutely refuse to stand and listen to the fears and concerns of their constituents.

Leonard Lance's town last night at Raritan Valley Community College had the biggest turnout of any public meeting of his political career and was especially interesting because he seemed to have been figuring out in real time that by adopting progressive agenda items he didn't get boo-ed; he got cheered. Watch how he handles the Obamacare replacement question right in the beginning of the clip. He also told the large crowd that he "urges" Trump to release his tax returns.

Closing Down The Gubbermint

Drunk on power, ignorance and blind ambition, the crazed Republican House majority-- as well as majorities in state houses around the country-- is trampling basic American values in their rush to enact a corporate, reactionary agenda before voters wake up and realize what a terrible mistake they made. (Keep in mind that voters never embraced the Republican Party, their wild-eyed candidates or their extremist proposals; they just were sick and tired of spineless, compromised Democrats.)

I doubt New Hampshire voters knew that by electing Republican majorities in both houses of their state legislature, they were voting for the unconstitutional goal of Republicans to take away the right to vote from students. I suspect suburban women voters in Ohio didn't think Republicans in Columbus would be insisting that they take testimony from a fetus. And, going way extreme and deep, dark red, I doubt even South Carolina or Tennessee voters knew they were voting for their own currency or that Arizona voters were taking the first steps towards secession by voting for federal nullification. Rather than work seriously on jobs legislation, all the Republicans in the U.S. Congress have done since January is to pass bills to make life harder for struggling citizens-- like repealing healthcare reform, throwing a greater tax burden on the middle class to lessen it further on the super rich and, most recently, voting to defund public broadcasting and Planned Parenthood. And then there's their hysterical obsession with teachers' unions. God forbid they consider looking into the billions of dollars stolen from the economy by banksters? Oops... almost forgot, Republican leaders get a healthy cut of that loot... not much from civil servants.

Steven at the Booman Tribune summed it up perfectly Thursday:

The Republicans in Congress, and in states across the country are making no bones about their agenda: they desire to kill unions and worker's rights. They desire to kill the EPA, and kill any regulation regarding worker safety, drug safety, food safety, environmental safety-- you name it. They want to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and healthcare reform with a thousand cuts until nothing is left but private accounts managed by by their buddies at Wall Street to which you are forced to contribute. They want to privatize prisons and schools.

They want an end to financial assistance to college students and their families (except football and basketball players, of course). They want to kill any investment in alternative fuels and public transportation. They desire the awarding of no-bid contracts to their "friends," i.e., the people who contributed the most to their political campaigns. Oh, and they want to make it ever more difficult, if not impossible, for innovative small businesses to compete with the corporate behemoths that dominate our political landscape. Indeed, without a middle class how can small businesses not dedicated to serving the desires of the rich survive?

In short, the goal of the New and Improved Tea Party Republican Governors and Legislators is to drive a stake through the heart of anyone who still believes he or she is a member of the middle class. As one of their own recently remarked those of us "slobs" in the middle class are a "different breed" the implication being that we are parasites on the body of corporate wealth and power rather than the collective engine of human labor and productivity that made that wealth and power possible.

Let us stop for a moment, now that the Republican "game plan" to dismantle the government and protect their wealthy benefactors at all costs has been exposed in all its naked infamy, and consider what type of country the realization of their goals would create. Imagine a world where there is no safety net. Imagine a country where wages and salaries are steadily decreased. Imagine a country where financial panics and "great recessions" are a regular occurrence every few years. Imagine a country where the water and the food are not fit to drink and eat, and the air isn't fit to breath. To take the lyrics from a popular John Lennon song lyrics out of context, "It isn't hard to do."

The last time in our history in which government primarily served the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the "rest of us" was roughly the period between 1880 and 1932. While comparisons between different historical eras are always fraught with the risk that the past and future are too different, that too much has changed, to make those comparisons valid and useful, I think in this case, it behooves us to examine the striking similarities between these two eras, because I believe that that particular past is truly prologue to the future the Republicans and their Puppet-masters (The Koch Brothers, yes, and Wall Street, but also many, many more industries and multinational corporations who have a stake in forging a new America) wish to bring about with their heavy handed attack on the American middle class.

You can barely tell what passes for a serious Republican congressman from lone-gunman type crackpots-- yes, I'm thinking of you, Louie Gohmert-- who occasionally pop their heads out of their garbage cans from time to time to screech about some crazy shit before disappearing again for a few weeks. In this case, were mixing lunatic fringe Gohmert up with Chris Smith, a fairly rational mainstream conservative about everything but... women. He flips out when the issue is women's health and his latest tantrum is to threaten to shut down the government if Mike Pence's bill to defund Planned Parenthood isn't enacted. Smith says he has a lot of other Republicans lined up to help him shut down the government if a bunch of GOP anti-abortion riders aren't in the budget compromise. "I'm going to push so hard to make sure those are all in there," he crowed.

Smith said several Republicans would defect on the spending bill if the abortion riders are removed. He focused specifically on one amendment, authored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), eliminating federal funds for Planned Parenthood.

"Many," he said. "You look at that vote, and how long that debate went...the [Planned Parenthood] amendment may have been the longest debate that I know of on the abortion issue since I've been here."

Enough reason to keep seniors from getting their Social Security checks? Smith thinks so. I wonder if his central Jersey constituents do. And I wonder if the 10 renegade Democrats who teamed up with Pence, Smith and the rest of the GOP to defund Planned Parenthood also plan to shut down the government. You see, not all psychopaths are Republicans. There are also conservative Democrats like Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Jerry Costello (IL), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Dan Lipinski (IL), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Nick Rahall (WV), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR) and Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). And, keep in mind, when the voting takes place that DCCC honcho Steve Israel picked McIntyre (a crony of his from Blue Dog days) to get a portion of every contribution that comes from Democratic donors, including those deluded enough to think that a donation to the DCCC helps guarantee Choice (rather than undermining it).

Ed Potosnak was the progressive Democratic candidate in the district next door to Smith's and I expect him to run again in 2012, probably against Leonard Lance again, unless the redistricting is so strong as to throw him into Smith's much more Republican-leaning district. In any case, Ed, a firm believer in women's Choice, doesn't agree with the way Smith and his Republican allies have been going about this whole budget thing. This morning he told me that "For the GOP, March means Christmas in Washington, the continuing resolution House Republicans are pushing is lit up with gifts to special interests. A very long list of giveaways and serious policy proposals are decorating the continuing resolution without hearings or adequate consideration. These half-baked proposals include cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood as payback to their pro-life donors and corporations. The bill should be a clean and focused on temporarily funding the country until Congress gets its act together and actually follows the appropriations process by holding public hearings and negotiations. If their proposals are right for country then they will prevail during this deliberative process. We can not allow this polluted continuing resolution to hold our nation and our future hostage." That's a pretty common sense approach. If you like it more than what we're hearing from the Republicans, you can help Ed raise a campaign fund through ActBlue.