I've Been Waiting-- Praying-- For 2 Years For This: A Credible Opponent For Reactionary Blue Dog Josh Gottheimer

After a month of rumors, this morning Glen Rock, New Jersey Councilwoman Arati Kreibich, announced she is running for the north Jersey congressional seat occupied by Josh Gottheimer, arguably the most destructive Democrat in the House, a 2020 version of Joe Lieberman, one of his heroes. If you're a regular DWT reader, you already know all there is to know about Gottheimer. Let me just make one thing clear about Gottheimer, Blue Dog, New Dem and co-chair of the mis-named Problem Solvers Caucus. According to ProgressivePunch, Gottheimer hasn't simply earned an "F" for his voting record. His crucial vote score for 2019 is the lowest of any non-freshman-- 25.58%. In way of comparison, conservative Republican Thomas Massie's is 30.23% and consevrtiave former Republican-- now an Independent-- Just Amash (MI) has a crucial vote score of 55.81. So who's the bad guy and who's the good guy here? Last week, one of his allies in Congress called me and asked if I was willing to talk with Gottheimer on the phone. I laughed and said, "No more than I'd be willing to talk to Trump or Putin." And now I understand the reason for that call.

The vast majority of the voters in New Jersey's fifth congressional district come from Bergen County, although the district stretches clear across the northern tier of the state from NYC suburbs, through Hackensack, Lodi, Paramus, Mahwah, Ringwood, West Milford, to the Delaware Water Gap and south past Belvidere, taking in parts of Sussex, Warren and Passaic counties. The PVI is R+3 and Obama lost the district both times he ran. Trump did a little worse than McCain and Romney, but he still beat Hillary by about a point-- 48.8% to 47.7%.

Far right Republican crook Scott Garrett had been reelected by around 10 points every two years when Gottheimer jumped across the Hudson River from Wall Street and outraised him, $4,782,462 to $2,411,570. At the same time that Garrett was feuding with GOP kleadership-- which refused to come to his aid, the DCCC and their House Majority PAC threw in another $3,928,544 to help Gottheimer. They drowned Garrett in money and Gottheimer ousted him 172,587 (51.1%) to 157,690 (46.7%). Last year, Gottheimer was reelected 56.2% to 42.5% and this cycle he already had 5 Republicans competing for the nomination with 2 others talking about it, before Kreibich announced today.

This isn't likely to be a cycle when the GOP-- led by the Grand Dragon of the KKK-- is going to do well in a suburban district like NJ-05, even if Republicans keep winning in Warren and Sussex counties' horse country. still, Gottheimer, a corrupt Wall Street suck-up who uses his spot on the House Financial Services Committee to raise money from the banksters, has $5,683,967 in cash, having raised another $1,705,565 so far this year. His closest GOP opponent, Frank Pallotta, a bankster himself-- and a self-funder-- raised $144,81. It's going to take Blue America a little longer than 6 hours to vet her, but you can contribute to Arati Kreibich's campaign by clicking on the 2020 DownWithTyranny thermometer on the right.

So what about Arati? I am waiting for a call back from her but from what I've read and heard from friends in the district, she is a 44 year old neuroscientist, an immigrant from India who has been here since she was 11, and a member of the Glen Rock borough council in Bergen County. She told Politico that, like many Bergen County Democrats who supported Gottheimer at first, she's disappointed. "I campaigned for Josh. I had signs on my lawn. I did whole big get-out-the-vote canvas for him. I knocked on doors for him. I’ve of course been a supporter because I thought that was the way to move forward. But I’ve been incredibly disillusioned and disappointed by the kinds of decisions he’s making and not making... What we have is a representative in Congress who is not representing us, who is not representing the people. I think what he is representing are corporate donations that he gets. I think he’s in the pocket of corporations, quite frankly. And I think when he does push for policies, they’re policies that are either actively against our particular self-interest or they’re really small, incremental changes. And, frankly, small, incremental changes are not cutting it."

Gottheimer isn't just a conservative. He was a leader in getting Democrats to fund Trump's concentration camps and he consistently uses NRCC talking points to attack progressive positions and progressive members of Congress.

He was a key figure in whipping Democrats to pass the Senate version of the border security bill, rather than a House version that included provisions championed by House Appropriations Chair Nita Lowey (D-NY), such as stricter language intended to protect migrant children at the border.

Gottheimer also has angered progressive Democrats by taking on members of his own Democratic caucus, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), for comments he alleged were anti-Semitic. Media outlets on the left have zeroed in on Gottheimer, with The Intercept publishing critical articles about him, including one that alleged he treated staff poorly. His ties to the group No Labels, which pushes for more bipartisanship, also angers some activists in his district.

...In 2017, Kreibich, a mother of two boys, became the first member of the South Asian community to be elected to the Glen Rock Borough Council after beating the Republican frontrunner by 187 votes. She says the election of Trump pushed her to become more involved in politics, spurring her to organize activists locally and eventually to seek elected office.

“I felt like I had to be a lot more active than I had been,” Kreibich said. “The 2016 election was definitely a before and after in my life.”

Kreibich is more liberal than Gottheimer and says that, if elected to the House, she would join the progressive caucus if invited to do so.

She's opposed to building a wall along the southern border and wants to see all undocumented immigrants given a path to citizenship.

She’s opposed to building a wall along the southern border and wants to see to see Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients given a path to citizenship. But she stops short of saying all undocumented immigrants should be able to become citizens.

Kreibich supports "Medicare For All", saying “health care is a right, it’s not a privilege,” but she doesn’t have a timeline for how quickly such a program should he implemented.

She supports the Green New Deal, and says the resolution laying out the deal “is great because it’s a great framework.” Should it be codified in law? “If that’s the ambitious framework in terms of the Green New Deal, absolutely.”

Kreibich thinks the federal minimum wage should be $15 an hour, supports decriminalizing marijuana, but not legalization and thinks the House should file articles of impeachment against the president. “Absolutely, 100 percent,” she says.

So why does Gottheimer vote so consistently with Republicans, particularly when the issue anything remotely progressive. "The short and long of it really is that Gottheimer is a fear-based politician. The NRCC attacks him as "a socialist," but that's almost as silly as the media calling him a "moderate." He's not a socialist and he's not a moderate. If the NRCC really wanted to beat him, they'd start talking about his corruption on the House Financial Services Committee. Of course, that would open their own members up to the same charges-- and the mutual disarmament agreement by the DCCC and the NRCC when it comes to corruption would never allow anything like that. So just keep shouting "Socialism!!!" and you'll be wasting all your money and you'll never get rid of him!

How many Democrats have photos of themselves like this?

Hot New Tune: "Nazi Trumps Fuck Off"... And Ice Cold Congressional Race In New Jersey

Who remembers the Dead Kennedy's classic punk anthem "Nazi Punks Fuck Off?" Well, Biafra has updated it (above). How about Steve Lonegan? Do you remember him? He's a New Jersey political on the far right GOP fringe. Anything you read about him will always mention he was the mayor of Bogota, New Jersey, a mighty metropolis of 8,000 people. Other than that, he runs for anything nd everything-- and always loses. Because he's certifiably insane. He was the head of the Koch brothers' political operation in New Jersey and he was the chairman of Ted Cruz's presidential campaign there. New Jersey Republicans weren't buying Ted Cruz's neo-fascist message and Lonegan led him to an embarrassing 3rd place finish behind Señor Trumpanzee, Lord of Bedminster (80.6%), and John Kasich (13.3%) with a dismal 6.1% of the Republican vote. Go Ted! Go Steve!

Well, yesterday, after weeks of rumors, Lonegan made it official-- he's running against the worst Democrat in New Jersey's congressional delegation, worthless Blue Dog Josh Gottheimer. If there was ever a congressional race to wish both candidates lose by landslides...! NJ-05 is New Jersey's most conservative district, most of it in Bergen County (and including The Sopranos' Bada Bing strip club). The district sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford through the Delaware Water Gap and beyond my old home in Stroudsburg. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Bada Bing club town). Politically, this is Chris Christie country although Sen. Bob Menendez won the district with 51% last time he ran. McCain won the district in 2008, 51-48% and Romney won in 2012, 52-49%. Last year Trumpanzee underperformed Romney but still managed to beat Clinton 48.8% to 47.7%.

Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Garrett, until recently a Wall Street fave (as the anti-regulation sociopath chairman on the House Financial Services Committee's subcommittee on Capital Markets), only got $674,888 from the Finance Sector this cycle, way down from the $1,159,579 he scooped up from them in 2014 or the $1,224,313 he got in 2012. They wanted him to lose this year.

So on November 9, Bergen County residents woke up to some good news and some bad news. The good news was that Scott Garrett was on the losing end of a 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%) result. It was the Bergen County voters who had finally grown tired of Garrett's extremism and who had turned him out. In 2012 he won Bergen County with 100,874 votes. This time, which far more people voting, only 93,430 in Bergen County went for Garrett. 121,875 voted for Gottheimer. And that's the bad news, of course: Gottheimer won. It looks like this will turn out to be the most expensive House race in New Jersey history. Outside spending was through the roof. Ryan's House Leadership PAC and the NRCC refused to spent a nickel on the widely disliked Garrett. Only another of crooked hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer's PACs, the American Principles Fund, kicked in any substantial money for Garrett-- $309,025. Meanwhile, smelling blood in the water, the DCCC and it's allies, excited to get another slimeball Blue Dog into Congress, spent a gargantuan $6.4 million attacking Garrett and bolstering Gottheimer. It worked. I wonder if they still think it was worth it now that Gottheimer has become a regular supporter of Paul Ryan's agenda.

He promptly joined the New Dems and the Blue Dogs-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- and has earned one of the worst "F" scores from ProgressivePunch. His crucial vote score is 30.56, the exact same as "ex"-Republican Tom O'Halleran. Only 3 Democrats-- wretched Blue Dogs Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Collin Peterson (MN) and Henry Cuellar (TX) have worse voting records this year. Yeah Gottheimer is as bad as they come. He was one of only 5 Democrats, for example, to vote for the Great Wall of Trumpanzee. And then there's Lonegan.

Lonegan will be making the case that Gottheimer is still too far to the left of 5th District voters.

“Liberal Josh Gottheimer is not a moderate,” Lonegan said at his Thursday campaign announcement. “He is in step with this big government agenda… We need to stand up and fight that.”

At his campaign launch at a hotel in Paramus, Lonegan said Republicans need to get behind Trump’s policy agenda-- a reversal from his earlier position on the president.

During the 2016 election, Lonegan was one of Trump’s loudest critics in New Jersey. He was the state chairman for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and called on top party officials to “unbind” delegates to the Republican National Convention so that they could “vote their conscience.” That plan could have deprived Trump of the nomination.

Because of those efforts, Trump once called Lonegan a “loser.”

“Imagine if Republicans were all behind Trump’s agenda right now-- we’d be winning in Washington, D.C.,” Lonegan said, denying that he was ever part of the “never Trump” movement. “When Trump got the nomination I supported him… I am behind this president. I think what we are watching from the left is just absurd.”

Lonegan opposes abortion and leans heavily to the right on social issues. He is also a fiscal hawk in the tea party mold, supporting deep cuts to a range of federal programs. Democrats say electing Lonegan in 2018 would be step backward for the district.

“From opposing choice, even in cases of rape and incest, to his anti-gay and anti-minority bigotry, to working against law enforcement and firefighters, Lonegan’s tea party politics have no place in New Jersey,” said Evan Lukakse, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

On the other hand, some Democrats say they would be glad to have Lonegan as the Republican candidate in next year’s race. The former Bogota mayor has not found success running for higher office over the years.

...“Despite his fundraising prowess, has lost every time — it’s not often that I agree with President Trump, but he hit the nail on the head when he called Lonegan ‘a loser,’” Lukaske said.

Gottheimer is widely considered one of the most Democratic freshmen in Congress. He sells his votes to special interests and "has broken fundraising records this year for a House freshman, reporting almost $1.6 million in fundraising as of June 30." Like I said... the only rational position on NJ-05 this cycle is to wish both candidates fail miserably... or wind up in prison. I wonder which one Trumpanzee will support.

Alienating The Base-- A Tale Of Two Primaries... Arizona And New Jersey

Many Arizona Republicans see Jeff Flake through this Alt-Fact lens

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has a long history-- mostly in the House-- as a right-of-center conservative. His record is very conservative but, unlike so many of his colleagues, not unhinged or deranged. He's a Mormon and his very vocal opposition to Trump seems to have been based on the same sense of decency and deep-seated beliefs that most Mormon leaders expressed during the election. Trump did significantly worse in Mormon communities than other Republicans did. In 2004, George W Bush took 80% of the Mormon vote. In 2012 Romney took 78%. Trump won 61% of the Mormon vote nationally.

We have written before than Trump's political operatives are hoping to defeat Flake in his 2018 reelection bid, preferably with neo-fascist Trumpist Jeff DeWit, Arizona state Treasurer. Another extremist who would likely be fine with the Trump Regime is extremist former state Senator Kelli Ward, another neo-fascist crackpot. When she challenged John McCain last year, McCain pulverized her 302,532 (51.2%) to 235,988 (39.9%).

A Republican mid-November poll looked sketchy for Flake. Trump's favorable rating among Republicans then was 82% and Flake's was just 30%. Wade scored 19% and DeWit came in at 35%. Head-to-head match-ups showed Ward tying Flake 35-35% and DeWit beating him 42-33%. DeWit would have also won a 3-ways primary:

• DeWit- 38%
• Ward- 15%
• Flake- 30%

Over the weekend Ward released a new poll of likely Republican primary voters from Political Marketing International. It shows Ward pulling ahead of Flake in a head-to-head match-up, 30% to 23%. Ward didn't released any polling that included DeWit, but she did boast that she was the "most conservative member of the Arizona State Senate in 2015" and reminded whomever reads her stuff that Flake is "one of President Trump's biggest foes."

[Note: Political Marketing Strategies is not a well-regarded firm and is pretty much considered one of those companies that delivers whatever results they're paid to deliver. Ward paid them $5,000 for this poll. She is touting it in a press release claiming Flake is "in freefall."]

That said, Flake, a freshman, could be in trouble with Arizona Republican primary voters. He's been a tad too independent-minded for most knee-jerk Republicans and if Trump really decides to make an example of him, he could be toast, even though Trump doesn't have an impressive track record interfering in GOP primaries. A North Carolina incumbent he strongly backed, Renee Ellmers, was eviscerated, barely coming in third in a 3-way race (George Holding- 53.4%, Renee Ellmers- 23.6%, Greg Brannon- 23.0%, just 207 votes separating the latter two). And Thursday, Trump's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo in KS-04, Alan Cobb, was badly beaten by run-of-the-mill establishment Republican Ron Estes.

Across the country, if not quite across the political spectrum, one of the very worst and most corrupt far-right Democrats elected in November, worthless Blue Dog, Josh Gottheimer (NJ) is well aware he's going to attract major Republican opposition in 2018. NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford to beyond the Delaware Water Gap. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Soprano's Bada Bing club town). In 2012 Romney beat Obama there by 3 points and this year Hillary managed to have beaten Trump 48.8% to 47.7%.

Gottheimer beat the incumbent Republican, bizarre extremist Scott Garrett, 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%). Garrett managed to win in Sussex, Warren and Passaic counties but Bergen County voters were sick and tired of him and gave Gottheimer the 18,000-plus vote cushion he needed. Gottheimer immediately joined the Blue Dogs and started voting with the Republicans. Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Ryan and the NRCC were happy to see Garrett lose and they shut off the party spigots. Pelosi and the DCCC wasted over $3.8 million boosting a corrupt reactionary will will almost never vote for any progressive legislation. His ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is one of the worst of any Democrat's in the House-- 20% which basically means he's voting with Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy on virtually every one of their agenda items, giving them the opportunity to call their destructive proposals "bipartisan." Gottheimer is already damaging the Democratic brand and alienating Democratic voters. Obviously, he hasn't been involved with any resistance to Trump at all. Bergen County activists already hate him and are unlikely to support his reelection bid-- one that the Observer speculates could be a huge national circus, featuring xenophobe and racist asshole 72 year old Lou Dobbs, a longtime New Jersey resident lives in Sussex County, on a 300-acre horse farm in Wantage. The Observer analysis of the 2018 race is interesting, except that it's based on entirely incorrect numbers. For example they claim Garrett won 125,861 to 101,859 but that was before absentee and mail in ballots were counted and he actually won 156,863 to 146,643. So I'm going to throw out their faulty numbers are just use the bits of the sloppy journalism they got right.

In 2016... more voters fell off from Trump to Garrett than Clinton to Gottheimer. One can reasonably conclude that Gottheimer will be hurt more by running without a presidential candidate atop the ticket than the Republican challenger will be.

Voter registration (as of 11/30/2016): Republicans 144,959; Democrats 142,717; Unaffiliated 222,193. So it’s a slight GOP edge, but off-year elections tend to favor Republicans, though not necessarily in the first off-year election of a Republican presidency, when voters may be looking to apply a “check” on the president’s power.

...Prior to Gottheimer, the last time a Democrat won the GOP-leaning 5th was in 1974, when Andy Maguire upset 11-term incumbent Bill Widnall in the Watergate year. Maguire held on until 1980, when Roukema washed him out in the Reagan tidal wave.

The biggest question here, of course, is whether the GOP can lure a marquee candidate like Dobbs to run. With a huge national profile and over a million Twitter followers, he’d start with a strong base of support. But a Congressional seat might not seem like an attractive prize to a guy who’s been hosting his own show on national television for decades and has a closet full of Emmy and Peabody Awards.

Republicans will then have to see if Garrett runs again. He’s never been popular among establishment Republicans-- he ran close primaries against Roukema in 1998 and 2000. Garrett lost because of his own quirks and oddities, not because of his party affiliation. His odd refusal to pay dues to the Party unless it disavowed support for gay candidates sent buckets of national money into the coffers of Gottheimer, which hurt all Republicans in the district, especially the more moderate Bergen GOPers.

Two conservative northwest NJ Senators live in the district: Mike Doherty, 53 (R-Oxford) and Steve Oroho, 58 (R-Franklin). Doherty was the first NJ GOP pol to endorse Donald Trump. He’s encouraged speculation of runs of his own for statewide office since 2008, but he never pulls the trigger. Others include Assemblyman Parker Space, 48 (R-Wantage) and former state Labor Commissioner Hal Wirths, 51 (R-Wantage).

Of strong interest will be whether Bergen can come up with a high-quality, consensus candidate-- with or without Garrett. The bench is a bit depleted up there, but strong choices might include Assemblywoman Holly Shepisi (R-River Vale), 45, seeking fourth term in the Assembly; Assemblyman Robert Auth (R-Old Tappan), 60, seeking third term in the Assembly; Republican State Chairman Samuel Raia, also the Mayor of Saddle River. Of these, Shepisi probably holds the strongest crossover appeal, while Raia has personal wealth.

Bergen lining up behind a consensus candidate might just be enough to ensure that person is the nominee. But at this writing, the BCRO might be in denial. Its website still shows Garrett as the Congressman.

Gottheimer deserves a primary opponent but I doubt if he has one it will be serious enough to deny him the renomination. There are local activists working to recruit someone to run against him. He deserves to be weakened enough so that he loses. He is inexorably dragging the congressional Democrats further right and further into Wall Street corruption. He could solve the Republicans' problem in NJ-05 by switching parties; it would make the most sense... and he wouldn't even have to change his voting habits.

Scott Garrett (R-NJ)-- The Ultimate Sore Loser

Loser and extremist loon, Scott Garrett (R-NJ)

Aside from being the home of the Bada Bing strip club from The Sopranos, NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford through the Delaware Water Gap and beyond my old home in Stroudsburg. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Bada Bing club town). Politically, this is Chris Christie country although Sen. Bob Menendez won the district with 51% last time he ran. McCain won the district in 2008, 51-48% and Romney won in 2012, 52-49%. The congressman from the area, Scott Garrett, is the most extreme right congressman from New Jersey-- and the entire northeast United States-- since he was first elected in 2002. He was reelected in 2014 with 55.7% against political novice Roy Cho, who spent $1,251,518 to Garrett's $2,245,456. This year, though, the DCCC found themselves a revolting Blue Dog and pushed him bigly.

Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Garrett, until recently a Wall Street fave (as the anti-regulation sociopath chairman on the House Financial Services Committee's subcommittee on Capital Markets), only got $674,888 from the Finance Sector this cycle, way down from the $1,159,579 he scooped up from them in 2014 or the $1,224,313 he got in 2012. They wanted him to lose this year.

So on November 9, Bergen County residents woke up to some good news and some bad news. The good news was that Scott Garrett was on the losing end of a 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%) result. It was the Bergen County voters who had finally grown tired of Garrett's extremism and who had turned him out. In 2012 he won Bergen County with 100,874 votes. This time, which far more people voting, only 93,430 in Bergen County went for Garrett. 121,875 voted for Gottheimer. And that's the bad news, of course: Gottheimer won. It looks like this will turn out to be the most expensive House race in New Jersey history. Outside spending was through the roof. Ryan's House Leadership PAC and the NRCC refused to spent a nickel on the widely disliked Garrett. Only another of crooked hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer's PACs, the American Principles Fund, kicked in any substantial money for Garrett-- $309,025. Meanwhile, smelling blood in the water, the DCCC and it's allies, excited to get another slimeball Blue Dog into Congress, spent a gargantuan $6.4 million attacking Garrett and bolstering Gottheimer. It worked. I wonder if they'll think it was worth it when Gottheimer becomes a regular supporter of Paul Ryan's agenda.

Gottheimer joined both the Blue Dog and the New Dems caucuses, as expected-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Members have been telling me that he and Ro Khanna, another fake Democrat who was largely financed by the Finance Sector, by anti-union charter school billionaires and by Republicans, seem to be joined at the hip and are always walking around the Capitol together. Who Gottheimer is not walking around with is Garrett, who has been absent from Congress, furious at Ryan and the NRCC and refusing to show up for work (although still being paid, of course).

Yesterday, Herb Jackson, the DC correspondent for the Bergen Record reported that after an especially bitter campaign, Garrett is doing his best to sabotage Gottheimer's transition.

In an interview about his orientation as a new member of Congress, Gottheimer told The Record that Garrett has not returned his calls or responded to a certified letter asking about a transition, especially to ensure constituent requests do not fall through the cracks.

“I called him," Gottheimer said Thursday. "I sent him a letter before Thanksgiving both thanking him for his service as well as asking him to meet to discuss the transition. My chief also reached out to his chief of staff. We just haven’t heard back.

“My biggest thing is, these constituent issues are not partisan issues. Helping a veteran or a senior, making sure they get their Social Security, or helping a business that has an issue, this election should not affect their lives,” Gottheimer said.

...While polarizing politics is all too common, Garrett's apparent unwillingness to discuss a transition with his successor is not.

The last time a Democrat captured a New Jersey seat that a Republican had held was in 2008, and Democrat John Adler not only worked on the transition with the retiring incumbent , H. James Saxton, Adler even kept one of Saxton’s constituent service aides on his payroll.

When Adler was defeated two years later by Republican Jon Runyan, he transferred his outstanding constituent files to the offices of the state’s two Democratic senators. Garrett’s office has not made similar outreach to either Sen. Cory Booker or Sen. Bob Menendez, their offices said.

“We have not been contacted by Garrett’s office, but constituents have begun to call,” Menendez spokeswoman Tricia Enright said. “They say they were told Garrett’s office is not taking any new cases and they’re telling constituents to contact Sen. Menendez or Sen. Booker.”

At the non-profit Congressional Management Foundation, which has a contract with the House to provide training services to members, President Brad Fitch said he had heard of only one other case in the past 10 years in which there was no cooperation between an outgoing and an incoming member. Fitch said it is not unusual for some materials to be withheld, such as electronic databases of constituent contacts, especially if party control is changing hands, but files about constituents are a different story.

...Along with being New Jersey’s most expensive House race ever, the Garrett-Gottheimer campaign was particularly nasty practically from the start. Gottheimer’s ads said Garrett was being investigated for ethics violations, when all that had happened was an advocacy group made an allegation that appeared to go nowhere.

Garrett, meanwhile, used a civil lawsuit that was ultimately withdrawn as the basis for ads saying Gottheimer had assaulted a female neighbor, when the lawsuit itself said he had only wagged his finger in the woman’s face and did not touch her.

In their only debate, the candidates argued over who was a better liar.

Garrett initially declined to concede on Election Night, saying there were tens of thousands of votes still be counted. With no further reference to those votes, he put out a statement the following day thanking his supporters and lamenting the results “were not what I hoped for.” The statement never mentioned Gottheimer.

Bada bing!


UPDATE: Moratorium On Saying Mean Things About Ro Khanna

I wrote the above post before had some exchanges with Ro Khanna we told me he's going to be a lot different than what I expected-- a lot better-- and that I should have an open mind. And I will. Among other things, he said "My grandfather spent four years in jail with Gandhi fighting British colonialism. My aspiration is to help end the colonial model of the world. I am a progressive. My heart is in the right place. I hope we can build a relationship and you can email me regularly if there are key votes or issues you think we need a strong progressive voice on." Who could ask for more? So no more Ro Khanna-bashing around here. And if it starts up again, you'll know exactly why.