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?