Was Lonegan’s defeat an inside job?

Well, at least Jay Webber won… and Seth Grossman.

Bob Hugin won’t totally have his way in wrapping the State’s Republican brand in a plain brown paper.  He’s going to have a Reagan conservative and an eccentric libertarian to provide some color to the package – not to mention the incumbents, starting with the staunchly Pro-Life Chris Smith.  

What Hugin won’t have is a genuine Trump-style populist bouncing around in the orchestra, stealing the stage of an election that he plainly believes he is paying for.  Like Grossman, Steve Lonegan is decidedly his own article, but enough in the Trump mold to easily wear the costume.

McCann you say?  The most baldly dishonest campaign in memory will now be set aside, and with it, all the Trumpian rhetoric.  No, John McCann was not endorsed by President Trump, even though his campaign communications led you to believe he was.  More on this later. 

It is enough for now to compare the post-truth campaigning style of a certain southern political consultant to the rather insufficient counter-measures of the Lonegan team, whose messaging was done by a consultant shared with the Hugin team.  Although completely false, McCann’s consultant had the discipline to dominate his candidate, confine him to those tasks of which he was capable, and to run the kind of sharp, focused, MESSAGE-driven campaign that we don’t often see here in New Jersey. 

If McCann’s consultant survives the recent raid on his office by the FBI, the inquires by the United States Justice Department and such, he could become a formidable presence on the field in New Jersey.  It takes a certain toughness to come up with a message so at variance with a candidate, to bully the candidate into silence, and then to brazenly run with it to victory.

Unfortunately, now the candidate will think the victory his… he will start to talk again.  Like he did last week when, in an unguarded moment, he let slip his true feelings about abortion (he won’t vote for ANY Pro-Life legislation if elected to Congress) and guns (he opposes the NRA and supports universal background checks).  Did the New Jersey Family Policy Council know this when its (c)4 lobbying arm was induced into doing an openly political mailer that buttered the Pro-Choice candidate but trashed the Pro-Lifer?  Or did they know and did they not care?  More on this later. 

Not to worry though.  John McCann has served his purpose.  The candidate with the money lost (and now that candidate is a wounded, angry animal, sitting on a million dollar war chest).  But John McCann is broke.  He has eaten his seed corn.  Don’t look for him to trouble Josh Gottheimer.  And there might even be a reward in it for him.  Another lucrative patronage job perhaps?  He might end up a judge. 

So the money that would have been spent in the 5^th fighting off the visceral attacks of a Lonegan candidacy will now be heading… where?  Which Democrat will be the beneficiary of yesterday… perhaps they will all share in a piece of it? 

Among the other lessons learned… 

The party potentates who opened the bottle  of a Tony Ghee candidacy did so before its time.  They gave the newcomer no time to breathe.  It’s a solid vintage that will hopefully be available again. 

And speaking of which.  We learn from the former Wally Edge that Peter Murphy is about to assume the throne of the GOP in Passaic County – the place he occupied before a certain United States Attorney, named Chris Christie, sent him away.  It’s a bad business – especially for Bob Hugin, who has made political corruption his ONLY issue.  Lonegan’s polling showed Murphy’s support to be the strongest negative against McCann.  More than 80 percent of Republicans were less likely to vote for a candidate who had his support… that’s REPUBLICANS.  You would have hardly guessed it from Lonegan’s campaign communications, but there you have it.

Surprisingly enough, Lonegan did have coattails of a sort.  In Sussex County, Lonegan-backed challengers to two incumbent Freeholders annihilated the incumbents.  It is the first time in living memory that a ticket with two incumbents was defeated in Sussex County.

Dawn Fantasia is the principal at a charter school.  Josh Hertzberg is an administrator with the ILA union.  These are what Republican candidates look like in our populist era.  Fantasia supported Senator Steve Oroho’s negotiations over the refinancing of the Transportation Trust Fund.  She learned about it and patiently explained the details to others – and ended up cutting a radio spot to that end. People warned that it would hurt her politically, because the final deal raised the gas tax, while cutting or eliminating a host of taxes (including the estate tax) and providing property tax relief.  Another lesson learned? 

John McCann injected himself into the Freeholder race, on behalf of the incumbents, who supported him.  He ran a radio spot that attacked Senator Oroho by name on the gas tax.  Former Congressman Scott Garrett came out in support of the incumbents and ran a robo-call on their behalf.  More lessons?

Lonegan won Sussex County, but by a much smaller margin – about 500 votes.  Why the difference?  Well, in Sussex, the Lonegan freeholder ticket had a strong message that they pursued relentlessly – and were quick and sharp with their counterattacks.  The Lonegan campaign proper lacked this, especially the quick counterpunches.  Fantasia and Hertzberg also had the full attentions of Kelly Hart, who had been “let go” by the Lonegan campaign in April.  She had been field director for Sussex County. 

Curiously enough though, when the dust settles after the General Election, the only big changes to the line-up of elected officials in CD05 will be the election of Lonegan’s running mates in Sussex County.  Everyone else… McCann and all his running mates in Bergen and Passaic will have lost. 

A few years ago, Ralph Nadar wrote a book called “Unstoppable” – in which he predicted the rise of populist movements on both the Left and the Right in response to the disconnect with the mainstream political parties.  He suggested that Left and Right reformers had much in common and therefore, the basis of a genuine “resistance” movement.

How will this translate with Dr. Murray Sabrin on the Libertarian Party ticket for U.S. Senate is anyone’s guess, but there are Libertarian candidates in Districts 5 and 11, and a Constitution party in District 3.  A Center-Left populist, Wendy Goetz, is also running in the 5^th. 

And finally, election night parties.  The people you meet at such things are not average Republican voters.  Many earn a living from politics – whether as a lobbyist or a vendor, a job holder or a consultant.  They are in the business of politics – even those that just secure from it a certain status, as a member of a local government perhaps, or a school board.

That is not the case with 99 percent of Republican voters.  All they get out of voting is the idea that they are checking the box for someone who thinks like they do.  Most have a general idea of what the Republican Party stands for and that they stand for that too.  That “general idea” is provided to them, largely, by the mainstream media.  And yes, it includes the points that Republicans are Pro-Life and pro-Second Amendment.  

New Jersey’s Republican political class needs to learn to live with this.  Bring to a close their 40 years war with Reagan and their contempt for our base.  Trying to pretend that you are something else or “a different kind of Republican” is not a message, it is a deflection.  For all his money spent on advertising, Bob Hugin was able to convince just 52 percent of Republicans in Sussex County to vote for him.  He will need to do a great deal better. 

Let the political class make its money… but leave average GOP voters someone they can vote for. 

Sadly, the party took a step back yesterday.  They took away someone who meant something to a great many average Republicans – and they did so by telling voters that McCann was just a newer Lonegan, only more conservative, and that Donald Trump endorsed him.  We all know that isn’t true.  

And on that note, we begin the General Election.

How Steve Oroho finished what Jay Webber started

In the Legislature, you can be a conservative in one of two ways... broadly speaking.  One way is to be a conscience, sit above it all, and vote accordingly.  You could not find a more perfect example of this than Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, who negotiates the prickly halls of Trenton with a Zen assuredness.  He always knows the right thing to do... and he always does it.  Instead of the wilting figure of John McCann, the YR's and CR's could do no better than to adopt Assemblyman Carroll as their Sensei. 

The other way is to wade into the muck in an attempt to climb aboard the ship of state and steer it in a more desirable direction.  Sometimes the engine isn't even working and you might need to get down into the boiler room -- knee deep in waste -- and grapple with the machinery of government, just to get it sputtering in some direction.

Assemblyman Jay Webber takes this course... to a point.  He seems well enough suited to steer, but when it comes to the engine room, he doesn't want to get his hands dirty.  That's where he differs from Senator Steve Oroho.  Oroho accepts that he will have to endure the heat and muck in order to get the machine running -- and he doesn't mind busting a knuckle or two while grabbling with a boiler wrench. 

A prime example are their differing approaches to preventing the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) from going bankrupt and ending the Estate Tax.  Two very conservative causes.  The TTF, funded by a gas tax, was right out of the Reagan mantra of using user taxes to fund public infrastructure.  Those who use the roads should pay for them, said Reagan, no free rides!  While the death tax -- which is what an Estate Tax is -- has been identified by conservatives for years as the destroyer of small businesses and the ruination of family farms.

Jay Webber waded into the issue assuredly enough.  On October 14, 2014, the Star-Ledger published a column by the Assemblyman.  It's title was "Fixing transportation and taxes together."  Webber was writing about how to raise the gas tax to re-fund the nearly bankrupt TTF, while offsetting that tax increase with cuts to other taxes.  He zeroed in on the Estate Tax: 

"NEW JERSEY leaders are grappling with three major problems: First, New Jersey has the worst tax burden in the nation. Two, New Jersey's economy suffers from sluggish growth. And third, our state's Transportation Trust Fund is out of money. There is a potential principled compromise that can help solve all of them.

Of the three problems, the Transportation Trust Fund has been getting the most attention lately, and for good reason: It's broke. There is just no money in it to maintain and improve our vital infrastructure. Without finding a solution, we risk watching our roads and bridges grow unsafe and unusable and hinder movement of people and goods throughout the state. That, of course, will exacerbate our state's slow economic growth.

...we should insist that if any tax is raised to restore the TTF, it be coupled with the elimination of a tax that is one of our state's biggest obstacles to economic growth: the death tax. By any measure, New Jersey is the most extreme outlier on the death tax, with worst-in-the-nation status... 

New Jersey's death tax is not a concern for the wealthy alone, as many misperceive. We are one of only two states with both an estate and inheritance tax. New Jersey's estate-tax threshold of $675,000, combined with a tax rate as high as 16 percent, means that middle-class families with average-sized homes and small retirement savings are hit hard by the tax. 

It also means the tax affects small businesses or family farms of virtually any size, discouraging investment and growth among our private-sector job creators. Compounding the inequity is that government already has taxed the assets subject to the death tax when the money was earned. Because of our onerous estate and inheritance taxes, Forbes magazine lists New Jersey as a place "Not to Die" in 2014. 

That's a problem, and it's one our sister states are trying hard not to duplicate. A recent study by Connecticut determined that states with no estate tax created twice as many jobs and saw their economies grow 50 percent more than states with estate taxes. That research prompted Connecticut and many states to reform their death taxes. New York just lowered its death tax, and several other states have eliminated theirs. 

The good news is that New Jersey's leaders finally are realizing that our confiscatory death tax is a big deal. A bipartisan coalition of legislators has shown its support for reforming New Jersey's death tax..." 

Taking Webber's lead, Senator Steve Oroho got to work and began the painstakingly long process of negotiation with the majority Democrats.  Oroho was animated by the basic unfairness that New Jersey taxpayers were under-writing out-of-state drivers to the tune of a half-billion dollars a year.  He understood that if the TTF went bankrupt, the cost would flip to county and local governments... resulting in an average $500 property tax increase.  Oroho went to battle to prevent this disaster and even had to stand up to Governor Chris Christie, who wanted to end negotiations too soon and accept a weaker deal from the Democrats.

Unfortunately, Assemblyman Webber didn't stick with it.  When the time came for Jay Webber to be counted as part of that bipartisan coalition, he couldn't be counted on.  Jay got scared off by the lobbyist arm of the petroleum industry and what's worse is that he started attacking those who did what he advocated doing only a short time before.  

Remember that it was Webber who wrote these words in that column more than three years ago:  "Any gas-tax increase should be accompanied by measures that will help alleviate, or at least not increase, the overall tax burden on New Jerseyans." Jay Webber wrote those words, setting the direction.  Steve Oroho was left on his own to get the job done -- to do the negotiating.  The helmsman had abandoned the engineer.  

Webber said at the time that he believed the bipartisan tax restructuring package worked out by the legislative leaders (minus Senator Tom Kean Jr.) and the Governor would result in a net tax increase.  Oroho and others disagreed with him.  Webber is by all accounts a good lawyer, but Oroho is the numbers man.  He's a certified financial planner and CPA.  Before beginning his career of public service, Steve Oroho was a senior financial officer for S&P 500 companies like W. R. Grace and  Young & Rubicam.  It was this knowledge that enabled him to fashion the compromise that he did -- one that turned out to be the largest tax cut in New Jersey's history. 

In the end, the Democrats' 40-cent increase on the gas tax was paired down to 23-cents.  The gas tax, the proceeds from which funds the TTF, had not been adjusted for inflation in 28 years, had not provided enough funding to cover annual operations in 25 years, and wasn't even bringing in enough money to pay the interest on the borrowing that was done to keep operations going (in 2015, the state collected just $750 million from the gas tax while incurring an annual debt cost of $1.1 billion).  Even so, Senator Oroho knew exactly where to draw the line... at the minimalist 23 cents and not the 40 cents the Democrats plausibly argued for. 

In the end, the engineer got the job done.  Senator Steve Oroho emerged from the boiler room triumphant.  He ended the Estate Tax and secured tax cuts for retirees, veterans, small businesses, farmers, consumers, and low-income workers.  He secured property tax relief by doubling the TTF's local financial aid to towns and counties -- and prevented a $500 per household property tax hike.  He made out-of-state drivers pay for using New Jersey's roads -- and ensured that New Jerseyans will continue to have safe roads and bridges to drive on.

Oroho's tax cuts were praised by conservative groups like Americans for Tax Reform and conservative publications like Forbes, which called his tax cuts "one of the 5 best state and local tax policy changes in 2016 nationwide." 

That's getting something done.   

Democrat Hamilton's lies continued. . .

At last evening's debate, Democrat legislative candidate Jennifer Hamilton pulled some facts out of... thin air?  Or her bottom?  We can't tell where they came from, but we can tell they have been made up.

Once again, there is data on this.  Perhaps they should go back to teaching the philosophical underpinnings of "truth" at law school -- or at least hone wannabe lawyers' research skills -- because if Jennifer Hamilton is a representation of this new breed of lawyer, you don't want her in the Legislature or the Judiciary.

In this case, the data is from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority.

And the data is pretty clear.  Jennifer Hamilton lied -- again -- when she made the false claim that last year's gas tax increase is costing the average household $500 more for gas each year.  First of all, gasoline prices are lower today than they were in 2015, as this graph clearly shows, so nobody is paying more for gasoline than they have in the past.

Yes, we are clearly paying less today for gasoline at the pump than we did in 2015. 

So now let's examine Hamilton's $500-per-year figure.  According to the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority's latest data the total "Vehicle Miles Traveled" per day in the county is 3,113,131.  And the total number of housing units for Sussex County are 62,057.

If you divide those 3,113,131 miles travelled by those 62,057 housing units, you  get 50.17 miles per housing unit per day (on average). 

 Multiplying 50.17 miles per day by 365 equals 18,312 miles driven by the average housing unit per year in Sussex County.  If the overall price of gasoline had not declined, the New Jersey Department of Transportation's data indicates that the gas tax increase would have cost an additional 1 cent per mile.  At one cent-per-mile that comes to $183.12 per year.  NOT the $500 figure belched out at the debate by Democrat Hamilton. 

Hamilton lied.

And in any case, gas prices at the pump have gone down since 2015, not up.

Hamilton's lies. But lawyers are no good at math.

Look, we all get that it is election time and politicians -- even wannabe politicians like Democrat Jennifer Hamilton -- are going to twist the truth in an effort to appear more attractive to voters.  But when smiles and earnest lip pursing doesn't work, it's down to lies.

Hamilton's latest lie is her claim that the average household in Sussex County is paying $500 more for gasoline than it has in the past.  Well, the sale of gasoline is a very regulated industry, and there are agencies that closely monitor these things, and they produced a graph.  Here's what it shows:

Yes, we are paying less today for gasoline at the pump than we did in 2015. 

And because Sussex County has received funding from the Transportation Trust Fund to repair its roads and bridges, property taxes won't have to go up an additional $600 per household to cover those costs.  Hey, it's not all Hamilton's fault.  Instead of taking accounting courses in college she skipped them and learned how to be a social worker instead.  Then she went to law school.  Ouch!  No wonder she can't tell the truth.

Heck, this lady told the newspaper in Morris County (the Chronicle) that she supported raising the gas tax to fund the Transportation Trust Fund, then turned around and told the newspaper in Sussex County (the Herald) that she opposed it.  Good thing she is blessed with a wide smile -- the better to talk out of both sides of her mouth with.

Jennifer Hamilton affects to complain about the imbalance in state funding for education -- but then supports the Abbott decision which is the cause of that imbalance.  Hamilton stands with her party, the Democrats, and her nominee for Governor, Phil Murphy, in their promise to continue that imbalance.  Only a Republican-controlled Legislature will pass Senator Mike Doherty's Fair School Funding Act, which will reduce property taxes by providing every child with a basic level of school funding.

Only a Republican-controlled Legislature will put a Question on the ballot to strip control of school funding away from the unelected State Judiciary and give it back to the elected Legislature.  Of course, Hamilton disagrees with this.  She is, after all, both a creature of her party and of the courts.  While Republicans like Senator Steve Oroho are fighting to get more for Sussex County, Hamilton's party is opposing them.  While Senator Oroho was bringing back resources for Sussex County, lawyer Hamilton was representing criminals.

From all reports, Jennifer Hamilton is a fair-to-middling criminal defense attorney but as a candidate for public office, she is an absolute disaster.  Hey, somebody give the lady a calculator.  At the Ogdensburg debate, Hamilton maintained that she wanted to cut taxes -- and then outlined billions in new government spending she insisted was necessary.  Before it was over, she agreed with her running mates that the following new taxes should be imposed:

- A $5.5 billion tax hike by revoking tax cuts on employers.  This will be great for jobs, won't it?

- A $650 million income tax hike on high earners.

- A $2 billion tax hike by reinstituting the job-killing, small-business killing estate tax.

- And untold millions through a new "special" tax on yet to be determined products that the Democrats consider to be "luxuries."  The last such tax killed the boat-building in New Jersey, so good luck with that.

As a candidate for public office, Democrat Jennifer Hamilton is a mess.  She talks before she thinks, doesn't get her facts right, promises more spending while saying she'll cut taxes, and then agrees with her running mates that raising taxes by an additional $8.5 billion will help jobs and the economy in New Jersey. Maybe that callous disregard gets by in the courtroom, but don't try it with the people of Sussex County.

Trump's infrastructure jobs need state matching funds

You know that it is over for the nattering nabobs of negativism when all they have are lies and disinformation.

Take this post put up over the weekend on a Tea Party website:

FACT #1: We are paying less for gasoline now than what we paid 18 months ago.  Costs have declined dramatically from 2014.  Here is the graph that proves it:

FACT #2: The Tax Reform bill (S-2411/A-12) actually cut taxes by $1.4 billion:

   - A tax cut on retirement income that means most New Jersey retirees will no longer pay state income tax.  This tax cut is worth about $2,000 annually to the average retiree.

- Elimination of the Estate Tax.  This protects family farms and small businesses from being forced to choose between paying taxes or closing and laying-off workers.

- Tax cut for veterans.  Honorably discharged active duty, guard, and reserve veterans now get an additional $3,000 personal income tax deduction.

- Tax credit for low-income workers.  Worth $100 annually to the average worker.

- Sales tax cut.  Worth another $100 annually to the average consumer.

- Property tax relief.  The legislation doubled the amount going to county and municipal governments to repair roads and bridges and so offset property tax increases.

After 28 years of failing to adjust the gas tax for inflation and borrowing to make up the difference the TTF was deeply in debt.  The last time the gas tax produced enough revenue to pay for New Jersey's transportation needs was in 1990.  Because of the debt that was allowed to accumulate, by 2015 the annual cost of that debt to taxpayers was $1.1 billion -- outstripping the $750 million revenue from the gas tax.  That's what happens when you suspend the iron rules of economics and tell people that they can have something for nothing.

The Transportation Trust Fund was broke.  Road and bridge projects funded by the TTF were frozen.  That included all those county and municipal projects dependent on TTF funding.  Work had stopped. Without funding from the TTF, local governments would have had to raise property taxes by an average of more than $500 a household just to make up for the lost aid to keep county and local roads safely maintained.  And if county and local governments failed to repair roads and bridges and allowed people to use them anyway, the eventual cost in litigation to cover the injuries sustained as the result could vastly outstrip the costs to maintain them in the first place.

So yes, under these circumstances, the long over-due adjustment for inflation did result in the tax on gasoline going up by 23-cents a gallon. 

FACT #3:  President Ronald Reagan doubled the federal tax on gasoline because, as a conservative, he understood that a user tax (like the gas tax) is the fairest form of taxation.  Ronald Reagan, the greatest Republican President of the last century, the father of the modern conservative movement.

FACT #4:  President Donald Trump is right.  America's infrastructure is a disgrace and New Jersey's transportation infrastructure is among the worst. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report in 2016 and we've taken snapshots directly from it:

Now that is what the professionals -- the best in their field -- had to say. 

Today, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, America is on the cusp of a huge boom in federal spending on infrastructure.  Twenty states are in the process of raising their tax on gasoline so that they have the matching funds available to participate in the federal projects coming our way.  New Jersey is, for once, ahead of many of the others. 

President Trump's plan is to spend a trillion dollars creating over a hundred thousand new jobs and billions in related economic activity.

Some, like the fellow who posted the negative comments above, already have nice, comfortable jobs with the state, a nice pension and benefits.  But others are not as fortunate.  President Trump's plan is going to mean the chance at a future for them.