If McCann's event was any smaller he could have held it in a restroom stall.

As he haplessly makes his way to the filing deadline, "Stumbling John" McCann held a hilariously under-attended fundraising event this evening.  To fill the room McCann resorted to bringing in a Democrat political consultant and managed to get just enough people for a seance. 

Just who they were conjuring up is anyone's guess.  We believe it to be the ghost of Nelson Rockefeller.

Meanwhile, over at Steve Lonegan's campaign, they were basking in the aftermath of a very successful fundraiser headlined by national conservative Republican leader Steve Forbes.  Instead of sitting next to a Democrat and some guy who was fired by Trump, like McCann was, Steve Lonegan was standing with Steve Forbes and Senator Gerry Cardinale (R-39) -- and Lonegan's event was attended by over 100 major donors. 

Poor "Stumbling John"... foiled again!

McCann lies again. No he's not pro-second amendment

John McCann tried sweet-talking a speaking spot out of the organizers of yesterday's Pro-Second Amendment rally in Trenton.  The rally, which was hosted by the NRA and its state affiliates, was well-attended and featured a number of prominent speakers with solid Pro-Second Amendment records, including Senator Steve Oroho, NRA National Board member Scott Bach, Assemblyman Parker Space, Assemblyman Hal Wirths, former Mayor Steve Lonegan, and former Assemblywoman Donna Simon.

John McCann did not end up speaking.  According to several sources familiar with the event, McCann was asked to fill out an NRA questionnaire to determine where he stood on the issues and McCann refused to do so.  Like another candidate associated with Passaic County machine boss Peter Murphy, he won't say. 

But McCann is a resilient bullshit artist.  His campaign rolled out an often-repeated story claiming that his father had been the victim of a terrorist attack by the Weatherman organization, a radical group of 1960's leftists.  But McCann's story keeps on changing with regards to this incident.  And the official records of law enforcement and the judiciary do not match McCann's claims.  More on this later.

In any case, McCann uses this exaggerated tale to claim that he is Pro-Second Amendment when his actions indicate that he is simply spinning us.  Any man, worthy of the name, should have the balls to tell us where he stands on the issues. 

We suggest that candidate John McCann grow a pair and fill out the questionnaire.  The voters deserve to know who and what they are voting for.

Lonegan: GOPers who push "moderation" while cutting deals with Dems are an existential threat to our party.

An important and timely message from the father of New Jersey's conservative movement:

Fellow Republicans,

You all know me.

No matter what you think of me, you all know where I stand on the issues. Some of you might accuse me of being too unwavering, unwilling to compromise, but nobody has ever doubted where I'm coming from.

As we watch the Christie era in the rear-view mirror, we need to decide on what kind of party we intend to be. We need to chart a course for the road ahead.

That's very easy for someone like me. The course is free market conservatism, defending freedom at home, and our interests abroad. It is the message of our Republican Party Platform. Simple enough. If you call yourself a Republican, you should value Republican principles.

Unfortunately, that is not who is leading the Republican Party in Bergen County these days. There are too many who look to cut deals with the Democrats -- and not for idealistic policy aims -- but for their personal benefit. Their vision of the Republican Party is a defeatist one, where they seek to benefit from the crumbs swept from the Democrat table. The policies they advocate consist of slavishly mimicking a watered down version of the Democrats' own post-Western, post-Christian, anti-Freedom agenda.

You've probably heard it around the county, and around the state, that a conservative cannot win -- anything. The fact is that the only Republican to win statewide office in over twenty years was both Pro-Life and Pro-Second Amendment. The fact is that those Republicans who get the most votes in New Jersey are consistently the most conservative. The liberal wannabe Republicans can't turnout their base and those they want to convince have someone better to vote for -- a Democrat.

This "moderate" nonsense is like a religion with some of our so-called "leaders" -- those who practice the Janus-faced religion of being all things to all voters. Even though every study and every poll shows that they will not convince a Democrat to vote Republican in this starkly divisive climate, they hold true to the faith that turning-off a dozen conservatives is worth every liberal vote they pick-up.

The way forward is clear for 2018: Maximum Republican and conservative turnout. A full effort.

Of course, there are some within our party who are working against this. Some who are personally enmeshed with the Democrats. It's happening in other parts of the state as well. Democrats are playing in our primary. In every congressional battleground in the state, there is a former Democrat running as a Republican or a liberal Republican with Democrat-ties claiming to be a conservative. Every one.

They are there for one reason: To make us spend money so we won't have it to hit the Democrats in the General Election. Here in Bergen County, I am facing an opponent who was described by the Bergen Record as the "right hand man" to Democrat Sheriff Michael Saudino. Let's not forget that it was Saudino's feud with the Republican County Executive that lost us control of our county. Saudino, followed that up by joining Hillary Clinton and Josh Gottheimer on a ticket that crushed the BCRO. Through it all, my opponent remained employed by Sheriff Saudino, as his trusted consigliore, and actually started his campaign while still on the Democrat's payroll.

Now we all know where Sheriff Saudino stands on this election. He's backing fellow Democrat Josh Gottheimer for re-election this year. So are Mayors Harry Shortway of Vernon and Harry Shortway of Midland Park. They held an event for my opponent at their family bar in Passaic County. Did you follow that? They are endorsing Democrat Josh Gottheimer in the General Election but held an event to help my opponent in the Republican primary. Meanwhile, in a neighboring district, the insider-backed "Republican" candidate wouldn't tell a room full of Republicans how he voted for President in 2008 (Obama vs. McCain), 2012 (Obama vs. Romney), or 2016 (Clinton vs. Trump). And like my opponent, this fellow seems to be allergic to voting in a Republican primary.

Our party faces an existential threat from those who cut deals with Democrats and then preach the religion of "moderation" while pushing fake Republican candidates on us. We must resist them, whether they are well-meaning and stupid or slick and treacherous. It is time to use the Republican Party Platform and our conservative principles as the measure by which we judge our candidates. If some of our so-called "leaders" don't like that platform or our principles, they are free to leave the party and start their own. I, for one, am sick and tired of being dictated to by a small group of professional political "leaders" who are totally out of touch with the thoughts and views of most Republicans. It is time for them to go.

A party that knows what it is about, is a party that can convince people to get involved, contribute, and win. This holds true up and down our ticket. The message of lower taxes, less government, and individual freedom is a winning one. The Democrats' warmed-over socialism, leavened with coarse identity politics has, in the end, always lost.

Thank you for your time and I hope I will have your support to secure our primary in June and defeat the Democrats in November. If you have any insights you would like to share with me, please feel free to send me an email at steve@lonegan.com.

Thank you,
Steve Lonegan

McCann campaign attacks prayer in public schools

Two operatives for candidate John McCann's congressional campaign went on a Facebook rant yesterday against the suggestion that prayer in public schools might be a helpful deterrent to school shootings.  The suggestion was made in a Fox-TV interview by Republican candidate for Congress Steve Lonegan, known as the father of the modern conservative movement in New Jersey. 

The two McCannites practically spit on prayer as a solution to anything, one writing of Lonegan that "mentally he's in Fantasyland and has been for some time."  This was a daring statement, considering his own candidate's challenges, and clearly showed contempt for cultural and religious conservatives.

It also ignores the data and the very low incidence of school shootings among, for instance, the 7,498 Roman Catholic schools in the nation.  A daily regimen of prayer does appear to work.  Although this could be merely coincidental, the suggestion should not be so rudely discounted -- and surprisingly by people calling themselves "Republicans."

While one McCann operative called John McCann a "fiscal conservative" (the same camouflage Bill Clinton used to describe himself), the other McCann operative mocked prayer as "a losing issue" and divisively wrote, "I wonder if Steve (Lonegan) would support a Muslim prayer, or a prayer in Spanish."  It goes to show where the McCann campaign's head is and makes you ask how different are these people from far-left Democrats? 

Both McCannites are affiliated with the Young Republicans organization, and one was recently active in the campaign of the Morris County Sheriff.  This leads us to wonder if the Sheriff shares these anti-prayer views too. 

More and more, this Young Republicans group in New Jersey is beginning to resemble a metro-sexual finishing school for socially-challenged post-adolescents.  Their commentary is cut and paste from the script of "Mean Girls."  Yes, Lonegan is in their "burn book."  "Oh, that's so fetch... on Wednesdays we wear pink."

Isn't it time for a little intellectual vigor?  They can start by asking themselves if they really want to be Republicans and how comfortable are they with the party's conservative platform.  Perhaps they'll discover that they're closet Democrats but unaware of it? 

It is also time for cultural conservatives to start their own public policy-centered youth organization.  There are thousands of meetings held across New Jersey by people who do believe in the power of prayer.  These meetings are attended each week by hundreds of thousands of people and the beliefs they represent are shared by millions in the state.  According to the Pew Research Center for Religion & Public Life, 67% of adult New Jerseyeans identify themselves as "Christian."  Of these, 34% are Roman Catholic, with 13% Evangelical Protestant, and 6% Black Protestant.  Mainline Protestant, Orthodox, independent Christian, Mormon, and Jehovah's Witness comprise the remainder. 

Of the non-Christian faiths (14% total), Jewish comes in at 6%, Hindu at 3%, Muslim at 3%, Buddhist at 1%, and other religions 2%.  Although so ascendant in political circles, in academia, the media, and in the cocktail parties of the one-percent -- only 2% identify themselves as atheists, with 3% calling themselves agnostic.  Apparently, the YR's are recruiting heavily from these very tiny groups. 

Oh, and the Wiccans -- that group particularly beloved of the pussy hat brigades and whose "religious" symbol is given equal billing with the Christian cross on the flags carried at rallies by Democrat Party operatives -- their actual numbers are so small (outside the aforementioned circles of politics, academia, the media, and the one-percent) that they fail to register.  Small, but as we see from the legislation they get passed, very powerful.

Yep, the nation needs all the prayer it can get.

John McCann stiffed the Sussex GOP in its time of need.

Candidate John McCann has been telling the story about how his father was wounded back in the days of the Weather Underground -- a radical group that came out of the 1960's anti-war movement.  Wikipedia describes them as a militant radical left-wing organization whose goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party to overthrow the U.S. Government.

He's told the story before, back during the 2017 Freeholder campaign in Sussex County between Republican Herb Yardley and Democrat Dan Perez.  It will be remembered that Democrat Perez was an associate in the law firm of William Kunstler, the notorious Leftist defense attorney, and that the Weather Underground was one of Kunstler's more prominent clients.

When McCann first related his story -- in the midst of the 2017 campaign -- it was suggested to him that he publicly re-tell it, either in a statement to the media or through paid advertising, as a way to define just who Kunstler was.  McCann said that he would, but that he needed to discuss it first with "his people."  At the time, McCann was employed as the attorney for the Bergen County Sheriff, a liberal Democrat who shared the 2016 ticket with Hillary Clinton. 

McCann never followed through on his promise to assist the Sussex GOP.  While people like Jason Sarnoski and Steve Lonegan and Bill Hayden and Doug Amedeo and Dian Koster were stepping up to help the GOP win in Sussex County, McCann kept to the shadows and never followed through on telling the story.  Important to keep in mind, now that he wants to broadcast his story.

McCann's candidacy in CD05 is not the only weird, Democrat-connected effort in a Republican primary this year.  In CD07, Congressman Leonard Lance is facing a young Democrat-turned Republican candidate who admits to voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  In CD03, Congressman Tom MacArthur is facing a primary from a GOP social warrior with a left-wing LGBT agenda.  In CD11, Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen is getting a primary from someone who is more comfortable with Democrat Party politics and who opposes most of what the Republican Party stands for -- especially on the social issues.  What's up?  Is it Democrat mischief?

Time will tell, so... stay tuned...