LONEGAN: DAN PEREZ IS A FAR-LEFT DEMOCRAT

Contacted while fundraising among Sussex County's auto dealers, 5th District Republican congressional candidate Steve Lonegan was asked about Democrat candidate Dan Perez' characterization of himself as a "Tea Party Democrat."  Lonegan, the father of New Jersey's modern conservative movement and the founder of New Jersey's Americans for Prosperity couldn't have been blunter:  "Perez is no Tea Party anything," Lonegan said.  "He is a fraud, a leftwing Democrat fraud."

According to his resume, Dan Perez was an associate at the law offices of Marxist attorney William Kunstler.  Perez later managed Kunstler's old firm in partnership with Kunstler's old law partner, Ron Kuby. 

Pay attention to the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam now airing on PBS and you will see William Kunstler in action, defending terrorists, communist agitators, American flag-burners, and the supporters of a North Vietnamese victory over the armed forces of the United States of America.  The clients Perez handled were a continuation of this Kunstler leftist mantra.

The Kunstler law firm defended members of the Catonsville Nine, Black Panther Party, Weather Underground Organization, the Attica Prison rioters, and the American Indian Movement.  But  Kunstler refused to defend groups like the Tea Party, on the grounds that: "I only defend those whose goals I share. I'm not a lawyer for hire. I only defend those I love."

Kunstler defended Joanne Chesimard (AKA Assata Shakur) who was convicted of murdering a New Jersey State Trooper and who escaped from prison with the help of fellow terrorists.  She is now on the FBI's MOST WANTED list. 

In collaboration with Dan Perez' law partner Ron Kuby, Kunstler defended Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, head of the terrorist group Gama'a al-Islamiyah, responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Colin Ferguson, the man responsible for the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting; Glenn Harris, a New York City public school teacher who absconded with a fifteen-year-old girl; Nico Minardos, indicted by Rudy Giuliani for conspiracy to ship arms to Iran; and associates of the Gambino organized crime family.

That's quite a line-up of scumbags.

Democrat Perez claims that he wants to "lower taxes by opposing wasteful spending" but the record shows this to be little more than election year b.s.   It was Perez who pushed the Freeholder boss to spend $500,000 to hire a New York City lawyer to tell the county what went wrong on its solar project.  Unfortunately for county taxpayers, the guy Perez pushed (and who was hired) was the same guy whose office had given the project the okay back in 2011.  So taxpayers paid $500,000 for a cover-up.

And it was Dan Perez who made his first proposal as a candidate a spending proposal -- to spend another $100,000 plus benefits on a patronage job because it "sounded like it might work."   Blindly throwing money at problems is bad public policy.

Democrat Dan Perez strongly supports funding Planned Parenthood and personally reprimanded Assemblywoman Gail Phoebus for voting against it.  As a Freeholder, you can bet that Dan Perez would spend our tax money on Planned Parenthood.  That's just for starters.

In a book he wrote on the subject, Steve Lonegan explained that conservatives believe in pulling power away from centralized governments at the state and federal levels and turning over more control to municipal and county governments.  Who runs local government is important because they set the agenda.  Liberals will fix their eyes firmly on the state and on Washington  for money and direction.  Conservatives will seek to break those bonds, while making sure to protect and defend traditional values at the local level through actions and the good use of the bully pulpit. 

Conservatives like Steve Lonegan understand that Dan Perez is a big-spending, high tax, leftist.  Perez is trying to paint a different picture of himself, but he has a long history that says otherwise.

Sussex Democrats won't tackle the opioid crisis

The Sussex County Democrats talk big about tackling the opioid crisis that has hit the county in a big way.  But their record in choosing candidates says otherwise.

Most lawyers never represent anyone who has anything to do with the drug trade and the vast majority have never, ever represented a drug trafficker in court.  But somehow, the Sussex County Democrats have found candidates who do just that.

Take the Democrats' candidate for Freeholder, lawyer Dan Perez.  He represented a Mr. Daniel Melugwo, a citizen of Nigeria, who was caught smuggling heroin into the United States. 

In July 2011, Mr. Melugwo attempted to sneak heroin past U.S. Customs officials at JFK Airport.  He was apprehended and a grand jury indicted Mr. Melugwo on two counts:

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Mr. Melugwo pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison in addition to fines and forfeiture. 

Mr. Perez argued that Mr. Melugwo's lacked the ability to pay a $5,000 fine -- despite the fact that he had travelled by airliner from Paris, France, into the United States and that he had $13,000 in his possession when arrested.  Perez claimed that the $13,000 should not be touched by the U.S. officials:

From the Court records, it appears that Mr. Melugwo never did pay his fine. 

How's that for justice?  $75 bucks on a $5,000 fine.  How many of you could get a deal like that? 

The Democrats' candidate for State Senate, Jennifer Hamilton, is another attorney who has blotted her copybook by taking some questionable clients.  But more on that later. 

Yes, they will argue, everyone has the right to legal representation.  That's true.  But it doesn't have to be YOU.  We don't need elected officials who have defended, argued for, and empathized with clients who are bringing the poison into our communities and who are making the addiction problem worse.

Maybe if attorneys weren't so eager to get paid to represent drug traffickers, the drug traffickers would think twice about coming to America?

The SCCC Trustees need a Conscience

Harry Dunleavy is right when he argues that the Sussex County Community Colleges Board of Trustees needs more people with backgrounds in science and math.  There are some very good people on the Board, but their backgrounds are concentrated heavily in the legal and corporate communities -- with a few education bureaucrats thrown in.  The personality of the Board is collegial and non-confrontational. 

What is really needed is another Dan Perez -- a Conscience who is not afraid to stir things up, call out wrongdoing, and say what has to be said.  We doubt that will happen any time soon, because the last time ended with the very public revelation that at least one trustee was self-dealing -- collecting money from a vendor to the SCCC while promoting contracts to that vendor.  Several trustees were forced into early retirement over the scandal -- with some claiming that they did not understand that what occurred was ethically wrong.  It was a real mess.

Maybe the time has come to elect the SCCC Board of Trustees, in the same way that the voters elect local Boards of Education.  This would remove questions of insider-control over the SCCC Board of Trustees and would give qualified candidates for Trustee -- like Harry Dunleavy -- the opportunity to take their argument directly to the taxpayers who pay for the college.  Of course, the election process should be non-partisan -- unconnected to any political party or group -- to give opportunity to the broadest spectrum of perspective.

Is the Sussex GOP "Dysfunctional"?

Gary Larson has been a successful local politician.  He is the Mayor of Frankford Township and has been elected and re-elected to that town's Committee.  At that level -- the small community -- it is tough to avoid hearing from your neighbor, to avoid touching the voters. 

Mayor Larson has also run for county Freeholder twice, in 2013 and again in 2015, and has lost both times.  After each loss, Larson has blamed the Republican Party for his loss.  In his most recent loss, he labeled the party as "dysfunctional".  One can only suppose that if he had won the election, Larson would have said the party was in good working order, functioning as it should.

But Larson does have a point because, by virtue of his running with incumbent Freeholder Dennis Mudrick, he could be described as a candidate of the county's "establishment".  So why didn't he win? 

The weekend before the June 2nd primary election, Larson and Mudrick put out a mailer that listed their support from local and county elected officials. Including Mudrick, three of the five county Freeholders supported Larson.  Their ticket ran a technically better campaign, with unified advertising and more voter contact.  They got their message out, so what went wrong?

Well, what went wrong was the same thing that went so disastrously wrong with the campaign of Marie Bilik.  The message and where it came from.

Instead of looking to the voters for guidance about what their message should be, in Sussex County many would be elected officials look to a small group of political insiders.  They have conversations, conduct their own version of "market research" and then fashion their message based on how they believe these insiders will react to it.  Unfortunately, these insiders represent only a fraction of the primary electorate who actually turnout to vote.  And many have altogether different reasons for voting.

There are levels of "insider" in Sussex County.  At the inner most core exist those who owe their living to government -- county, local, state, and federal (in that order) -- especially those whose living is based on a more fluid relationship with government.  Most county employees have a static relationship with government (35 hours time for X in compensation, week in, week out) and are not political insiders.  However, if you are looking to score a contract from government, it is probably safe to say that you are at least an aspiring insider.  If you are not one of the chattering class, you will soon be.

It is this relationship -- the wanting of something from government -- that makes the Sussex County "insider" so different from the average Republican primary voter in Sussex County.  The insider is looking for something from government:  Money or some consideration that he or she can turn into money.  The average Republican voter doesn't want shat from government.  They simply want to be left alone.  They want government to spend less, so it doesn't have to tax them at the highest rate in America.

So there's the difference.  The insider wants government to spend taxpayers' money on their product or service.  The average Republican primary voter wants government to spend less and just go away.  It's a difference of perspective and it is why candidates like Gary Larson see "dysfunction" -- because the wants of the insiders he's listening to are different from those of the Republican voters he is trying to convince to vote for him.

And often -- too often -- the insider's game turns into little more than crony capitalism, with products and services considered based on the pedigree of the "representative" (aka "advocate", "lobbyist", "recipient of corporate welfare") as opposed to the needs of the taxpayer.  Who said we needed solar panels on the roof tops of every public building anyway?  Which came first, some insider's need for a score or the taxpayers' need for the product?

So Gary Larson is on to something.  There is something dysfunctional about Sussex County politics.  Too many prospective elected officials dispense with polling the people they want to represent and instead look to the direction of a handful of chattering insiders.  These perspectives couldn't be more different, and so they lose, wonder why, and then call it "dysfunctional".