I’m so tired of NJ bashing: We have some truly beautiful areas here, not the mention the cultural “joiseyness”that is known all over the country. Yes it’s politically corrupt, probably has been for longer than PA or MI. . . but that it MUST change. I don’t feel my vote even counted, except for the local vote. It’s been a given that NJ’s 14 electoral votes are just literally handed over to Dems every single year. If there’s a way to get around truth in ballot counting, NJ will find it and do it. Jeff van Horn, the former Dem who switched parties last year and ran and WON here this election, is someone I want to reach out to. I’ll congratulate him, and then tell him I want NJ’s electoral process examined and investigated. Now is the time, and I’m not giving up on NJ, as the rest of the country has. Got to work to flip this state, and I don’t mean voters. I mean election process.
The problem in NJ is very simple: The most conservative and productive citizens have moved out due to high taxes and stifling regulations, and they’ve been (openly) replaced with foreigners - and not necessarily the “winners” from around the world the US used to attract. NJ imports anyone who will keep the public school system filled with “clients”, because the teachers’ unions dominate politics. We have a huge government worker caste (the cause of the high taxes), and many people vote Dem because they have relatives in those gubmint jobs.
Once employers started to flee the high costs, this was inevitable; now anyone coming here is just buying into a huge IOU to those gubmint workers, and less and less current revenues (the high taxes) can be used for maintenance of the ageing infrastructure - so you pay high taxes to drive on deteriorating roads, with foliage blocking stop signs and such.
I couldn’t imagine how you reverse this process; NY has the same diseases.