With a Little Help From Their Friends: How the Democrats Beat Schundler

11/08/01 | Timothy Henderson

[thenderson]

Here's what I recently wrote a friend about the election:

Bret's opponent in the primary -- Frmr. Congressman Bob Franks -- was on the radio yesterday. He spoke about Bret's leadership and the validity of his ideas. (The Franks clip is archived at WNYC.) I take that as an intimation that the larger Republican establishment (outside the circle of traiterous NJ RINOs) is still solidly behind Bret Schundler.

The NJ acting governor (a RINO forced to drop out of the race due to shady business dealings) actively worked against Bret.

Early in the campaign for the general election, a state report was prepared and leaked to the press stating that Bret had left Jersey City shattered financially by a $54 million DEFICIT. The truth was that Bret left Jersey City with $19 MILLION CASH in the bank. The former two mayors had improperly put in place property tax revaluations. When Bret first took office during a recession, property owners appealed the inflated revals. Bret's City Hall now had to repay the property tax money wrongly collected for around five years. With the stated approval, Bret had Jersey City issue bonds to repay the appeals. $54 million of this DEBT is still outstanding. A classic BIG LIE -- the newspapers all ran with the DEFICIT story and McGreevey brought it up in the debates.

RINO cronies of the acting gov openly started a REPUBLICANS FOR MCGREEVEY group. Another real clever RINO backstab was a group called FOR OUR FAMILIES -- against gun ownership and FOR ABORTION (The values that made our Country great?).

Corzine won by putting something together the Dems call THE NEW JERSEY PLAN. This basically seems to be (they talk to reporters about it, but keep the written copy secret) a flood of misleading advertising coupled with an endgame of massive coordinated street workers. College students and professional political workers are brought in from all over the East Coast. These act as sergeants to troops of homeless and drug rehabs (many also brought in from out of state). We got hit on the head with this two-by-four.

When Bret did appearances hordes of union workers (and sometimes paid "volunteers") would heckle him. We tried to counter this with our volunteers, but never could match their numbers.

What really nauseates is that McGreevey is a tax and spend liberal. Here's an example of the guy's integrity.

The newspapers basically ignored all the McGreevey negatives. (The NY Times did do a piece on McGreevey's placticity/duplicity on the issues.) Almost every article in the general election ran this way:

1. What Bret had to say
2. an "analysis" or some other negative slant/comment on Bret's statement
3. Some flattering bit on McGreevey

To some degree, this can be excused (9/11 made the race 2nd page news, Bret ran a proactive campaign of innovative proposals, McGreevey just shot down Bret's ideas while doing puff appearances), but the press was basically against us -- nearly all endorsed McGreevey.

[MoralSense]

Look, I voted for Bret, but you gotta face the truth here. Schundler ran a vague, unfocused campaign, particularly in the last 6 weeks. You can make all the excuses you want, but politics is about winning, and there were ways to win.

As for the Dems' strategies, what do you expect from Democrats?

[hchutch]

Bret made his mistakes, but to be honest, DiFrancesco's sabotage had a lot to do with this as well. Bret will be back. Clearly a lot of the establishment liked him enough in the first place to give him the shot. I think more will go to him because there is no place else to go.

Finally, I also have to admit that I'd like to see Bob Franks get in the mix again. Clearly, he's the type of guy who I might disagree with, but he is a team player. I only wish others in the establishment were the same. It might not have saved Bret's run, but it would have saved the State Legislature.