Tag: New Jersey

This story at Politico is truly amazing. Josh Zeitz’s opponent, long-time incumbent (and ‘pro-life’ House caucus chair) Chris Smith, is paying in state tuition for his child enrolled at the University of Virginia. Smith is, in theory, representing the people of the Fourth District of New Jersey.

As if we didn’t already know that Chris Smith was out of touch with his New Jersey constituents. We learned not long ago that, in the last eight years, he has spent maybe two dozen nights a year in his home district (which is not in, say, Alaska, but only a reasonable two hours-plus by train from Washington, DC). He is basically a full-time resident of the great state (no disrespect meant here) of Virginia.

More after the jump.

This is a huge story that has the potential to reshape the media narrative in this fight. A number of major bloggers are covering this already.

Matt Stoller at Open Left has a diary up, as does Josh Marshall at TPM, and Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress. Blue Jersey has front paged this story as well, and is doing a great job of getting the word out to New Jersey Democrats.

This is a wave election, and this is our best chance in more than 25 years to sweep out a pro-deregulation, pro-Bush foreign policy conservative who is radical on social issues, especially those related to reproductive rights. Remember that Smith has introduced, on twenty two occasions, bills that would outlaw the common, everyday birth control pill and the IUD.

Josh Zeitz needs your help. Please consider volunteering as well as donating. To volunteer contact steve_at_joshzeitz_dot_com.

Thanks!

Americans appear ready to sweep a lot of Democrats into office on November 4. Not only does Barack Obama maintain a solid lead in the popular vote and electoral vote estimates, several Senate races that appeared safe Republican holds a few months ago are now considered tossups.

Polling is harder to come by in House races, but here too there is scattered evidence of a coming Democratic tsunami. Having already lost three special Congressional elections in red districts this year, House Republicans are now scrambling to defend many entrenched incumbents.

In this diary, I hope to convince you of three things:

1. Some Republicans who never saw it coming are going to be out of a job in two weeks.

On a related note,

2. Even the smartest experts cannot always predict which seats offer the best pickup opportunities.

For that reason,

3. Activists should put resources behind many under-funded challengers now, instead of going all in for a handful of Democratic candidates.

Allow me to elaborate.

1. A lot of seemingly safe incumbents have lost in wave elections, even in districts tilted toward their own party.

The Republican landslide of 1994 claimed my own Congressman Neal Smith, a 36-year incumbent who had a senior position on the House Appropriations Committee. Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley spent “what aides say may total $1.5 million to $2 million, a staggering amount for a House race” in 1994, but he still lost to George Nethercutt in Washington’s fifth district.

Many of you probably remember long-serving House and Senate Democrats in your own states who were swept away in the Reagan landslide of 1980.

By the same token, a lot of entrenched Republicans lost their seats during the 1974 post-Watergate wave. That was the year Iowans elected Tom Harkin and Berkley Bedell in the fifth and sixth Congressional districts, where both candidates had lost elections in 1972.

2. Even the political pros and the best analysts cannot always handicap Congressional races accurately, especially House races where public polls are scarce.

In 2006, could anyone have predicted that Lois Murphy (who almost beat Republican Congressman Jim Gerlach two years earlier) would fall short again in PA-06, while the massively under-funded Carol Shea-Porter would defeat Jeb Bradley in NH-01?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee poured millions into IL-06 in 2006, only to see Tammy Duckworth lose to Peter Roskam. Meanwhile, Larry Kissell didn’t get the time of day from the DCCC and came just a few hundred votes short of beating Republican incumbent Robin Hayes in NC-08.

My point is that we can’t always know where our best chances lie. Sometimes a stealth candidate can catch an incumbent napping in a race that hasn’t been targeted by either party.

Look at the seats Republicans are now worried about, according to Politico:

GOP Reps. John B. Shadegg of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Henry Brown Jr. of South Carolina and Dan Lungren of California are all fighting for their political lives, a reversal of fortunes that has caught even the most astute campaign observers by surprise.

Markos commented on the Politico piece,

Shadegg’s AZ-03 is R+5.9.

Terry’s NE-02 is R+9.0.

Brown’s SC-01 is R+9.6

Lungren’s CA-03 is R+6.7.

We haven’t had any public polls in Iowa’s fourth or fifth district races, but last week Republican incumbent Tom Latham (IA-04, D+0) released his first negative television ad, suggesting that his internal polls may show Becky Greenwald gaining on him.

I can’t tell you today who will win on November 4, but I guarantee you that some Democrats in “tossup” seats will lose, even as other Democrats take over “likely Republican” or “safe Republican” districts. Which brings me to my third point.

3. We need to expand the field of Republican-held districts we’re playing for.

Thankfully, the bad old days when the DCCC would target 22 races, hoping to win 15, are just a memory. The DCCC has put more than 60 Republican-held seats in the “Red to Blue” category. Not all of those seats have seen media buys or other significant financial investment from the DCCC, however.

Plus, as I mentioned above, Dan Lungren is sweating bullets in CA-03, which isn’t even on the Red to Blue list.

In 2006 we won at least two seats that were not in the Red to Blue program (IA-02 and NH-01) and came oh, so close in NC-08.

The bottom line is that a lot of Democratic challengers with the potential to win are not getting the support of the DCCC. This post at Swing State Project lists lots of seats once thought safe for Republicans, which are becoming competitive.

Where can netroots fundraising have the most impact? In my view, it’s in the winnable districts where there will be no influx of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the DCCC or other outside groups. Many of these are districts where an additional $50,000 or even $25,000 can make the difference.

The mother of all moneybombs dumped three-quarters of a million dollars into Elwyn Tinklenberg’s campaign in 24 hours over the weekend. It was a strong statement against the intolerance and bigotry Michelle Bachmann (MN-06) displayed on Hardball.

While I respect the enthusiasm, I can’t agree with those who are still asking the netroots to give to Tinklenberg, even after he’s collected more than $750,000 and the DCCC has promised to put $1 million into this race. Tinklenberg now has the resources to run an aggressive paid media and GOTV effort for the next two weeks. He probably has more money than he can spend effectively with so little time left.

Raising $50,000 for each of ten good challengers would be a better use of our energy than continuing to push activists to give to Tinklenberg.

Remember, few challengers are able to match incumbents dollar-for-dollar, but that doesn’t mean they can’t win. They don’t need to match incumbent spending, but they do need the resources to improve their name recognition and capitalize on the Democratic wave.

Which House races should we target for a moneybomb? I would suggest looking at the list of candidates on the Blue America ’08 page at Act Blue, as well as the candidates endorsed by Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund. We have good reason to believe that those candidates will stand up for progressive values.

I would then pick a few Democrats on those lists who are not benefiting from large independent expenditures by the DCCC or others.

Our money will go further in districts with relatively inexpensive paid media.

I would also favor candidates taking on particularly odious incumbents, such as Dennis Shulman (running against Scott Garrett in NJ-05) and Debbie Cook (facing Dana Rohrbacher in CA-46). RDemocrat has written a book’s worth of material on why we should support Heather Ryan against “Exxon Ed” Whitfield in KY-01.

And what kind of Iowan would I be if I didn’t mention Rob Hubler, who is taking on Steve King in IA-05? My fellow Iowa blogger 2laneIA published this comprehensive diary showing that if we’re talking about the most ignorant and bigoted wingnuts in Congress, King gives Michelle Bachmann a run for her money. Click the link to read all about King’s “greatest hits,” including his suggestion that we electrify the border fence with Mexico like we do “with livestock,” his prediction that terrorists will be “dancing in the streets” if Obama becomes president, and his pride in working to scale back funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (which he calls Socialist Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents). King considers his work to reduce SCHIP funding a “key moment” in his Congressional career.

Amazingly, there’s even more to dislike about King than 2laneIA had room to mention in that piece. For instance, while still a state senator, King was a leading advocate for Iowa’s “official English” law, which was adopted in 2002. Then he filed a lawsuit in 2007 to stop the Iowa Secretary of State’s office from providing voter information in languages besides English. It’s not for nothing that Ann Coulter calls King “one of my favorites.”

Hubler is a good progressive who spoke out against the FISA bill and supports the Responsible Plan for Iraq. I just found out yesterday that during the 1980s he was INFACT’s national director of the boycott against Nestle. Hubler also happens to be running a great campaign, but he is not getting much outside help except from Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund, which has sent an organizer to work on the campaign.

Two dozen House Democrats already represent districts with a partisan voting index of R+5 or worse. We should be able to increase that number in two weeks and send home Republicans who didn’t even realize they were in trouble.

Few people have enough money to donate to every worthy Democratic candidate. But if the netroots could raise more than three-quarters of a million dollars for Elwyn Tinklenberg in just over 48 hours, we ought to be able to raise $50,000 each for ten good challengers, whose races are relatively low-profile.

Who’s with me on this, and which districts should we target?

Crossposted on Daily Kos and Blue Jersey

Last night, I joined a rally of Lobbyists for Republican Scott Garrett, who gathered to thank Garrett for supporting the financial industry that has run our economy into the ground. Scott Garrett, who represents New Jersey’s fifth Congressional district, doesn’t just accept campaign donations and personal loans from the financial giants that caused our current economic crisis – he hired a former Countrywide lobbyist as his chief of staff. Garrett is among the nation’s strongest supporters for deregulation of the financial industry that puts profit before people struggling thanks to today’s economic crisis.

More and pictures after the jump…

My name is Erica, and this week I started working on the Dennis Shulman for Congress campaign. With ‘Lobbyists for Scott Garrett,’ our campaign is highlighting Garrett’s ties to both the housing crisis and the special interest culture of corruption. As a member of the House Financial Services Committee and Housing Subcommittee, Garrett is unduly influenced by the industry he is supposed to regulate. This week, the Shulman campaign released a new ad calling on voters to fire Scott Garrett for letting the greed and speculation run rampant under his watch.

See the ad here – Fire Scott Garrett

Shulman for Congress is also underscoring Scott Garrett’s record as one of the staunchest conservatives in Congress. By the end of 2006, the American Conservative Union had only given a “perfect” score of 100 to two members of Congress for their lifetime voting record – and Scott Garrett was one of them. Yet the district he represents, a politically moderate swath of suburban New Jersey – is nowhere near to the far-right views Garrett pushes in Washington. Voters here are looking for leadership to get our economy going again, work towards alternative energy solutions, and bring an end to the war in Iraq.

Our campaign isn’t afraid to take the fight to Scott Garrett and expose his corruption. We recently launched several websites to highlight Garrett’s atrocious record-including his support for Big Oil, his refusal to acknowledge scientific evidence for global warming, and his opposition to a woman’s right to choose, even for victims of rape or incest.



Garrett Caused the Crash

Scott Garrett and the predatory lenders are a case study in Washington’s corrupt special interest culture. Garrett has accepted more than three quarters of a million dollars from the financial industries he is supposed to oversee in Washington, and put his taxpayer-funded office in the hands of a chief of staff who had lobbied for Countrywide and Washington Mutual.

Oilmen for Garrett

Scott Garrett has voted to subsidize Big Oil, for drilling off the New Jersey shore and in the federally protected areas of Alaska, and has taken $69,000 from the oil industry.

Global Warming – It’s a Real Threat

Scott Garrett refuses to accept the overwhelming body of scientific evidence showing that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming and that it is a real threat to our way of life. He voted to remove language from an appropriations bill acknowledging that greenhouse gases cause global warming and that global warming is a real threat.

Your Choice Not Scott’s

In a district where 70% of residents support reproductive choice, Scott Garrett opposes a woman’s right to choose in all instances, even for victims of rape or incest.

Garrett Shrubs

Career politician Scott Garrett gets a huge property tax break because he says his brother sells $700 worth of shrubs annually. Garrett takes up to $41,000 a year in tax breaks meant for real farmers, and failed to disclose this shrub farm as required by federal law.

In what promises to be a tough race, the amazing outpouring of netroots support for Dennis’ campaign cannot be underestimated. The Daily Kos community raised $20,000 dollars for our campaign in September –  and we here at Shulman for Congress can’t thank you enough. With a horrendous right wing opponent, an inspiring candidate, and your help, together we can elect a strong progressive leader to Congress this November.

Cross-posted at Blue Jersey.

Congressman Frank Pallone and I hosted a conference call earlier today to discuss what the war in Iraq has cost New Jersey and why New Jersey can’t afford another four years of the failed Bush policies in Iraq that Chris Smith and John McCain want to continue. To see exactly what the war in Iraq has cost New Jersey, go to National Priorities.org.

On the call I emphasized the following:

· I support a responsible end to the war in Iraq so that we can invest in America’s urgent domestic priorities like renewable energy, and break our addiction to foreign oil as well as lower gas and electricity costs.

· Chris Smith and John McCain have supported George Bush every step of the way on Iraq, from believing faulty intelligence, to believing we would be greeted as liberators, to believing the war will pay for itself with Iraqi oil.

· Each month, the United States spends $10 billion a month in Iraq – money which could be used to address domestic priorities like ensuring affordable health care, rebuilding our infrastructure or hiring more teachers or public safety officers.

· Incredibly, Iraq is right now holding onto $79 billion in excess oil revenues. We’re spending $10 billion a month to rebuild Iraq instead of using that money to create jobs here in America.

· The citizens of the 4th Congressional district have paid $2.2 billion for the war effort. That money could have been used to provide every home in the 4th Congressional District with Renewable Electricity, with enough money left over to help provide affordable health coverage for our residents.

That $2.2 billion could:

· Provide 203,137 People with Health Care for One Year

· Power 3,096,562 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year

· Hire 37,775 Public Safety Officers for One Year

· Provide 724,756 Children with Health Care for One Year

· Provide 28,856 Port Container Inspectors for One Year

· We can’t keep doing what we’re doing. We need change at all levels of government.

· Chris Smith and John McCain have no plan to bring our troops home.

· We need to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress to bring our troops home and invest in our country’s future.

The campaign is entering a critical phase and I need your support. You can contribute at my ActBlue page. If you’d like to volunteer, please contact ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com. Please visit Josh’s website to learn more about what I stand for.

Cross-posted at Blue Jersey.

Chris Smith likes to say that he’s an independent voice who doesn’t vote along party lines. Smith also claims to be pro-worker, pro-union, and pro-woman. Well, here’s one vote that demonstrates that he is none of those things.

Smith, along with 99% of House Republicans, voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007. The bill passed the House 225-199, as virtually all Democrats voted in favor of it, but it was filibustered by George Bush and Chris Smith’s allies in the Senate. [HR 2831, Vote #768, 7/31/07] Smith, Christopher (NJ/R) N

Lilly Ledbetter suffered wage and gender discrimination at her job but could not sue because the existing law is outdated and poorly written. The Lilly Ledbetter Act that Chris Smith voted against would ensure that workers who face wage discrimination, the majority of whom are women, are able to protect their right to equal work for equal pay. It is a travesty that women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn on the job. Equal pay for equal work is not only an issue of fundamental fairness, it’s an absolute necessity if we want to reward hard work and encourage personal responsibility. Apparently, Chris Smith doesn’t share those American values.

“In this time of exploding prices for gas and basic necessities, job losses, and the collapse in the value of our homes, it is unconscionable to think that our government would favor corporations who knowingly discriminate against women or any employee by paying some workers less than others for doing the same work. Yet that is exactly what Chris Smith did with this vote.” said Josh Zeitz campaign manager Steve D’Amico.

The campaign is entering a critical phase and we need your support. You can contribute at Josh’s ActBlue page. If you’d like to volunteer, please contact ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com. Please visit Josh’s website to learn more about why we need to elect Josh to Congress.

Note: Kudos to Swing State who put Josh on their ‘Races to Watch’ list months ago!

See also at Blue Jersey .

On Friday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced that Josh Zeitz, the Democratic nominee for Congress in New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District, was added to their targeted Races to Watch list. It’s alphabetical, so you’ll have to scroll to the bottom to see Josh. 🙂

The targeting demonstrates that the DCCC believes this race is competitive and worth investment. Demographic shifts have created the unique conditions for beating 28 year incumbent Chris Smith. Democrats now enjoy a voter registration edge in the 4th District and consistently win the district at the Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate levels. With boosted turnout and registration expected from urban areas like Trenton, Zeitz is poised for one of the biggest upsets of the cycle.

“We’re excited to have the DCCC engaged in the race,” said Zeitz campaign manager Steve D’Amico. “With our economy struggling and a representative like Chris Smith, who is more interested in introducing legislation to abolishing common, everyday birth control than he is in helping middle-class families, voters in the 4th District are realizing it’s time for change.”

The campaign has produced a video outlining Smith’s attempt to criminalize birth control, and you can view it by clicking below.

In late September, we hope to unleash a massive wave of direct mail and paid media targeted at swing voters in the district.  We have almost raised enough money to begin that effort, but we remain a bit shy of our target. Please contribute what you are able at Josh’s ActBlue page. If you’d like to volunteer, please contact ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com. Please visit Josh’s website to learn more about why we need to elect Josh to Congress.

Cross-posted at Blue Jersey.

Today, a bombshell article in The New Republic (TNR) exposed what many of us thought to be true?that Chris Smith’s misguided priorities go far deeper than his twenty-two attempts to ban the common, everyday birth control pill.

Thanks to new investigative reporting by TNR’s James Kirchick, we now know that Chris Smith is a founding member of the radical right.  A reporter at TNR, Kirchick is the author of a highly-regarded article on Ron Paul’s ties to segregationists; that article changed the national narrative on Paul earlier this year.

Kirchick’s new article reveals that Chris Smith has longstanding ties to religious-right hate groups; that he sat on the board of advisers of a pro-racial segregation organization in the 1980s; that he authored legislation that would bar gays and lesbians from working openly as nurses, doctors, first responders, federal employees or federal contractors; and that he played a role in a vicious disinformation campaign about HIV/AIDS that demonized gays and lesbians as “serial killers.”  The article also reveals that Smith concealed campaign contributions from at least two hard-line, pro-segregation groups.

The New Republic only scratched surface of Smith’s bigotry. Following up on TNR’s reporting, this morning, the Zeitz campaign discovered Chris Smith not only worked with segregationists; he voted with them. In 1981, Chris Smith voted to restore non-profit status to segregated private schools [HR 4121, 7/30/81] that were created as a mechanism for white Southerners to avoid the full implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The Zeitz for Congress campaign also obtained a copy of Chris Smith’s early college writings. In an article dated 1973, Smith accused gays and lesbians of being in league with “the Anti-Christ”:

In Smith’s words:

“We can live in harmony with His [God’s] spiritual laws and be like the man, as Christ said, who built on an undestructable [sic] rock, or we can live in disharmony with the Anti-Christ; the devil, not the laughable, fiery and character with horns, but the evil one often spoken of by Jesus and he like the man who built his life on sand which eroded and eventually fell. God wants us happy; His laws are for our welfare, our protection, not Sin!”

Chris Smith’s bigotry goes beyond his early career. In the 1990s, Smith introduced legislation that would force any company or public entity that receives federal funds to fire openly gay employees. The legislation would deny gays and lesbians the right to work as teachers, doctors, nurses, first responders, federal contractors, or state and federal workers.  It might even deny basic rights like student loans to gay college students.

What we’ve learned today:

Chris Smith is a founding member of the Religious Right, having sat on the advisory board of the Christian Voice. The Christian Voice strongly supported racially segregated private schools in the South and worked closely with Jerry Falwell.

Chris Smith voted to support segregation by allowing all-white private schools (which were created after forced-desegregation) to remain segregated.  

Chris Smith failed to abide by FEC rules and report contributions from openly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic groups on the radical right.  

Chris Smith introduced legislation in the 1990s to mandate that the government (or any recipients of federal funds, like local school district, fire departments, police departments and federal contractors) fire any openly gay employees. Openly gay individuals would have been barred from any receipt of federal funds such as school loans, food stamps or unemployment benefits.  

“Chris Smith is an extremist,” said Steven D’Amico, Zeitz for Congress campaign manager.  “There is nothing moderate about racial segregation.  There is nothing moderate about denying jobs and education to millions of gay Americans. There is nothing moderate about taking away the right to use common, everyday birth control. These are unacceptable positions that are out of step with basic human decency.”

I’m asking you to do a couple of things here. Please make a contribution. Also, if you’re in or near the district, please contact ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com to volunteer.

We can win this race, and we need to do it in order to show New Jersey and the country that this kind of extremism is immoral and unacceptable, and voters will hold such extremists accountable.

Thanks so much.

Cross-posted at Blue Jersey.

I’m Josh Zeitz, the Democratic candidate for Congress in New Jersey’s Fourth District. I want to talk to you about my strong support for reproductive rights, but first I want to tell you about the person I’m running against. My opponent, Chris Smith, is the leader of the anti-choice caucus in the House of Representatives.

Chris Smith has introduced legislation to criminalize the common, everyday birth control pill and IUD on twenty-two separate occasions. He wants to put millions of American women in jail for using the pill. We have to say no to this kind of extremism.

My campaign has produced a video outlining Smith’s attempt to criminalize birth control, and you can view it by clicking below.

I believe that access to basic birth control and family planning services is a fundamental right. By refusing to provide contraception and age appropriate sex education, Chris Smith’s policies increase the number of unintended pregnancies.

By providing women with a full range of information and health care options, we can help them make informed decisions about their lives and bodies. Together we can continue to provide women the right to choose.

I know how important reproductive rights are to all of you, and I want to thank you for taking time to learn more about this crucial Congressional race.

If you are able, please make a contribution at my ActBlue page.

If you’d like to volunteer, please contact steve_at_joshzeitz_dot_com. Please visit the campaign at www.joshzeitz.com to learn more about what I believe.

Sincerely,

Josh Zeitz

Cross-posted at Blue Jersey.

Josh Zeitz, the Democratic nominee for Congress in New Jersey’s 4th Congressional district, today challenged Rep. Chris Smith to four public debates.

In honor of the 150th anniversary of the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates, Zeitz asked Smith to join him at one public debate in each of the fourth district’s counties: Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean. During their campaign for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated in each of Illinois’s nine congressional districts.

As a sign of respect, Zeitz mailed a personal debate invitation to Smith’s home, along with a copy of a book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Here’s what Josh had to say:

“The rising cost of food, gas, health care, and education is hurting many working families,” wrote Zeitz. “People have a right to know how each of us proposes to address these grave problems, and they have a right to challenge us in a public forum.”

“I can think of no better way for us to honor the anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates than by providing the residents of New Jersey’s Fourth Congressional District a similar opportunity to see their candidates engage in a vigorous but respectful exchange of ideas.”

“While neither of us would presume to walk in the footsteps of these two giants, let’s agree to honor their memory — and to honor our neighbors in Central Jersey – by debating in Ocean, Monmouth, Burlington, and Mercer Counties.”

The campaign is entering a critical phase and we need your support. You can contribute at Josh’s ActBlue page. If you’d like to volunteer, please contact ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com. Please visit Josh’s website to learn more about why we need to elect Josh to Congress.

If any of you, in particular those from the Garden State, have specific things you’d like to suggest Josh focus on in the debate, feel free to email ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com and I’ll pass them along. No guarantees of course, but Josh and the campaign want to hear your thoughts.

Yesterday, Congressional Quarterly changed their rating of New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District from Lean Republican to No Clear Favorite.

This means that every single House rater including CQ, the Cook Political Report, Swing State Project, The Rothenberg Report, and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball have predicted NJ-03 to be either Tossup or Lean Democrat. This is a historic moment, with Republicans having controlled this seat in Congress since 1882.

This is a prime opportunity for a Democratic pickup in a district that has been trending Democrat, and for the first time in history, Democrats outnumber Republicans.

The campaign has made tremendous strides and is gaining momentum throughout the district. Take a look at the campaign YouTube and see all the great stuff from the Adler for Congress campaign.