PRINCETON – Presenting himself as a post-partisan candidate eager for public service, venture capitalist Scott Sipprelle unveiled his first cable television ad of the general election season at his headquarters this morning in front of fold out chairs and a handful of reporters.
The 30-second spot gives a quick strike look at Sipprelle, summing him up in the following lines: “Businessman. Job creator. Not a politician. He made a name for himself by speaking out against excess on Wall Street. He’s helped entrepreneurs start new businesses and created private sector jobs. Now he’s running for Congress… Where he’ll be a different type of Congressman… With a Blueprint for renewal that will cut taxes, control spending and reform a broken system.”
The Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-Hopewell Twp.) banged out some answers to questions.
“Rather than ban offshore drilling, we need to give access to people to work in government,” he said, referring to the monopoly on access to government channels that prevents tougher federal regulating of drilling.
He criticized Wall Street reform legislation that passed in the House yesterday, which he said “would not prevent another bailout.”
Moreover, “many aspects of the bill were engineered for consumer payoff and will be counter-productive,” Sipprelle added.
“Maybe we should not have lawyers writing these bills,” he said of the 2,000-page document. “This is a bill written in legalese. There should be more transparency.”
As the founder of an investment company, which funds entrepreneurs, Sipprelle said he was in part responsible for the creation of “60 local, high-quality jobs” in the Bank of Princeton, and over 100 jobs since he retired from Wall Street to run his own company.
The candidate offered no evidence of real time opposition to the 2008 multi-billion bank bailout bills endorsed by President Barack Obama.
“At that point I was not a player in the public policy arena,” Sipprelle said. “But I would encourage you to look at my record of how I think markets should work.”
The candidate endorsed Gov. Chris Christie’s 2.4% hard cap on property taxes as a needed but admittedly “crude and blunt instrument” to stop government spending.
Committed to term-limiting himself to six years in office, Sipprelle took a jab at Holt when he suggested the veteran congressman has served for too long at this point to problem solve beyond the constrictions of his party.
“Rush Holt votes with his party’s bosses 99% of the time,” Sipprelle said. “I’m not afraid to tell the truth. I’m not afraid to lose. And I will term-limit myself to three terms. The hyper-partisan politics we have in Congress now is not in the nation’s interest.”
