As we await the sentencing fate of former Bergen County Democratic Committee Chairman Joe Ferriero with the understanding that he’s unlikely to emerge on the winners side of the ledger balance this week, we submit the following…
WINNERS
Chris Christie
The Republican Governor received the 2016 GOP Primary endorsement of the Union Leader, which subsequently gave him a bounce in New Hampshire. This week’s Public Policy Poll put him in fourth place with ten percent, just behind Florida Senator Marco Rubio at 11%. More good news for Christie in New Jersey, where the Assembly Democrats’ failed to match the state senate and override his veto on the expungement bill.
Frank LoBiondo
Arguably the only person in CD2 who could give the incumbent Republican Congressman a real race won’t run in 2016. Senator Jeff Van Drew told PolitickerNJ he wants to remain focused on his Statehouse duties and (yet again!) not pursue a federal seat at this time.
John Currie
In New Brunswick earlier this week, members of the Democratic State Committee unanimously reelected the chairman to another two-year term as leader of the party in New Jersey. That means Currie will be the big man from NJ at the national convention in Philadelphia next summer, and also be in a position to wear a super-sized ring around those competing 2017 gubernatorial contenders who will continue to fall all over one another as they compete for his attention and affection.
Steve Sweeney
New Jerseyans for a Better Tomorrow, the super-PAC associated with the Senate President, raised about $400,000 between two events in as many weeks: the first a kickoff at the Westin in Mount Laurel and the second a breakfast confab at the Mastoris Diner in Bordentown co-hosted by Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-37) and Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald (D-6).
LOSERS
Vincent Prieto
The Assembly Speaker failed to secure the requisite 54 votes in the lower house to override the governor’s veto of public safety gun bill S-2360 (A-3593). This stung in part owing to a developing north-south rivalry connected to the 2017 gubernatorial contest and Senate President Steve Sweeney’s (D-3) insistence on walking around the Statehouse in seven league boots ever since his chamber overrode the governor on the same bill. Sweeney’s success and Prieto’s failure fuels the South’s narrative that its power base actually functions in the clutch. It’s just an irritating development for those northern allies connected to Prieto. Then there was that bizarre little resignation letter from South Jersey Assemblyman Whip Wilson (D-5) just prior to the gun bill vote.
Jeb Bush
In the Public Policy Poll this week, the aw-shucks-mannered son off the former president – the one who’s supposed to have all the infrastructural and monetary advantages in the GOP Primary – came in a dismal eighth in this week’s New Hampshire gut-check. Bush was supposed to be the child of privilege for whom you don’t feel sorry, but now appears precisely the time for a heavy dose of compassionate conservatism.
Enviros
Per Governor Christie’s signal, the state is moving ahead with a six-day bear hunt scheduled to start this coming Monday. “Next week’s hunt may eliminate individual bears, but it will do nothing to eliminate the issues we are having. Real progress won’t be made until we have a real management plan that includes education, garbage management, and enforcement of the bear feeding rules. Instead of arbitrarily maiming and killing more bears, we need a real management plan and we need the money and resources to implement it,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. To no avail.
James Habel
A judge on Friday gaveled the former Wall schools superintendent off to a five-year prison sentence without the possibility of early release on parole “for official misconduct for lying about 105 vacation days he took but never reported to the school district,” according to the Asbury Park Press.
