Chris Christie Goes Down For the Count
Republican Christopher Christie won
re-election to a second term as Governor of New Jersey on Tuesday, November 5th,
2013. Here at the Institute of Election Analysis,
we have the annoying habit of waiting until all the votes are counted and the
official tally released before deciding what happened. This year, as in all other years, the results
in New Jersey do not get certified until the first Tuesday in December, and
were not posted on the website until Wednesday, December 4th.
According to the Asbury Park Pravda or other local and
national media outlets, Christie romped to victory and is now considered a
frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. The voters in New Jersey tell a different
story. Christie received 1,278,932 votes
compared to 1,174,445 votes four years ago.
That’s an increase of 104,487 votes, or 8.9%. The reason the two-party press keeps touting
Christie’s landslide is that his Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono, received only 809,978 with another six independent
candidates getting another 34,000.
So yes, Christie won with 60.2% of the vote, which is
pretty impressive until you consider that the turnout was the lowest in the
history of New Jersey General elections, 38.5%. It is not so much that Christie won by a
large margin; but rather that he ran the kind of dishonest campaign that kept
the voters from knowing anything about his opponent, so people stayed home in
droves.
Christie was born in 1962. This was the 13th gubernatorial
race in his lifetime. His re-election
victory was the sixth, let me repeat that, the 6th
highest vote total, that’s in absolute numbers of votes, of the winning
candidates for governor. He is barely in
the top half of winning candidates for governor of New Jersey in absolute
numbers. As a percentage of registered
voters, his re-election victory was the second lowest 23.2%. The only winner who did relatively worse was
Christie himself, four years ago, with 22.47%.
By comparison, just for laughs, the biggest winner in Christie’s
lifetime was Governor William Cahill in 1969.
He won with 1,411,905 votes, or 43.58% of the registered voters. In those days, the voting age was 21 and
there were only 3,151,599 registered voters compared to 5,511,048 for the
recently completed General Election. So
Christie won re-election with 132,973 less votes (-9.4%) than Republican
William Cahill forty-four years ago with 2,271,674 more registered voters (+70.1%).
And in case some find
the numbers confusing, even the paid two-party press was forced to admit that
in spite of Christie’s alleged landslide, the Republicans gained exactly zero
seats in the legislature that was already overwhelmingly Democratic 24 to 16 in
the Senate and 48 to 32 in the Assembly, 3:2 in both cases. But of course, Christie ran on the rubric
that he could work with the opposing party, so there was never any reason to
give him fellow Republicans in the legislature.
Voter Suppression White Collar Style
So, how did Christie engineer his landslide and manage to keep so
many voters turned off and away from the polls?
First, he gathered endorsements from many leading male Democrats. (Endorse Christie and no one gets
indicted.) This deprived his opponent of
valuable financial and political support.
Then, during the summer, when she was still short of funds, Christie
mounted an advertising campaign that savaged her record.
Currently there is a
probe of lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. On September 9 - 13, two of three New York
bound local access lanes were closed without notifying the public, local
officials, or the agency’s executive director as part of a “traffic study.” The alleged study created huge traffic jams
in Fort Lee. Speculation is that David Wildstein, the director of interstate capital projects for
the Port Authority that operates the bridge, ordered the closures to
deliberately create the traffic jams because Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich would not endorse Christie. Wildstein is the
former mayor of Livingston, New Jersey who went to high school with Chris
Christie.
It always helps to have
luck in politics and the death of Senator Frank Lautenberg in June was a gift
for Governor Christie. He could have
appointed a replacement to serve until the General election next year, in 2014,
giving the Republicans an additional seat in the Senate. Instead, he appointed his friend, Attorney
General Jeffrey Chiasa who immediately announced he
would not be a candidate for the seat and engineered the victory of Cory
Booker, who Christie did not want for a gubernatorial opponent. So, why would any Republican want Christie
for president?
Christie then called a Special Election for
Wednesday, October 16th, with a primary in August. Talk about throwing the election calendar
into confusion. So, New Jersey’s voters
had to go to the polls four times in five months: regular primary in June,
Special Senate election primary in August, Special Senate General Election in
October and the general election in November.
The elections were marked by debates that were not broadcast on
the major New York and Philadelphia television stations, that were not rebroadcast nor available on-line. As a condition of accepting public campaign
funds, gubernatorial candidates are required to agree to two debates, the
sponsors of which are chosen by the Election Law Enforcement Commission.
The last debate in the
governor’s race, sponsored by publicly funded Montclair University, took place
on October 15th, the night before the Special Senate election, when
the federal government was shutdown.
Long story short, on the weekend before the General Election in
November, 40% of poll respondents said they did not know enough about the
Democratic candidate, Barbara Buono, to have an
opinion.
So, Christie did not so much win in a
landslide as prevent a large segment of the electorate from knowing anything
about his opponent, so they did not bother to vote. And this vote suppression is nothing new in
New Jersey Republican history. In 1981,
in Tom Kean’s squeaker against Jim Florio, the Republicans mounted “ballot
security squads” in minority neighborhoods to intimidate voters. A subsequent Justice Department investigation
resulted in a consent decree subjecting the New Jersey Republican Party to the
same kind of monitoring as southern states with historical patterns of voter
discrimination. Now, our clever brothers
on the Supreme Court are dismantling these protections for minorities because,
get this, they are becoming more subtle and widespread so the fact that the
remedies are not being equally applied is used as the excuse for getting rid of
them entirely. QED.
Illegal conduct by the Lieutenant Governor
Four years ago, Governor Christie chose Monmouth County Sheriff
Kim Guadagno as his running mate for Lieutenant
Governor. (Christie’s entire administration heavily weighted with law
enforcement personnel.)
Two years ago, Olympic
Track Gold Medalist Carl Lewis, whose mother lives in Willingboro, ran for the
State Senate. He had voted in California
two years previously, and the 1948 New Jersey constitution provides for a four
year residency to be eligible to run for State Senate. There was no dispute that Lewis grew up in
New Jersey and had moved to New Jersey and even when he was in California, came
frequently to coach students in Willingboro; but the fact that he voted in
California was used to disqualify his candidacy. In spite of a federal court ruling that his
name could appear on the ballot, Kim Guadagno removed
it; and his Republican opponent got to run unopposed, thereby denying voters a
choice. (Of course, Lewis could have
mounted a write-in campaign, but this would have made him an independent but
his Democratic (sic) backers would have abandoned him and he declined to follow
that route. Controlling ballot access is
the choke point for political corruption and party control.)
Now, in the Special Senate Primary in August, the total number
of votes cast in the Republican primary was 130,000. Election Law in New Jersey stipulates that in
order to be awarded a permanent column on the ballot, a party must get 10% of
the total vote cast in the previous election for Assembly. In 2011, this meant that 260,000 primary votes
would have been needed for Steve Lonegan, the
Republican candidate running against Cory Booker, to be awarded one of the two
first columns on the ballot. Otherwise, Lonegan’s name would have had to be included with the six
independent candidates in each of the 21 county lottery drawings for ballot
position.
Guess what? Guadagno simply
ignored the law and certified Lonegan’s ballot
column. Christie shot himself in the
foot with the Special Senate Election.
It showed that the Republican Party is no longer able to meet the
statutory qualifications as a political party in New Jersey. So, is it any surprise that only 24% of the
voters turned out to cast ballots in the Special Senate election and only 38.5%
bothered to vote for Governor and the Legislature?
Why Christie Can’t be President
Christie can’t be president for four reasons: first, he can’t
control his mouth. No one can be
President who can not control what she or he says; the nation would be at war
in one nanosecond after a thoughtless insult to some foreign leader. Second, Christie
is an entertainer. A candidate with such a weak vote pulling record can not be
elected to national office: low turnout and no coattails. Third, his record on the most important
issue, job creation, is a disaster (which is why he did so poorly at the polls.) During Christie’s first four year term, New
Jersey created less than 150,000 jobs, at a cost of $2.1 billion in tax breaks
to big corporations. That comes to
$14,000 per job. And finally, Christie is smart enough to not even want to be
president; his real goal is to use his presidential heft to become Attorney
General in the next Republican administration, if there ever is one.
The Real Problems
As the New Jersey
results and polls show, only about one-third of the voters support the
Republicans and Democrats. So, why do
the two parties hold virtually 100% of all elective offices? Because of a vast
media/university conspiracy combined with blatant illegality in the conduct of
elections. At every step of the
political and electoral process, there are two different sets of rules: one for
the two major party candidates, and another for
everyone else and even those rules are unevenly enforced to the benefit of the
Republicans and Democrats.
There are two other reasons: Americans’ belief in exceptionalism and current national leadership. Americans believe they are different from
other people, just by dint of being American.
Other nations have coups, Americans have assassinations, removals from
office for scandal (Watergate), the “electoral college” that allegedly put the
loser in the White House (it was really the Supreme Court, Bush and Gore). The 2000 presidential election was no
different from the 2009 Iranian election where the Guardian Council determined
the winner.
In response, in 2002, New Jersey put Frank Lautenberg back on the
ballot after the deadline had passed and votes had already been cast. Political hack judge Linda Feinberg just
ordered that new ballots be mailed out, and if not returned, the Senate vote in
the original absentee ballot would be void.
Where, oh where, in the election law do judges have the power to order
some voters to receive two ballots and other voters to have their votes annulled?
But there is a bigger
problem, that of personnel.
Most males born or living in the United States between 1890 and 1955
were subject to the military draft. It
was a rite of passage, part of everyone’s life was the need to assess and
determine what to do about military service.
This not only focused people’s attention on foreign policy and the
common good, but it also required individuals to take time out of their personal
lives to deal with this public obligation.
These were the years that the United States became the world’s greatest
superpower.
All the men born or living in the United States since 1955 have
been free from this public obligation.
They have been free to pursue their personal agendas without a thought
for anyone but themselves. Naturally,
they have been more successful in their careers. People who had to make detours of several
years or even decades before being able to start careers and families are far
behind. This truth was amply elaborated
in Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers. It is no coincidence that both Bill Gates and
Steve Jobs were born in 1955.
Chris
Christie, Paul Ryan, Mark Zuckerberg and Cory Booker
are poster boys for that generation of business and political leadership who
have never had to think about anyone or anything but themselves
and their personal desires. They think
they’re geniuses, when all they are is lucky.
They think they made it on their own and that it’s ok to do whatever it
takes to win, take away people’s pensions, limit their salaries, cut their food
stamps, depict health care as slavery, even cheat in elections and use clever
administrative legerdemain to prevent the most disenfranchised from being able
to cast an informed vote. They forget
the generations of men and women who had to leave their homes and families,
most never to return in the same shape if at all, to secure the blessings of
democracy to themselves and their posterity.
They think a 38.5% or
a 24% turnout in a general election is a landslide. They are fools. The United States can go down
the drain just like anyplace else. Just
watch.
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