Sabato: CD3 Now Leans GOP

Tom MacArthur at the OC Convention

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Tom MacArthur at the Ocean County Convention
Tom MacArthur at the Ocean County Convention

Veteran Virginia-based political prognosticator Larry Sabato is changing his rating of the race to replace Jon Runyan, Save Jerseyans, citing the outcome of Tuesday’s primary contest:

New Jersey: The most watched Garden State race of the night was in NJ-3, a potentially competitive district in the fall. With Rep. Jon Runyan (R) retiring after two terms, Republicans picked former Randolph Township Mayor Tom MacArthur over 2013 Senate nominee Steve Lonegan, 60%-40%, nominating the candidate widely seen as the stronger general election choice. MacArthur will now face Burlington County Freeholder Aimee Belgard (D), who easily won her party’s primary. With MacArthur’s nomination victory, we’re moving this race from Toss-up to Leans Republican as Tuesday’s result makes it more likely that the GOP will be able to retain the seat. However, Democrats love Belgard and plan to compete hard for the swing seat.”

We’ll see how well they can compete with (1) defenses stacking up around the country and (2) Belgard complete and utter lack of policy knowledge and practical experience. She was behind Shelly Adler’s 2012 fundraising pace at the end of Q1, and I don’t think most CD3 watchers consider the fight she put up to be particularly “hard.”

All the same, MacArthur and his team aren’t the kind of people who take anything for granted, going after Belgard with both arms swinging by challenging her on President Obama’s incompetent handling of the Sgt. Bergdahl debacle within 24 hours of the primary’s conclusion. 

“I have a very simple, straightforward and substantive question for my opponent,” MacArthur inquired in a press release. “Does Aimee Belgard agree with President Obama’s decision to exchange five violent terrorists for Sgt. Bergdahl without notifying Congress as the law required him to do?”

So will Belgard defend her party’s leader? Or run away from him? Defending Obama’s infamous (and probably illegal) terrorist swap would go over like a fart in church throughout the heavily military personnel-populated CD3. She’s already done a poor job on the topic of Obamacare, bungling so badly during a November 2013 radio interview with Dom Giordano (click here) the he warned Belgard “[m]aybe you shouldn’t be running for Congress until you know what you’re talking about.”

Matt Rooney
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MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.

11 Comments

  1. Good call. With Lonegan out of the picture, Aimee Belgard is faced with a well-funded opponent who doesn’t have any stances offensive to the people of CD3. Remember this comment: MacArthur 54, Belgard 44, Others 2.

  2. George Norcross tends to think a little differently from Larry Sabato. His newspaper thought that Belgard had a much better shot against MacArthur, which is why he received its endorsement. Steve Lonegan has a national profile, which comes courtesy of his endorsements from numerous prominent conservatives. On the other hand, Tom MacArthur is a complete unknown. No one knows who he really is … come to think of it, I don’t even think he knows who he is, and he won’t until George Gilmore & Bill Layton tell him who he is. We can forget about getting the support of Tea Party Express, FreedomWorks, or any other group that helps small government candidates get elected around the nation. And I’m sure that Norcross knew this as well. But hey, maybe if there’s groups like TAGG (Things Are Going Great) or Raise The National Debt out there, perhaps they’ll channel some funds over to help Tom out.

  3. I agree. Nothing offensive about supporting amnesty, raising taxes, increasing spending, and making your first priority ensuring that George Gilmore & Bill Layton get a nice return on their investment and all the time and effort they’ve spend in coaching him to be a good little puppet. Nothing offensive about that at all.

    Also, not having any funding from any Tea Party or conservative groups out there will also be a great help to the MacArthur campaign. Because we all know that Washington doesn’t have anywhere near enough big government crony capitalists there, and we desperately need to elect more of them.

  4. I actually think of myself as more of a libertarian. I also believe that most people are without actually knowing it. They don’t want the government telling a pregnant woman what to do, same sex couples that they can’t marry, or claiming that marijuana is dangerous when there is no evidence to support that statement. And they also are sick and damn tired of the government pissing away our tax dollars. I’m not going to claim that Steve Lonegan is perfect, but he was certainly a lot closer to what a libertarian-minded voter would be looking for than someone who is backed by the GOP machines, which almost always support big spending tax hiking candidates, including everyone on Ocean County’s board of freeholders. I’m not going to rattle off Tom MacArthur’s record of support for liberal spending and progressive taxation, because it’s been done countless times. I understand why voter turnout in general is so low, and it’s because people don’t see any real difference between the Democratic & Republican candidates. It’s also because there’s so much difficulty in mounting a strong independent challenge. This is yet another one of those elections where I feel voters don’t have a choice. Any candidate that is going to win needs the support of independent candidates. And in an instance like this, with most (who are fiscally conservative and socially moderate) seeing no real difference between the candidates, the Democrat has the edge. Only time will tell, but I think GOP primary voters made a huge mistake that is going to come back to haunt us big time.

  5. True. This infant is woefully ignorant about the district to the point that I think he keeps repeating the same falsehoods to himself so that at least one person believes them.

  6. Conservatism can win elections, even in a place like New Jersey. With that said, it can’t win when it’s delivered in an angry, nasty, negative (Loneganesque?) way. Reagan won with Conservatism because he was likable. Lonegan is no Reagan.

  7. The McArthur campaign attacks against Lonegan were viciously brutal. (Want to see some of their ugly mailers?) Then they pretended their guy was a poor little victim and accused Lonegan of being angry and nasty. Somehow I don’t think that will work against Belgard.

  8. He even sued the woman who answered the phones at Lonegan’s HQ. Coming off with numbers in the 7000’s in Ocean and Burlington Counties – (less than 2% of the available voters) – with a large fraction of those votes “Not STEVE LONEGAN”, is hardly a “trouncing”. A more realistic measure? Belgard’s unknown opponents, Todd and Kleinhendler, spending less than 2K combined, garnered 11 percent of what Mac did – with the “Hell NO, Not Lonegan” factor not corrected for. 2 Million for less than 8K per county? Not a very good return on investment.

    I looked at his web-site, and almost every post is about Steve Lonegan. Is there a program on the horizon, or are we going to be graced with “I’m Ronald Reagan”, or “I’ll Stand Up to Nancy Pelosi”, or “I’m not Belgard” for the next five months.

    If Aimee Belgard and Tom MacArthur are the best the Democrats and Republicans can put out there, are we all supposed to vote for Weedman?

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