By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Regular readers know Ray Lesniak‘s deal so I don’t need to give you a history lesson, Save Jerseyans. Suffice it to say he’s one of our state’s biggest hypocrites ! We’re glad he’s leaving the State Senate in January 2018. We’d tell him directly but he blocked us on Twitter…
In any event, even in the twilight of his underwhelming public career, Senator Lesniak is still managing to excel in the hypocrisy department. Take for instance his latest cheap shot at Governor Chris Christie over the status of PokerStars in New Jersey.
Non-gamblers may not know that there’s been some controversy surrounding the status of PokerStars’s pending application to join the other licensed poker websites in New Jersey. What you need to know: there are for the way that the process has played out, but the hyper-partisan Lesniak alleges it’s politically motivated owing to the fact – and nothing else – that billionaire gambling magnate and GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson :
Rumors to that effect circulated heavily earlier this year. New Jersey Senator Ray Lesniak put the blame for the slowdown on both, believing that the two were in cahoots and “playing presidential politics” as the governor considered a run for the White House and perhaps asked the DGE to hold off on the license approval as a favor to Adelson, a likely donor to his campaign.”
Okay. Not only is this accusation the product of pure conjecture (at best) by a known Democrat hatchet man, but more to the point, who the hell is Lesniak to accuse anyone of presidential influence-peddling?
Go back to the sources, Save Jerseyans, like this 2006 profile of the Senator’s powerful politics-for-profit apparatus by The New York Times:
At the heart of that nexus is Mr. Lesniak’s law firm, Weiner Lesniak, based in Parsippany. In the past decade, it has done legal work for scores of New Jersey municipalities, collecting millions of dollars. In many instances, the contracts awarded to Mr. Lesniak’s firm came after the senator or his allies offered campaign contributions or other political support to local officials who decide who will get the work, a fact that Mr. Lesniak acknowledges.
While such trade-offs are hardly novel or unique to New Jersey’s power brokers, what sets them apart is the prevalence and common acceptance of the practice.
“I don’t deny that,” Mr. Lesniak said of connections between his support and contracts for his firm. “People say, ‘You raise money for people who get elected and then they hire your law firm.’ I go, ‘Shocking, isn’t it?’ Are you supposed to hire people who donated to your opponent?”
By Mr. Lesniak’s estimates, government work accounted for as much as a quarter of his firm’s business in recent years. Currently, he said, it accounts for about 10 percent.”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Read the article for yourselves.
Ray Lesniak accusing anyone of “playing politics” is not unlike Al Capone calling someone a “crook.” It’s just not credible. At all. And more than a little funny given how he earns a living.
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Lesniak- the Shame of Union County.