Yesterday the NJ Election Law Enforcement Commission, which regulates campaign finance activities in New Jersey, announced a formal complaint against the New Jersey Democratic State Committee for making illegal contributions in the 2009 Gubernatorial election on behalf of Independent stalking horse Chris Daggett. Many of our long time readers will remember that in the weeks leading up to the 2009 election, numerous robocalls were sent out on behalf of Daggett, some of them even stating “Paid for by the NJ Democratic State Committee.” Save Jersey was one of the first sources to break this unfortunate, and embarrassing, fact.
According to ELEC, the robocalls amounted to nearly $200,000 being spent on behalf of Daggett just before election day. Save Jerseyan’s, I know from experience, the average robocall costs between 3 and 4 cents per call. This means that the Democrats ordered over 57,000 calls to sway an election for their toxic and fiscally damaging candidate. The strategy was to call Republican and Independent households to syphon votes away from Christie, just enough to maybe give Corzine an edge. Of course, we all know how that turned out.
Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? Its almost like they are sticking to some multi-year playbook. There seems to be a trend here, and its one that doesnt tend to play into the Democrats favor. In a statement to the press, Assemblyman Jay Webber responded to ELEC’s announcement.
What’s worse, the Democrats aren’t event spending money illegally to promote their own candidates. They have resorted to deceiving the voters by bolstering third party candidates like Chris Daggett and Peter DeStefano to drain votes away from Republican candidates in those races . . . These deceptions are stinging self-indictments of bad Democratic candidates and policies. Fortunately, the people of New Jersey rejected their politics of cynicism and deceit, and their policies of big government and high taxes, in 2009 and 2010. The NJGOP has every confidence that come 2011, they will continue to reject them.
Let’s hope so. In a state where Democrats enjoy such a vast registration advantage over Republicans, and where they control a substantial amount of political capital, usually outspending GOP challengers by 2 or 3 to 1 (if not by more!), you would think that they could recruit and train an effective candidate that would do the bidding of the party and union bosses.
