The only thing worse, in my mind, than the farce the Dems put on for us yesterday was the way Diane Allen handled the whole thing. Senator Allen, who is in a not-so-intense battle with Mayor Gail Cook who honestly does not stand a chance in hell, decided that she was going to take a stand yesterday by, well, not taking a stand at all. She abstained from the override votes, and from what I can tell, did not speak on the Senate floor on one of the issues. She did, however, give PolitickerNJ a nice statement after it all went down.
“These are all things that I support,” Allen said. Among the items on the agenda were restorations for legal services and women’s health centers.
She said if revenues come in above projections that she would like to find funding for some of the items throughout the year.
“I could have voted for every one of them,” she said after the session. “That wasn’t the fiscally responsible thing to do.”
So let me lay this out: Senator Allen abstained from the votes, because presumably she supports the funding of “women’s health centers” (ie. subsidized abortion) and all of the other things that Governor Christie saw fit to remove and balance the budget again. And then she goes and makes a statement on the record declaring her support and intention to fund these things in the future? Way to marginalize yourself, Senator!
Now you have managed to anger the conservatives in your district by taking a solid position on controversial social issues, angered liberals by not voting to support funding for those issues, and angered everyone else by not having a strong enough spine to actually take a position. If you really feel that the “fiscally responsible thing to do” is to not fund these things when we don’t have the money, then put your voting finger where your mouth is and vote no! Senator Beck had a strong position on the “women’s health centers ” too, but the differences is that she actually had the chutzpah to vote for it! The vote was not going to pass either way, but you just came out looking weak.
There is something to be said of party unity in trying times, but next time Senator, pick a side and stick to it.
