Host for Guadagno’s campaign launch is a noted Trump critic

Kim Guadagno (R-Monmouth) made no apology for saying “no” to Donald Trump back during the 2016 general election.

She told NJ Advance Media back in October that she “can’t support Hillary Clinton, and I won’t vote for Donald Trump.

The Republican Lieutenant Governor has a kindred spirit in her supporter Leo Cervantes, the owner of the restaurant (La Playa in Keansburg) where she plans to launch her own bid this Tuesday.

Leo Cervantes (third from right)

“I feel that (Trump) represents power, money. Not heart. Not being kind,” Cervantes told The Asbury Park Press in an interview back in November, one conducted shortly after the President-elect’s victory.

The political angle: Does the selection of Cervantes’s establishment suggest the LG doesn’t consider her past opposition to the President-elect much of an issue moving forward despite Trump’s ultra-strong performance in last June’s N.J. GOP primary? And that she’s looking ahead to the general when the electorate is decidedly less pro-Trump?

Or did Cervantes’s national political positions not enter into the launch decision calculus?

Guadango’s attitude towards Trump — and how voters weight it — could prove an interesting 2017 story-line well beyond Tuesday’s launch event and this Friday’s inaugural festivities.

Her most vocal primary opponent/critic, Jack Ciattarelli, was also a strong critic of Trump during the primary, but the two other announced candidates (and candidate-in-waiting Joe Piscopo) are strong Trump boosters. Her boss Chris Christie’s Trumpie status is a matter of public record; more recently, her chief political operative Bill Stepien left the state to take on the role of Donald Trump’s White House Political Director.

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