The Fourth Legislative District (LD4) is situated 30 miles from the coast, but this year’s Republican slate is wading into the Garden State’s territorial waters and taking a firm stand against Phil Murphy’s offshore wind projects.
“This is a classic ‘Robinhood in Reverse’ scheme that screws local ratepayers to bail out a multi-billion-dollar company,” said Chris Del Borrello, the LD4 GOP State Senate nominee. “The fact that it’s a foreign company who is under scrutiny for a record number of whale and dolphin deaths up and down our coast only makes it worse. What was Paul Moriarty thinking? Or better yet, follow the money.”
Del Borrello is referring to the Murphy Administration having secured a $1 billion bailout for offshore wind earlier this month shortly before the Biden Administration signed off on Ocean Wind 1, an initial 98-turbine wind farm project located a mere 13 nautical miles from some of the Jersey Shore’s iconic resorts.
Del Borrello and his team are focusing their political fire on Moriarty, a long-time assemblyman struggling to hold retiring Democrat Senator Fred Madden’s seat for the majority party in a district that shifted slightly but significantly to the right in redistricting. For his part, Moriarty didn’t only support the bailout with his vote but actually co-sponsored it, a move which led many political observers to wonder by a battleground Democrat would stick his neck out on such a controversial issue.
While the math doesn’t add up and the image of New Jersey politicians throwing tax dollars and foreign companies isn’t a pretty one for Democrat incumbents, it might be the images of dead whales and dolphins washing up on beaches – and the prospect of ugly pinwheels destroying the Jersey Shore’s legendary vistas – which give the issue rhetorical power in districts located many miles from the sand and surf.
At a minimum, 40 dolphins and 12 whales have surfaced on or alongside New Jersey beaches since December; the latest victim (a dead dolphin) was discovered floating lifeless in Barnegat Bay earlier this week.
Republicans can’t be blamed for viewing the controversy as an opportunity to not only rally the base but also reach non-traditional Republican voters who are turned off by the entire affair.
“I see a lot of American tax dollars – New Jersey tax dollars – going to this foreign company, but the reports I am hearing are that the workers on these jobs are foreign workers. That just adds insult to injury,” added Matt Walker, one of Del Borrello’s Assembly running mates. “Assemblyman Moriarty’s vote is a betrayal, and the silence of his running mates is unacceptable.”
