Pass the sunscreen, please…
There are days you love to cruise the Cape May – Lewes Ferry and there are days you don’t. January 28th was a don’t day. A classic Nor eastern pushed me away from my home county on the southern tip of New Jersey as if telling me, “If you want to go, then just go.”
I watched the shoreline of Higbee’s Beach fade away in the pouring rain. Now off to start a new chapter in the Sunshine State, I’ll miss my lifelong friends, my family and the political compatriots I fought beside for the past dozen years. The frustrating battle for a saner, safer, freer New Jersey will go on.
They say “fight or flight” is the basic survival instinct in humans. A rapid assessment of a threat environment. A life-altering decision. What are my chances? Do I stand and fight or do I retreat and live to fight another day? When it seems all you can do is rant and rave as your home state circles the drain (and the power of the opposition party metastasizes) when is it the sanest course of action just to walk away?
I served as a Township Committeeman and Mayor for a dozen years. I was a County Committeeman and Vice Chair of the CapeGOP. I worked in local, county and state government. From each and every one of those vantage points, the lesson was pounded into me (good and hard) that the state government and the entrenched bureaucracy in Trenton are no friends to the vast majority of New Jersey citizens. Yet these same citizens continue to vote against their own interests, year after maddening year. The definition of insanity…
And, year after year, New Jersey continues to rank at or near the top of every list you don’t want your home state to be on….highest property taxes, most regulations, least freedom, strictest anti-second amendment laws, defunding the police, forcing ruinous bail reform, attacking parental rights, forcing education to the Left and instigating mass migration of residents and retirees to points beyond the Garden State.
Pencil me into exile. My wife and I have sold the family homestead and started a new chapter in Clearwater Beach, Florida. As Bob Marley would say, “Sun is shining. The weather is sweet.” The morning I pulled into my new driveway, I got a 6.37% increase in my income (no state income tax), moved from #47 on the state-by-state Freedom Index to #2, and I got my groceries bagged for me at Publix in those nifty plastic bags.
Shall we compare the Governors?
Still, as New Jersey drifted into the distance and I turned my eyes towards southern shores, I couldn’t help but feel like a soldier shipping out for home while my compatriots remained behind in the trenches, fighting the good fight.
Stay true my friends. While I may be gone, the battle is not forgotten. I love New Jersey. But, I have had enough. There are many fronts in the mission to save the soul of our country. No matter where we might be, the forces of darkness are always on the march. I’ll always be in the fight.
Stay tuned for dispatches from Southern Command in the Free State of Florida.
