Baroni – Page 2 – Hank Kalet

Labor goes for Singh, finally

After several notable unions, including the state AFL-CIO and several CWA locals, lined up behind Assemblyman Bill Baroni, a Republican, in his bid for the state Senate from the 14th District, the Middlesex County Central Labor Council , which is headed by Jamesburg Borough Councilman Joe Jennings, has lined up behind Democrat Seema Singh.

The union has 17,000 members in the county, but Middlesex makes up only about 45 percent of the district, so it is unclear what kind of impact this will have.

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And then there was one

Five of the six candidates for Senate and Assembly in the 14th District have crossed the first Clean Elections threshold, qualifying for public financing and it appears that the second threshold — 800 $10 contributions — maybe within reach soon.

The only candidate not to qualify — as far as public reports go — is Democrat Wayne D’Angelo, who was away and unavailable when we tried to reach him on a separate question earlier this week.

It looks like the program will be a success and it will be interesting to see how the election plays out once everyone is on board. Maybe there is a chance that the amount of money given to each candidate can be reduced in the future?

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Speculative values

Interesting bit of speculation on the Blue Jersey site (where I blog occasionally) on the 14th and its potential ramifications down the road:

Baroni is running for State Senator, and though no public polls have been done, he’s the odds-on favorite to win. He’s gaining endorsements from labor unions and other progressive groups and he enjoys solid support from Republicans, who feel he’s the not-so-distant future of the state party.

Before Inverso’s retirement, Baroni was touted as a serious challenger to Lautenberg in 2008. He’s definitely on the short list to run for state office in the next 5 years — likely for Governor or the new Lieutenant Governor’s position (Christie-Baroni ’09?). But to get the extra boost he really needs, Bill Baroni will have to do something extraordinary. Something that will turn heads across the state — not to mention with the big Republican money around the country. What can he do to accomplish that?

Paint the 14th red.

And he could do it. Say Baroni runs a modest campaign this fall: he’ll win by ten points easily. He’s running against a newcomer — Seema Singh — in a “Clean Elections” campaign, where she cannot use a large warchest to saturate the airwaves and bring up her name recognition. It’s going to come down to the streets, where
Baroni is a dynamo — no one’s knocked on more doors than he has.

If Baroni goes all out, pummels Singh in the free media early, pushes his runningmates to knock Greenstein hard, too, and campaigns his heart out — he could very well carry the entire GOP ticket to victory.

I’m not so sure — as my response indicates (the response quoted below has been edited some):

Baroni is likely to win pretty big, taking five of seven towns, including South Brunswick, where he’s well-known and popular. He will lose, however, in Monroe and Plainsboro pretty convincingly, as will his running mates. (Republicans are nearly extinct in those communities.)

The question, ultimately, is how well Linda Greenstein can do in Hamilton and South Brunswick. In the last race, she finished third in Hamilton by a handful of votes and finished second in South Brunswick, beating former SB Police Chief Michael Paquette in the process. She also won West Windsor and Jamesburg outright — taking four of the seven towns in the district.

Her opponents are a Hamilton councilman and a former Jamesburg councilman who has lost his last two or three bids for Jamesburg council. I think this is going to come down to a three-way race to see who serves with Greenstein in the Assembly, with the two Hamilton candidates battling for the spot and Adam Bushman, the former Jamesburg councilman, finishing fourth (I like Adam, by the way — he’s more progressive than many Dems I know on many issues and we have endorsed him several times for Borough Council).

My sense, right now, is that the political make up of the 14th is likely to remain as is, with a Republican state senator (albeit a more progressive one), and a split in the Assembly.

I should point that this is speculation and is not a reflection of how the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press will endorse come November. It’s just an interesting thought experiment.

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More doubts on the death penalty

The Star-Ledger comments today on the case of Byron Halsey, who had his double-murder conviction overturned earlier this thanks to DNA evidence tying the crime to someone else — someone who had testified against him during the 1988 trial.

The Ledger correctly notes that

The case is cause for grave concern about police interrogation tactics, lie detector tests, confessions and the overall well-being of the justice system.

The Halsey case is another in a long line of cases in which seemingly incontrovertable evidence — in this case a confession — proves not to be so incontrovertable, after all, the confession apprently coming after a long, difficult interrogation.

That confessions aren’t always what they appear to be is yet another lesson. To many, it seems almost incomprehensible that suspects would confess to crimes they didn’t commit, but criminologists say false confessions are not as rare as some believe.

Halsey’s lawyers had argued that the length and circumstances surrounding his interrogation made his statements unreliable.

It’s a lesson that the federal government should take to heart as it attempts to justify its torture program at Guantanamo and one that should be factored into the debate over the death penalty here in New Jersey.

One of the striking things about this case is that the crimes committed are exactly the kinds of crimes that those who support the death penalty regularly point to as a reason to preserve capital punishment. Halsey was sentenced to life in prison — the death penalty was sought by prosecutors because the murder victims were children and apparently raped, but the jury opted not to impose it.

Consider the candidates for state Senate and Assembly from the 14th District. Four of them — the three Republicans, Assemblyman Bill Baroni, who is running for state Senate, and Assembly candidates Adam Bushman and Tom Goodwin, along with Democratic Assembly candidate Wayne D’Angelo — express doubts about the death penalty, but believed it should be retained for cases of terrorism, child murder and the killing of prosecutors, police or witnesses in criminal cases.

“Can you imagine if a convicted terrorist were allowed to stay alive, letting him continue to rally and support his cause?” (Mr. Bushman) said.

Then again, wouldn’t putting a terrorist to death turn him into a martyr? That, however, is a side issue. The question here is whether we can eliminate doubt from the process, whether we can ever be completely certain of the guilt of the men and women being sentenced to death.

There are other issues surrounding capital punishment — moral and ethical concerns, its effectiveness as a deterrent, etc. — but the question of guilt or innocence and our inability to ever be 100 percent sure seems paramount (and tied back to the moral and ethical issues).

Human nature being what it is, there is no way to ensure that we are not sentencing an innocent man or woman to death. That being the case, how can we not abolish capital punishment?

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Reasons to be cheerfulabout clean elections

A Saturday story in the Portland Herald Press details a Maine report on its clean elections program that offers an example of why supporters of public financing in New Jersey are so hot to have the pilot program here work. The 14th legislative district, which includes Cranbury, Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick, was chosen as one of three pilot districts this year. Assembly members Bill Baroni, a Republican, and Linda Greenstein, a Democrat, are co-sponsors of the clean-elections program and probably the Legislature’s biggest backers.

According to the Maine paper, the 11-year-old clean-elections law “has encouraged more people to seek office and boosted the number of challengers who take on incumbents.” The law has helped control “direct spending by legislative candidates, but not indirect campaign spending by special interests” because “political action committees and political parties are spending more to help or hurt candidates.”

This should not be a surprise — nor should it be used to damn the law. Interest group ads were a prominent feature of the last presidential race and have become a staple of races for all level of office. One option is for clean elections legislation to provide a boost in funds to candidates targeted by independent groups or those who run against candidates who opt out of the system.

The goal of public financing, however, is not just to reduce costs. Privately financed campaigns already cost the public a lot, though those costs are hard to quantify (pay-to-play contracts, corruption, access to legislators). Public financing breaks this connection, while also increasing participation.

“I think the most significant findings are that the act is encouraging first-time candidates to run for office” and allowing challengers to run competitive races, said Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the state ethics commission.

From 1990 through 2000, the number of general-election legislative candidates averaged 349, the report says. That number jumped to 391 candidates in 2004 and to 386 in 2006, as public financing became more popular.

Adopted by Maine voters in a 1996 referendum, the Clean Election Act first made public financing available in legislative races in 2000 and in gubernatorial campaigns in 2002. In last year’s general election, 81 percent of the candidates for the Legislature used the Clean Election Fund to pay for their races. So did three of the five gubernatorial candidates who were on the ballot in November.

Let’s hope the New Jersey pilot works and that clean elections can be expanded to the entire Legislature next time out.

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