Chris Christie – Hank Kalet

Vote, vote and then vote again

In a normal year, the closing of the polls for today’s primary election would signal the beginning of a single-minded focus on the general election. This year, however, is no ordinary year.

Instead of a single Nov. 5 general election featuring state and local races, along with the special election to replace Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who died yesterday, there will be a series of votes, as announced by Gov. Chris Christie today.

Normally, New Jersey voters will get the chance to vote again three more times: in a Senate primary on Aug. 13, in a special Senate election Oct. 16 and, finally, in a general election featuring battles for governor and all 120 seats in the state Legislature.

Christie explained his decision this way at a news conference earlier today:

“The issues facing the U.S. Senate are too critically important, the decisions that need to be dealt with too vital, not to have an elected representative making those decisions who was voted on and decided by on the people of this state,” Christie said at a news conference in Trenton.

He is right, of course. The decision on who should fill the seat — and all elected seats — should be filled by the voters as quickly as they can be filled, within reason.

But, why hold a special vote on Oct. 16 — just 20 days before voters already were scheduled to go to the polls — instead of Nov. 5? The answer, though I suspect our straight-talking governor would disagree, is politics.

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver was blunt in her criticism:

“The November general election date is what’s best for taxpayers and voter turn-out,” Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said in a statement. “It’s unquestionably the best option, but Gov. Christie has chosen to put partisan politics and his self-interest first.”

The Star-Ledger called the decision “a shameless move that will waste at least $12 million and risk the integrity of the vote.”

For him to present it as a high-minded attempt to empower voters shows what nerve the guy has.

There is no legitimate reason to hold two separate elections, and the reason he’s doing it is purely self-serving. He calculates that more Democratic voters will show up and cast ballots against him if a popular Democratic candidate like Newark Mayor Cory Booker is on the ballot as well. Given the big lead the governor has already, the greed here is striking: He apparently wants to run up his margin of victory as a credential for his 2016 presidential campaign.

Remember, this is the same governor who opposed early voting by citing the extra costs. It seems different rules apply when he stands to benefit personally.

What the governor has set up is a tag-team election that could end up suppressing the vote — a move that generally benefits Republicans in a majority Democratic state but short-changes voters, costs unnecessary money and contradicts efforts by the state Legislature to consolidate elections and boost turnout.

Initial thoughts on the State of the State

Gov. Chris Christie gave his annual state of the state speech to the state Legislature earlier today and the theme of his speech was clear: All Sandy, all the time.

The idea under-girding his speech was that the storm may have knocked the state down, but by working together the state will get back up and get moving in the right direction.

He then offered an outline of his accomplishments — pension reform, the property tax cap, balanced budgets — that was specifically crafted to elide some of the ways in which these accomplishments were achieved. No mention of the cut in the earned income tax credit, for instance, or the fact that he willfully underfunded the pension fund or the state’s school funding law; no mention of his use of inflated or overly optimistic revenue projections to sell an unwise tax cut or to the one-shot revenues — affordable housing trust fund, the foreclosure settlement money — that makes his far less different than his predecessors than he believes.

Democrats were not shy with the criticism and, while a good amount of it was the kind of political posturing typical of opposition-party responses, there were some legitimate criticisms involved that should help structure the kind of questions asked as we move forward.

Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald (D-Camden) summed these issues up:

“Rebuilding our storm-ravaged communities is of paramount concern, but we cannot ignore the problems we faced before Sandy and permit them to worsen. Rising property taxes and a continuing unemployment crisis are problems we must address, and I am hopeful the Governor will join with us in bipartisan spirit to do so.

“We need a broad approach that addresses our underlying economic crisis so that we will be better positioned to help all our citizens–whether it’s our shore towns, our struggling middle-class families, or our senior citizens.”

We need to help everyone affected by Sandy — I think everyone agrees on this point — but we also need to remember that many in New Jersey were hurting well before the storm started forming.

It as a good speech, but not a great speech, not one that will alter the political dynamics in the state.

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Christie budget math does not add up

Gov. Chris Christie rode into office promising to put the state’s fiscal house in order. According to him, it’s mission accomplished.

According to everyone else — including one of the nation’s most influential bond rating agencies — the state fiscal house remains a mess.

S&P, the first major credit-rating agency to analyze Christie’s proposal, found little to praise: The budget relies on more one-shot revenue sources than last year; the $300 million surplus is too small; the hole in the pension fund is still too big; tax cuts are expected to drain $530 million, and revenue-growth estimates of more than 7 percent defy the conventional wisdom among economic analysts, especially since the state is under target for the first half of the current fiscal year.

“We believe revenues could rebound significantly in a strong economy,” an S&P analyst, John Sugden-Castillo, said. “(But) some of these revenue assumptions have been optimistic given the current growth the state has been experiencing. That could put pressure on the budget.”

Christie, portrayed by most as a straight-talking, no-nonsense leader, is really no different than the governors who have preceded him in office. While he slashed the budget, he also has relied on a tried and trued New Jersey budget-balancing trick: one-shot revenue/spending cut.

Remember, the governor has withheld paying money into the state’s pension funds (a short-term saving that will bite us on the ass down the road), used money set aside for climate change efforts to balance his budget and raided urban enterprise money.

This year’s sleight-of-hand involves a shockingly positive revenue outlook, based on the notion that the state is out of the woods even as it deals with a 9 percent unemployment rate and towns continue to lose tax ratables.

But they are necessary to his larger political and policy agendas — the proposed income tax cut (which will primarily benefit the rich) and a generally positive message designed to buttress his re-election campaign next year.

The state needs tax reform, but the income tax is not the problem, or not in the way Christie paints it. What we need is property tax reform that shifts away from property and sales taxes to income taxes along with an aggressive reorganization of local and county government to reduce the number of taxing entities in New Jersey.

Putting that on the table would take real courage. Promising a tax cut and pretending the recession is over for budgetary purposes does not.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Only governor gets to have a big mouth

Apparently, it is OK for the governor to say outrageous things, but when his political opponents make similarly obnoxious comments they should step aside.

Let’s be clear: What Vincent Giordano, the executive director of the New Jersey Education Association, said on Sunday was unacceptable.

Responding to the “New Jersey Capital Report” host’s comment that many parents can’t afford to take their children out of poor-performing schools, Giordano said, in part, “Life’s not always fair and I’m sorry about that.”

An apology is definitely in order, and maybe Giordano should resign — I’ll leave that for the NJEA membership to decide.

The governor, however, probably should keep his mouth shut on this. Remember, it was just a few weeks ago that Christie called Assemblyman Reed Gusciora “numbnuts” and said that blacks in the South would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights in the 1960s.

This is typical Christie, of course. He’s the blunt tough guy. Everyone else, apparently, should just shut up and deal with it.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Getting things done and getting rid of cops

Chris Christie became the darling of the national media because he is said to be getting things done. But is he? Read this piece from today’s New York Times and let me know what you think.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.