endorsements – Hank Kalet

It ain’t easy being green, when all you are is mean

In October 2009, the New Jersey Environmental Federation did something it had never done: It endorsed a Republican for governor.

Four years after endorsing Democrat Jon Corzine, the NJEF concluded that Corzine’s environmental record was a disaster — an accurate assessment — but rather than sit out the election or back the third party candidate, Chris Daggett, it opted to back the conservative Republican based on a set of promises.

Christie won the election, of course, and has made the NJEF look foolish, running up the worst environmental record in memory — worse than both Corzine and Christie Whitman.

The New York Times today, placing his most recent assault in a larger context, offers us the list:

Running for governor in 2009, Chris Christie vowed to become “New Jersey’s No. 1 clean-energy advocate.” That was a hollow promise. As governor, Mr. Christie proceeded to cut all the money for the Office of Climate and Energy. He raided $158 million from the clean energy fund, meant for alternative energy investments, and spent it on general programs. He withdrew the state from an important lawsuit against electric utilities to reduce emissions.

On Thursday, he took the worst step of all: He abandoned the 10-state initiative in the Northeast that uses a cap-and-trade system to lower carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. The program has been remarkably successful, a model of vision and fortitude. Lacking that, Mr. Christie has given in to the corporate and Tea Party interests that revile all forms of cap and trade, letting down the other nine states trying to fight climate change.

The governor also eliminated the office of the public advocate and has slashed DEP funding, but those seem minor given the entire green — or should I say antigreen — record.

It should be noted that Christie’s 2009 campaign featured another important element — an attack on Corzine for breaking promises made during the Democrat’s 2005 campaign. Someone should play those attacks back to Christie and remind him that the promises he has been breaking carry no less weight.

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Team players, endorsements and the Post and Press

Joe Stasi, a Cranbury Republican, approached one of our reporters recently and complained that The Cranbury Press never endorses Republicans.

It was an odd criticism coming from Mr. Stasi, given that we endorsed his wife in her run for Township Committee in 2006 and have endorsed Alan Danser, Art Hasselbach, Michael Mayes and Wayne Wittman in the past. (This is not an exclusive list, by the way.)

I raise this not to poke Mr. Stasi, but to deconstruct a standard criticism of newspapers that offer endorsements — that the endorsements (a) influence news coverage, (b) are predetermined and (c) that we care more about the team (i.e., Democrats v. Republicans) than we do about policy.

First off, I can say unequivocally that news and opinion are separate matters at the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. Yes, I have strong opinions about a lot of matters. And, yes, I am not afraid to share them. But I also refuse to allow my opinions to dictate the stories we choose to do or the way they are presented.

Second, endorsements are based on any number of factors, including resume, vision, a candidate’s connection to a larger whole (will election of a candidate lead to a shift in party control, for instance, and will that change be positive) and are never made until we meet with all candidates willing to sit down with us.

As for the third issue that seems to come up, I think the way partisanship has come to be defined as near the end of the first decade of the 21st Century has poisoned our ability to independently review candidates and policy through any other prism but political party.

Part of this is the GOP’s fault, a by-product of the Newt Gingrich revolution in the party that shifted Congressional control and enshrined in office a class of Republicans more intersted in maintaining power than effecting policy and following a core philosophy.

Before anyone jumps all over me for being a lousy liberal or radical communist, consider that long time conservatives have made the same argument. On Bill Moyers Journal on Friday, for instance, Mickey Edwards — author of “Reclaiming Conservativism,” a founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation who served 16 years in Congress and was national chairman of the American Conservative Union — and Ross Douthat — author of “Grand New Party” — said that the conservative movement changed after Gingrich and his colleagues came to power.

MICKEY EDWARDS: Right. Some of the things were good. But there was a change in the dynamic of Republicans in Congress to where hold winning power and holding power became the most important goal they had. It wasn’t about what they had come there to stand for.

BILL MOYERS: Party loyalty over principle?

MICKEY EDWARDS: Party loyalty or loyalty to a person. In, you know, because what happens is instead of the President becoming, you know, the head of a separate branch of government, you know, he’s not the head of government. He’s the head of a separate branch of government. Well, all of a sudden, you don’t look at him that way. You look at him as your team captain. So instead of keeping a check on him, what you do is you find a way to rally around him and help him.

BILL MOYERS: And you said Newt Gingrich…

MICKEY EDWARDS: You know…

BILL MOYERS: …actually made the Republicans in Congress the handmaiden of the executive.

MICKEY EDWARDS: Pretty much.

ROSS DOUTHAT: What’s interesting about Gingrich is, in the short run, he was trying to change that. He was really the only figure on Capitol Hill in the last few decades who’s tried to really shift the center of political gravity in Washington back to Congress.

The problem is, though that the means he ended up using to do it, the only way he could do it, was by trying to rally the GOP around him and make it a much more partisan, more like a parliamentary party, really, than a traditional you know, House of Representatives / Senate party in the United States. And as a result, once the control of the White House flipped, once the GOP held all three branches, you did have this mentality that Mickey’s describing where it was, you know, Republicans in Congress were just on the same team as George W. Bush. And they were going go along with what whatever he was going do.

That, in a nutshell, is how we have come to view everything — whether at the national, state or local level. I’ve written consistently as a columnist that there is a need for two-party respresentation on the local governing bodies — Wayne Wittman is the only Republican among 23 elected officials in Cranbury, Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick — but I also believe that it is the responsibility of the political parties and the residents of the communities to find good candidates and to offer coherent visions for the future. The problem has been that, aside from Cranbury and the occasional Republican in Jamesburg, the GOP has failed miserably at this task locally.

On the national level, I have been intensely critical of President Bush, but not because Bush is a Republican. It is because the Bush presidency has been a disaster. Forget for a minute that the 9/11 terrorist attacks occured on his watch — somehow he managed to use them to bolster his own limited credibility. What we have witnessed during the last eight years — an unnecessary war that is costing us lives, money and prestige around the globe, a negligent response to a national disaster (Katrina), the erosion of civil liberties and the separation of constitutional powers, a ballooning deficit, the appointment of political hacks to positions of authority, the politicization of the Justice Department and much of the bureaucracy, an attack on scientific standards and the replacement of scientific judgment with political opinion — is mindboggling.

I’ve been critical of Jon Corzine (a Democrat) and the state legislative leadership (Democrats), endorsed Bill Baroni for Senate (a Republican) and have written positively about reform efforts made by both parties.

The connecting thread in all of this is a belief that something more than the team for which these candidates play should drive the papers’ and my own political commitments. I don’t care if a candidate is a Democrat or a Republican, only that the candidate share my values and have a coherent and practical vision for his or her community, the state or the country.

Primary pretense

Anyone looking for an example as to why newspapers should not endorse in primaries should read today’s New Yok Times’ endorsements of Richard Zimmer and Frank Lautenberg for the Republican and Democratic Senate nominations in New Jersey.

The Lautenberg endorsement is the stronger of the two — telegraphing the paper’s likely endorsement of the four-term incumbent in the fall, provided he gets past U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews on Tuesday. He gets significantly more space and a far more glowing review of his accomplishments and goals, most of which dovetail with positions taken by the Times in the recent past.

The Zimmer endorsement, on the other hand, reads like one written to satisfy a requirement. Much less real estate is given to the GOP race (the Senate and a House race share space) and while he is lauded for being in the model of past New Jersey moderates, the Times gives a perfunctory nod to his positions on the Bush tax cuts and a balanced budget, calling it a “goal (that) would be impossible to attain without a quick and drastic curtailment of the Iraq war effort, and while Mr. Zimmer wants to withdraw combat troops, he opposes setting a deadline.” Basically, Zimmer and the Times agree on very little and Zimmer wins this endorsement by default.

As a reader — and an editorial writer — I find the approach disingenuous. As I said, the GOP candidate has little chance of winning the paper’s backing in the fall, so why bother with this excercise? If it is only to preserve some false sense of balance — creating an illusion that the November endorsement is up for grabs — then I’d drop the pretense. Better to not endorse in the primaries than to engage in an intellectually dishonest excercise.

Six for three

Six candidates, three seats — with more possibly to come. Who says there is no interest in the school board?

It is early yet — and we still need to decide on whether to endorse for school board — but the crowded field is good for the township. The more voices the broader the debate — especially because of the inclusion of two Indian-Americans.

The deadline for filing is Feb. 26, so get your petitions in.

And let me know whether you think the Post should endorse. E-mail me here.

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