NY Times Endorses Lautenberg - and NJ was cheated out of an election

From the NY Times endorsement of Senator Frank Lautenberg:

New Jersey voters deserved a better race this year than the nearly invisible contest between Senator Frank Lautenberg and Richard Zimmer, his Republican challenger. Mr. Lautenberg, 84, has accomplished much over 24 years in the Senate but seemed reluctant to campaign actively. He agreed to only one televised debate.

A lot of bloggers are criticising the Times on this one. I am not so sure. While the media should have forced Lautenberg to come out of his hole, so should the citizens of New Jersey. This man was allowed to hide during the primary and again in the general election.

New Jersey should take a page out of the Pennsylvania book. Every Presidential election, they are a battleground state. New Jersey doesn't really even mobilize either side. No issues are discussed or debated here. Everything is debated in PA. We are rapidly becomming a corrupt welfare state. And Pennsylvania has become a player that matters on the national stage.

And Frank Lautenberg sitting in his easy chair refusing to campaign, debate or discuss the issues is responsible. And so are we.

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Courier Post Endorses Zimmer

In the continuing saga of the New Jersey's secret Senate campaign, one newspaper has had enough.

In the spring, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg defeated U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews of Haddon Heights in the Democratic primary for the Senate nomination. Since then, Lautenberg has laid low, so low, in fact, that his race against Republican Dick Zimmer, a former congressman, has gone virtually unnoticed in a year when politics are on just about everyone's mind.

No one in this state is happy with the status quo. Whether or not the Democrats who control it want to admit it, they have performed abysmally. While other states were getting their fiscal house in order the past several years, the New Jersey governor and legislature has been simultaneously stealing the citizens blind (convictions of Democrat politicians number over 100 and rising) and bankrupting the state. They only know how to spend and have absolutely no self control. It is time for a change but the citizens in this state don't get it.

Zimmer, who spent six years in the House of Representatives in the 1990s representing Central Jersey, is not the most electric candidate in the world. But he knows the issues and he's got a pedigree when it comes to opposing any and all tax increases. And he recognizes just how off-kilter things are in New Jersey, where residents pay the highest amount in the nation in total taxes when local, county, state and federal taxes are all put together. We're first in taxes and, as Zimmer also points out, 50th out of 50 states in getting money back from Washington. New Jersey gets just 61 cents back in federal funding for projects here for every $1 in taxes we send to Washington.

Lautenberg, who's been in the Senate since 1982 except for a two-year hiatus in 2001 and 2002, has had his chance to reverse that trend and done nothing. Worse, he failed to really acknowledge the seriousness of this problem at the meeting Thursday, instead defending his performance by touting a few institutions he's gotten money for over the years.

And the biggest joke in all of this is that Lautenberg had to be embarrassed out of his hidey-hole to even participate in the debate this past week. He doesn't feel the need to address the issues and deal with voters. But then, I often wonder whether the real reason he is hiding is that he may no longer be completely in control of his faculties. If he is so proud of what he has done for New Jersey, come out and tell us Frank.

Read the endorsement here.

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Lautenberg comes out of hiding - Debate today with Zimmer!

Our Senator has finally come out of hiding and will be debating Dick Zimmer today from 2-3:30. It is clearly about time for him to make at least a pretense of answering to the voters. I don't care who the candidate is and even if I really liked them, if someone I supported refused to come out of hiding and discuss the issues, that would be the end of my vote. Unfortunately, many voters just don't seem to care.

Click HERE to watch the debate between 2-3:30.

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Still Looking for Lautenberg!

Our state Senator Frank Lautenberg continues to hide from any kind of interaction with his opponent. You see, the Senator doesn't feel he should dignify the citizens of New Jersey with any substantive discussions of policy, priorities or any of his plans for the state for the next six years. Dick Zimmer is trying to get him to come out of his cave:

But Frank Lautenberg, the man who now holds the job, has pretty much ignored Mr. Zimmer, the Delaware Township Republican who entered the primary race at the last minute and went on to win the nomination.


Mr. Zimmer's campaign has appeared at what he calls the boondoogle Secaucus train station named after Mr. Lautenberg, issued press releases on what he calls wasteful spending Mr. Lautenberg has voted for, and used a cardboard cutout of the senator to illustrate that Mr. Lautenberg won't stand on the same stage with him. There's only one scheduled debate, and that's the Saturday night before the election.

"He's showing disrespect to the voters and the governmental process," said Mr. Zimmer. "It's a matter of good government that a man who seeks to represent the state for six years should explain why he deserves to be elected.

We will continue to look for the Senator and see if he decides to every answer anything from anyone in this state. What is actually criminal is that no media or the citizens of this state seem to care. That is pathetic. It is even more pathetic when you consider that he only got the job through a Democrat scam after their former corrupt Senator had to bow out the last time.

Read the entire article here.

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Good Govt NJ Style - Hide the Senator!

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has decided to come off his mountain and debate Dick Zimmer on November 1, 2008. The State of New Jersey is awash in government corruption scandals. The perpetrators in these scandals are almost exclusively Democrats. Lautenberg is allegedly one of the parties leaders and yet, he refuses to debate, speak or really appear in public that much.

At the heart of good government is the access citizens have to the process and the people who run it. Every citizen of this state has a right and a responsibility to hear from the candidates from elected dog catcher to governor to (yes, Mr Lautenberg) Senator. Yet, Frank Lautenberg refuses to even pretend that he has to act like he wants our votes. True, this state has a lot of people who will vote for this man because they are told to by their union or their boss. But there are also people in New Jersey that want to hear from the man.

But even then we are shortchanged. For example, in a recent Newsday story about King Frank agreeing to a late debate, there were plenty of quotes from Zimmer. But from Lautenberg-only a "spokesman". This was the same trend during the primary. Is this man even alive anymore? Can someone check his pulse? (I can't wait for a spokesman for Lautenberg to issue a press release that yes indeed, the senator is alive)

New Jersey citizens have a right to hear from you Mr Lautenberg.

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Zimmer hold Lautenberg Accountable

For far too long, Senator Frank Lautenberg has been happy to thoroughly trash his opponents whether they are Democrats or Republicans. His engine to spew slime is as well known as the corrupt tactics that put him in office the second time around after his corrupt predecessor was forced to withdraw he bid for re-election. But in a response to an editorial, Dick Zimmer took some serious shots at Lautenberg record in this article from the Dailyrecord.com:

Our incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., certainly has never agreed with your contention that the gap between what New Jersey sends to Washington and what we get back is a phony issue. Back in 1982, when he first ran for the Senate, he complained that we ranked 45th out of the 50 states in the percentage of our tax dollars we got back from Washington and promised that he would change it. He certainly did. As your editorial correctly notes, we now rank dead last among all 50 states, a position we have held for many years. We currently receive back only 61 cents for every dollar we send to Washington.

These are serious words from a congressman with a solid track record of fiscal responsibility. While he will likely be completely sullied throughout this process by the Lautenberg machine, we shouldn't ignore some of the facts that represent our current Senator's record. Lautenberg will try to make this about Zimmers record while refusing to talk about his own. But he has one.

Lautenberg has not only failed New Jerseyans on the money we get from Washington, but he has failed us on the taxes we send there as well. He opposed the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 on the grounds that they benefit the "rich." But, because New Jerseyans' incomes are relatively high, our state benefited from those tax cuts 33 percent more per capita than the nation as a whole. In fact, 3.4 million New Jersey tax payers saw savings because of the cuts. If Lautenberg had his way, and those tax cuts never went into effect, the return on each dollar we paid in taxes would not have been 61 cents; it would have been only 58 cents. Yet, Lautenberg wants to repeal most of those tax cuts.

This piece is a must read. Let's take Senator Lautenberg to task for once.

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