NJ Democrat Van Drew To Switch Parties

Republicans are celebrating the rumored defection of Democrat Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey congressman and one of two Democrats who voted against authorization of the House impeachment inquiry. Van Drew’s decision to leave the Democratic Party became public on Saturday after the congressman met with President Trump on Friday.

As of this writing, Rep. Van Drew does not appear to have spoken publicly to confirm his plan to switch parties. The congressman’s website was last updated on Dec. 12 and he has not tweeted since Dec. 13 and neither references changing parties.  

While Republicans link Van Drew’s defection to impeachment, polling makes that connection questionable, at least as interpreted by Trump apologists. A recent Fox News poll shows 50 percent of voters in support of impeachment. That number is likely to be higher in deep-blue New Jersey. A poll from back in October showed that support New Jersey voters backed impeachment by 50-36 percent.

Van Drew, who was first elected to Congress last year, represents New Jersey’s second district. In 2018, he won the seat that was being vacated by the retiring Republican Frank LoBiondo with 52 percent of the vote.  The district voted for Trump in 2016 but sided with Barack Obama in the two prior presidential elections. LoBiondo, who was first elected in 1994, won the 2016 election with 59 percent of the vote.

Rep. Van Drew is among the most conservative Democrats per Govtrack’s ideology chart, but his voting record would still place him to the left of all House Republicans. Van Drew scores seven percent on FiveThirtyEight’s Trump scoring scale. Regarding his record on other hot button issues, he gets a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood and zero from National Right to Life.  While he scores poorly on taxes with a nine percent rating from Americans for Prosperity, he did garner 80 percent from the National Rifle Association. On conservative issues, he gets 36 percent from the American Conservative Union and a zero from Conservative Review. If he was an established Republican, Van Drew would be listed among the “rinos.”

If Van Drew doesn’t fit well with Republicans, he also is not a typical Democrat. Politico reported that Democratic leaders were losing patience with the soon-to-be-runaway congressman over a number of votes that had angered the liberal base. As a state senator, he voted against gay marriage, increasing the minimum wage and numerous gun control bills. Progressives already considered Van Drew to be something of a Democrat-in-name-only, but it was his rogue vote on impeachment that caused the most trouble.

“The large majority of our party in Cumberland really isn’t or wasn’t happy with [Van Drew’s] approach on impeachment,” Doug Long, a former Cumberland County, N.J. Democratic chairman, said. “That really has little to do with local politics, until it becomes a part of local politics.”

Several Democrats were reportedly planning to primary Van Drew next year and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, cited a recent internal poll which found that 58 percent of second district primary voters wanted a different candidate. Only 28 percent supported incumbent Van Drew.

“What he's reacting to is public polling that shows he can't get renominated,” Nadler said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Van Drew may not be able to secure the 2020 nomination as a Republican either. Even though New Jersey is a left-leaning state, Republican primary voters will be more conservative than the state as a whole. The liberal side of Van Drew’s record is likely to be a liability.

Three Republicans have already declared their candidacy for Van Drew’s seat. One, Brian Fitzherbert, accused the soon-to-be-former-Democrat of “trying to use South Jersey Republicans to cling onto his power.”

“How stupid does Desperate Jeff Van Drew think South Jersey Republicans are? Desperate Jeff knew exactly what Washington Democrats were about when he ran for Congress two years ago,” Fitzberhert said in a statement.

In the big picture, Van Drew’s defection is a win for Republicans and provides a welcome respite from the bad news of the Ukraine scandal, but, under the surface, his flight from the Democratic Party likely has less to do with moral qualms about Democratic positions than with the unpopularity of his stance against impeachment with second district Democrats.

Van Drew’s move may not be enough to preserve his seat. New Jersey Democrats will be angry at him and Republicans will look to more conservative candidates. Moderates and independents are unlikely to trust him after his party switch less than a year into his term.

If Van Drew is able to mount a successful re-election campaign, he may well become a thorn in the side of the GOP. He seems to sympathize with Republicans on a precious few issues aside from impeachment. However, in the modern Republican Party, loyalty to Donald Trump often seems to trump all else.

Originally published on The Resurgent

New Jersey Senate Race Moves To Tossup

Republicans got another breath of fresh air today when the Cook Political Report moved the New Jersey Senate race to tossup status. Senator Bob Menendez, the Democrat incumbent, has been saddled with ethics problems that give the Republicans a chance to flip his seat in this dark blue state.

Sen. Menendez had been charged with granting political favors in exchange for donations. He was acquitted on some charges last January after a jury failed to reach a verdict on the 18 counts against him last year. The Justice Department declined to retry Menendez on the other counts and dropped the charges. After his acquittal, the Senate Ethics Committee admonished Menendez in April for accepting gifts without proper approval. Despite his legal problems, Menendez won the Democratic primary with 62 percent of the vote.

Menendez began the race with a 20-point advantage over Bob Hugin, a healthcare CEO, but the Republican challenger has closed the race to single digits. The most recent public poll, posted on Oct. 24, gave Menendez a five-point lead. Menendez leads in the Real Clear Politics average by 7.7 points.

Other forecasters have not followed Cook’s lead in moving the race toward the Republicans. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball still rates New Jersey as “likely Democrat” and FiveThirtyEight’s forecasting model makes Menendez a heavy favorite with a 90 percent chance of winning and an estimated vote share of 53 percent.

Even if Menendez ultimately holds onto his seat, the tightening race means that Democrats will have to pour more money and effort into retaining a seat that should have been secure. That means that fewer resources will be directed toward the tossup for races for Republican seats that Democrats need to win in order to build a Senate majority.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Elections Should Be Wake Up Call For GOP

Despite the trope that “all politics is local,” it is difficult to see last night’s election results as anything but a rebuke to President Trump and the Republican Party. Exit polls indicated that resistance to President Trump was a large factor in the Democrat landslide.

Politico reports that half of Virginia voters said that their vote was about Trump. Thirty-four percent of Virginia voters said they were voting to oppose Trump while 17 percent were voting to support the president.

Forty-seven percent of Virginia voters strongly disapproved of President Trump and Democrat Ralph Northam won 95 percent of those voters. Starting with a disadvantage of almost half of the electorate meant that Republican Ed Gillespie needed almost unanimous support among other groups. He did not find it, however, losing 53-45 percent.

In New Jersey, where the outgoing governor is the unpopular Republican Chris Christie, 28 percent of voters said that their vote was against the president, whose approval rating in the state is at 36 percent. Only 11 percent were voting in support of Donald Trump. Democrat Phil Murphy carried the governor’s race over Republican Kim Guadagno by 55-42 percent.

Politico notes that Gillespie and Guadagno both won the segment of the electorate that said that President Trump was not a factor. However, the margins (15 points for Gillespie and six points for Guadagno) were not enough to overcome the strong anti-Trump bloc.

To cap off the Democrat victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race, the party also picked up at least 13 seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates. The landslide is the largest in more than 100 years and includes a trans woman (i.e. a man) and a former newscaster whose girlfriend was murdered on live television in 2015.

New Jersey is deep blue and Virginia is bluish purple these days, so Republicans may try to write off these losses to traditional voting patterns. That does not explain the loss of two seats in Georgia’s state House of Representatives, however. The two seats were in districts near Athens and have historically been solidly Republican.

The biggest takeaway from the elections is that President Trump has no coattails. Trump won because of Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity and lacks a mandate for his agenda. After starting with a popular vote defeat, Trump’s behavior while in office has caused support for his presidency and the Republican Party to erode.

Republican candidates in 2018 are between a rock and a hard place. Trump’s strong support in the GOP makes it difficult to distance themselves from the unpopular president. On the other hand, if they don’t move away from Trump, they face the possibility of losses in the general election.

Originally published on the Resurgent 

The good, the bad and the ugly: A balanced look at Chris Christie

 

When Examiner published an article last week detailing how Chris Christie was the current Republican frontrunner for the 2016 elections as well as the only Republican who currently beats the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, it set off a firestorm of indignation among some conservatives. Many deride Christie as a “RINO” who would be almost as bad as Clinton. Others go further and claim that Christie is a Democrat in disguise. A number of angry conservatives say that Christie is dead to them.

A good place to start when trying to determine whether a Republican is a RINO is the American Conservative Union. The ACU rates members of Congress and state legislatures by their votes and determines whether they are “true conservatives” or not. In a previous article, Examiner found that most Republicans who are commonly labeled RINOs easily pass Ronald Reagan’s 80 percent rule. The ACU does not rate governors, however, so one must examine Gov. Christie’s record in New Jersey.

The Good

There are many aspects of Christie’s career that conservatives can cheer. The governor seems to be an authentic fiscal conservative. John Nichols of The Nation, a liberal site, says that Christie is in the mold of Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Nichols cites a long list of complaints that include raising the retirement age for state employees and increasing their required contribution for insurance and retirement plans, opposing tax increases on the wealthy, vetoing minimum wage hikes and pay equity bills, and trimming state budgets. Christie has taken on New Jersey’s public employee unions and won. One teacher’s union leader even publicly wished him dead in a tasteless joke in 2009.

Christie has not raised taxes during his time as governor. Politifact does note that he cut several tax credits such as the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Homestead Benefit, which provides a credit on property insurance. The EITC is a refundable credit that can be paid out to individual filers even if they have no tax liability. Politifact also confirmed that Christie balanced New Jersey’s budget as its constitution requires. Christie has also taken steps to fix New Jersey’s underfunded pension program according to the Trentonian. New Jersey’s pension problems are not resolved, but underfunded pensions are a national crisis that many states and cities have not even begun to address according to CNBC.

Christie is pro-life. In 2011, New Jersey News described Christie’s remarks before a pro-life rally at the statehouse in which he said that “every life is precious and a gift from God” and noted that he had cut funding for Planned Parenthood. Christie urged the activists “to speak calmly and clearly and forthrightly for the idea that this is an issue whose time has come.” Salon describes Christie’s conversion from a “non-thinking pro-choice person, kind of the default position” when he heard his unborn daughter’s heartbeat as seemingly much more genuine than Mitt Romney’s.

Christie’s appeal to minorities is also a very good thing for conservatives. As reported by Examiner after his re-election victory, exit polls from New Jersey show that Gov. Christie made deep inroads into Barack Obama’s core constituencies. Christie won female voters by 15 percent even though the Democratic candidate, Barbara Buono, was a woman. He also won Hispanic voters outright with 51 percent (compared to Buono’s 45 percent). Although Christie did not win the black vote, at 21 percent his percentage of the black vote was three times greater than Romney’s. A successful Republican presidential candidate will have to appeal to minority voters.

With respect to global warming and climate change, the Huffington Post noted that when Christie ran for governor in 2009, he had “an impressive green agenda” on his website according to the New Jersey Environmental Federation, but that it has remained only on the website. Since then, he told a town hall meeting in 2010 that he was “a little skeptical” that humans are responsible for climate change. The Post story goes on to say that Christie withdrew New Jersey from the Northeast’s regional cap-and-trade plan, weakened the state’s renewable energy standard and used $210 million from the state’s clean energy fund to balance the budget. On the other hand, Christie opposed oil drilling and liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities off the New Jersey coast.

The Bad

The news about Christie isn’t all good for conservatives, however. For example, Christie accepted the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act. He justified approving the expansion by noting that New Jersey’s Medicaid program was already so large that the potential expansion of the program under Obamacare was minimal, a claim confirmed by Politifact. Christie did veto a bill making the expansion permanent, telling N.J. Spotlight that if the terms of the expansion change “because of adverse actions by the Obama administration, I will end it as quickly as it started.” Republican governors John Kasich of Ohio and Mike Pence of Indiana also accepted the Obamacare Medicaid money according to the N.Y. Times.

Many conservatives also do not like Christie’s position on gun control. In 2009, Christie told Sean Hannity that he supported “common sense laws that will allow people to protect themselves” but also favored some gun control measures that would protect police. He noted that the state’s Democratic legislature would not allow easing restrictions on guns.

In the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, Christie established a task force to “responsibly expand New Jersey’s strict gun control measures” according to the Washington Times’ Emily Miller. Christie signed 10 gun control bills into law, including a measure that required the state to submit mental health records to the FBI for instant background checks, but vetoed three others, including a ban a .50 caliber rifles. The NRA hailed the vetoes even though the group rated Christie as a “C.”

On same sex marriage, Christie is also at odds with many conservatives. In October 2013, he dropped the state’s appeal of a court decision striking down New Jersey’s marriage law in spite of the fact that he had previously vetoed a bill that would have allowed same sex marriages. The decision can likely be explained by the fact that previous court decisions made it very unlikely that Christie would have prevailed in court. Additionally, it is clear that the people of New Jersey supported the redefinition of marriage. A Rutgers Eagleton poll at the time showed that 61 percent of New Jersey voters favored marriage for same-sex couples compared to only 27 percent who were opposed. Sixty-seven percent opposed continuing the appeal. Even the state’s Republicans were almost evenly split on the court decision and whether to appeal although slight majorities of Republicans opposed both. Coming right before the election, pursuing the unpopular appeal could have sunk Christie’s campaign.

Christie’s decision to sign a bipartisan bill banning gay reparative therapy is harder to justify. Politico reported that Christie’s note accompanying the bill said that he believed that people were born gay and denied that homosexuality is a sin, a position inconsistent with his Catholic faith. A similar ban in California was challenged on First Amendment grounds and upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2013. At least two lawsuits have been filed against New Jersey’s ban according to NJ.com.

Christie’s appointment of Sohail Mohammed to the New Jersey Superior Court was also controversial. Mohammed is a native of India who immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager. As an attorney, he specialized in immigration law and represented dozens of immigrants who were detained in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mohammed’s career is profiled on Superlawyers.com.

The criticism of Mohammed seems to stem mostly from the fact that he is a Muslim and the fear that he might help to institute sharia law in New Jersey. Some critics also point to his ties with the American Muslim Union which some believe is tied to Islamic terrorists. Of the controversy, Christie said in the Wall St. Journal, “It's just crazy, and I'm tired of dealing with the crazies.”

Speaking of immigration, Republican hardliners won’t like the governor’s history on illegal immigration. In 2008 when he was a federal prosecutor, Christie told a gathering of Latinos that illegal immigration was a civil, not criminal, matter and that, technically speaking, illegal immigrants are not committing a crime by being in the country illegally according to NJ.com. Although he is correct, “illegal [unlawful] presence” is a civil violation, not a misdemeanor or felony, Christie drew criticism from conservatives for the remark. New York Magazine noted that Christie only prosecuted 13 illegal immigration cases between 2002 and 2007, a very low number considering New Jersey’s status as a port of entry the state’s large immigrant population. In December 2013, Politico reported that Christie had announced that he planned to sign New Jersey’s DREAM Act.

The Ugly

One of the hardest things for conservatives to get past may be Christie’s “bro-mance” with President Obama. When Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey and New York a week before the 2012 election, the two executives toured storm damaged areas and traded compliments. A famous photo shows the two men shaking hands, Obama resting his hand on Christie’s shoulder, in Atlantic City on Oct. 31, 2012. Many conservatives, such as pollster and pundit Dick Morris, blame Christie for making Obama look like a bipartisan leader, an appraisal that had eluded him for the previous four years.

An Examiner analysis of 2012 exit polls found that 64 percent of voters said that the president’s response to the hurricane was a factor in their vote and 62 percent of these voters chose Obama. Both Rasmussen and Gallup polling showed an uptick in Obama’s approval ratings in the days after Hurricane Sandy struck New York.

There are several theories as to why Christie, who actively supported Mitt Romney, became a cheerleader for Barack Obama less than a week before a very close election. The most likely answer is that Christie was doing what he thought was best for his state. It probably did not hurt that the move was also good for Chris Christie. The governor’s approval rating jumped to 70 percent after the storm according to Philly.com.

In the end, Chris Christie can’t be accurately termed a RINO, but neither is he a hardcore conservative. If he were, he would be unelectable in a state as blue as New Jersey. In reality, Christie seems to be a fiscal conservative who is moderate on most social issues. Christie’s views might play well with moderate voters in a general election, but the recent shift towards libertarianism by many in the Republican Party makes it unlikely that he will get past the primary unless other candidates split the votes of social conservatives and Tea Partiers.

Read this on Examiner.com:

The Good - The Bad - The Ugly

Elections hint at problems for Dems

Democrats are still celebrating the victory of Terry McAuliffe over Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, but the elections on Nov. 5 should ring alarm bells for the Democratic Party. Chris Christie’s resounding victory in New Jersey showed that Republicans can be competitive in blue states while McAuliffe’s margin in Virginia was much narrower than expected.

The McAuliffe campaign raised and spent far more than Cuccinelli. Politico reports that McAuliffe outraised Cuccinelli by almost $15 million. The funding disparity meant that Cuccinelli was not able to air campaign ads in the final two weeks of the campaign.

The Republican Party has been criticized for not providing support to Cuccinelli, but the Politico article points out that the Republican National Committee spent $3 million on the Cuccinelli campaign while the Republican Governor’s Association spent $8.3 million. Dick Morris points out that Republicans tried to aid Cuccinelli when the race became competitive in late October, but at that point it was too late to buy air time for ads.

A bigger problem than the lack of money from political groups was Cuccinelli’s lack of fundraising prowess. The Cuccinelli campaign raised only $11.7 million compared to McAuliffe’s $28 million. The Washington Post notes that businessmen who previously supported Republican Bob McDonnell backed McAuliffe this year, making it difficult for Cuccinelli to raise funds.

The bad news for Democrats is that the mountains of cash that McAuliffe spent barely eked out a victory, even with a Libertarian candidate drawing Cuccinelli voters by a margin of two to one. As previously reported by Examiner, McAuliffe’s double digit lead in mid-October had all but evaporated by the end of the month. The likely reason for McAuliffe’s difficulties was the steady stream of bad news relating to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Unless a dramatic change occurs over the next year, Obamacare may prove to be a drag on Democratic candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

Voter demographics in the Virginia race are also troubling for Democrats. Strategist and pollster Dick Morris points out that a major question in surveying the race was whether turnout would mirror 2012 or 2010. Exit polls show that turnout closely resembled the off-year election of 2010. The surge of minority Democrats that propelled Barack Obama to two election victories in Virginia did not materialize when he was not on the ballot in either 2010 or this week.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post agrees. “A Republican looking at these numbers should feel disappointed by last night's election but hopeful about next year's,” he says, noting that the core demographics of Obama’s electoral success, women, minorities, and young voters, all decreased as a percentage of the electorate, as did the percentage of Virginia voters identifying as Democrats.

With Barack Obama off the ballot, his ability to get out the vote is considerably curtailed. Obama’s ability to rally voters may get worse as his approval rating drops with disappointment in Obamacare. A Gallup poll from Nov. 5 showed Obama’s approval rating at 39 percent, a historic low. If the makeup of voters in 2014 resembles the electorate in Virginia from this week, the Democrats may suffer a defeat similar to the 2010 Republican congressional landslide. Democratic hopes for winning control of the House are in jeopardy and with 20 Senate Democrats up for reelection Republican control of both houses of Congress is a very real possibility.

Chris Christie’s victory in New Jersey presents a different set of problems for Democrats. Although Christie is reviled by Tea Party Republicans as a “RINO,” the New Jersey governor has proven adept at reaching into traditional Democratic vote strongholds.

Exit polls from New Jersey show that Gov. Christie made deep inroads into Barack Obama’s core constituencies. Christie won women voters by 15 percent even though the Democratic candidate, Barbara Buono, was a woman. He also won Hispanic voters outright with 51 percent (compared to Buono’s 45 percent). Although Christie did not win the black vote, at 21 percent his percentage of the black vote was almost two-and-a-half times greater than Cuccinelli’s (eight percent).

Some Republicans would charge that Christie’s success is a result of abandoning traditional conservative principles. Christie claims to be a conservative and John Nichols wrote in The Nation that he is right. According to Nichols, Christie cultivates a moderate image to appeal to New Jersey’s voters, but his policies are in line with other Republican governors.

Nichols details how Christie has enacted Wisconsin-style “austerity” in New Jersey and clashed repeatedly with unions. He pulled the state out of a regional carbon emissions program, scaled back renewable energy targets, and vetoed a plan for early voting. Christie’s record on social issues is also conservative. He is pro-life and defunded Planned Parenthood from the New Jersey budget. He also vetoed New Jersey’s gay marriage law.

Christie’s conservative record is not perfect, however. As the L.A. Times pointed out on Nov. 5, Christie his support for in-state tuition for illegal aliens will trouble the right. He also dropped a state appeal to a New Jersey Supreme Court decision that allowed marriages to proceed and signed a bill banning gay conversion therapy. Christie also has a mixed record on gun control. Many Republicans will not easily forget or forgive Christie’s “bro-mance” with President Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Nevertheless, a Gallup poll from June found that Christie is the most popular Republican politician. The poll found that Christie had approval ratings of greater than 50 percent with members of both parties as well as the public at large. No other Republican topped 50 percent outside the party. Even if Christie is not the Republican nominee in 2016, his success shows that Republicans can win in blue states without abandoning their principles.

Taken together, the two elections this week portend a difficult future for Democrats. President Obama’s legacy, the problem-ridden Affordable Care Act, could spell disaster for many Democratic candidates just as the president becomes unable to help them.

Originally published on Elections Examiner