My conservative friends are upset that Jack Ciattarelli chose Diane Allen as his running mate in the race for governor. They argue that he should have picked some solid conservative instead and run to the right.
When has that ever worked?
The last Republican to try that trick was Bret Schundler 20 years ago. The former Jersey City mayor got shellacked by Jim McGreevey.
You have to go all the way back to Charles Sandman to find another example.
That Cape May County conservative turned out to be a total disaster for the GOP. In the 1973 primary, Sandman knocked off a sitting Republican governor, William Cahill. He then went on to lose the general election to Brendan Byrne in a historic landslide.
So much for running to the right.
Governor’s races in New Jersey are won in the middle. And that’s where Ciattarelli positioned his campaign with his nomination for lieutenant governor.
Former state senator Allen has some strengths not readily apparent to those who live north of the Raritan River. She had a long career in Philadelphia TV news before she first ran for the state Legislature. In the South Jersey media market she has built-in name recognition.
She’s very articulate and is well-positioned to take shots at Murphy, which she began doing the moment her nomination was announced last week.
“It seems all the women in his orbit are put aside,” Allen said of Murphy. “They’re thought of as less than. And the men seem to always be taken care of.”
That’s a good issue to exploit at a time when the Democratic governor of neighboring New York is in the middle of a sexual-harassment scandal. And Allen is the ideal candidate to exploit it.
This pick also helps the Republicans blunt the Democrats’ main line of attack on Ciattarelli. That’s the charge that he is a Donald Trump clone who in the words of one Democratic insider “never misses an opportunity to appeal to the most extreme fringes of his right-wing base.”
New Jersey Democratic State Committee spokesman Phil Swibinski leveled that charge before the choice of Allen was announced. But she is the moderates’ moderate. It’s tough to pigeonhole her as a Trumper.
Another moderate Republican, Assembly minority leader Jon Bramnick of Union County, told me Murphy “is running against the Trump brand.”
Ciattarelli will be helped, Bramnick said, “by having a reasonable Republican on his side.”
Bramnick, the most prominent Trump critic in the New Jersey GOP, said that while The Donald was president, “he motivated a lot of independents and Democrats in New Jersey” to vote - against Republicans.
But Trump’s no longer the president. New Jersey is one of just two states with gubernatorial elections this year, so this will be one of the first major elections in the post-Trump era. I suspect his influence will be greatly diminished.
My conservative friends argue the party base won’t turn out for a ticket that has Allen on it because of her pro-choice stance and her history of pushing for women’s rights. But if Allen won’t energize the base, then Murphy certainly will.
His remark that he wants to make New Jersey “the California of the East Coast” would fire up any conservative I’ve ever met.
If that doesn’t work then there’s his statement that “if you’re a one-issue voter and tax rate is your issue, either a family or a business, we’re probably not your state.”
True enough. But why say it out loud?
“That hurt him,” said Bramnick. “He couldn’t use Trump to cover that one.”
No, he couldn’t. Taxes, particularly property taxes, remain a big issue for Jersey voters, particularly in those sprawling townships in the middle of the state where in 2009 Chris Christie piled up the margins that allowed him to defeat the prior governor from Goldman Sachs.
Jon Corzine ran up the usual margins in the big cities, but Christie countered by appealing to suburbanites in places like Ocean County, which gave him a 70,000-vote plurality.
He didn’t do it by running to the right. Actually Christie spent that campaign running from the right, avoiding thorny topics like abortion and guns. It was only when he made it to the national stage that Christie began to characterize himself as a conservative.
Murphy’s been characterizing himself as a liberal – or “progressive” is you prefer - from the moment he entered state politics. During all that time I never saw him take any action that would diminish his standing among the interest groups that make up the Democratic Party.
I suspect that he has big plans for the future.
But when it comes to the present, he seems to be leaving the middle of the playing field wide open.
You can hardly blame Ciattarelli for moving into the gap.
ADD - SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT THAT MELLENCAMP SONG, IT’S GOT A GREAT GUITAR RIFF:
I noticed some of my fellow journalists are having fun with the lyrics to the song that the Ciattarelli campaign adopted as its theme. The problem is that the title character. Jack, wants to take Diane behind a shade tree and do what he pleases.
As Andrew Cuomo is finding out. you can’t get away with that sort of thing these days. But I doubt the campaign will be hurt by the song. No one but us writers actually listens to lyrics. That’s why Donald Trump could get away with playing the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” during his campaigns.
Mellencamp’s opening guitar riff is as memorable as the Keith Richards riff in that song about meeting a gin-soaked barroom cream in Memphis.
And a riff is all you need to open up a campaign event.
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With his choice of Diane Allen as his running mate, Jack Ciattarelli moves to occupy the middle | Mushine - NJ.com
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