JCbiscuit wrote:
It always bothered me that this never gets more than a passing mention. I think it's a way bigger deal than bridgegate:

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/17/the_c ... tivated_political_scheme/

So Christie called for the special election to be held on?Oct. 16 ?three weeks before Election Day. At the time of his decision, Christie said that ?The costs associated with having the special election and primary, in my mind, cannot be measured against the value of having an elected member of the U.S. Senate. I don?t know what the costs are and quite frankly I don?t care.??

The idea that Christie valued having a new Democratic senator in Congress for three additional weeks above any amount of money is about as laughable as it sounds. In private, his advisers knew full well that the decision was a blatant, if clever, act of political maneuvering: as the?New York Times?recently?reported, one said after the announcement that ?We?re playing 3-D chess while [Democrats] are playing checkers.? ?

Still not convinced this was a scandal? There is a strong case to be made that last year?s New Jersey special election was the most unnecessary statewide election in American history. ?

Consider just how unprecedented this move was. In the century since the passage of the 17th?amendment in April 1913, establishing popular vote elections for Senate, there have been 113 U.S. Senate special elections. Of those 113, 85 were held at the same time as congressional elections in an even year and three were held at the same time as gubernatorial elections in an odd year, so they did not require an additional election. An additional 14 were held in odd years when neither Congress nor a governor was being elected, because the time before the next regular election was too long to leave the seat vacant. Four more elections were held in January of even years, still long before the congressional elections, and two were held in December of even years after deaths of senators late in the election cycle. The remaining four were held in April, May, June and September of even years; three of the four occurred before 1920 and the other was held alongside a statewide party primary in June of 1960. ? ?

That leaves one outlier: New Jersey in October 2013, a gubernatorial election year. In sum, there has been only a single other Senate special election held between January and November in a statewide election year in the last 95 years (the 1960 election). The three U.S. Senate special elections that will occur this year will all be held in November in tandem with the midterm congressional elections. ??

As it happens, there are two good reasons why no one ever wants to hold statewide elections unless they really need to. First, statewide elections are very expensive. The special election last year cost New Jersey taxpayers some $12 million, and that?s not even including the productivity lost from the time voters had to spend getting to the polls and waiting in line to vote. (By way of comparison,?Time magazine?estimates?that Bridgegate cost somewhere between $7 million and $21 million worth of hours of productivity lost.). ?

Second, an additional election has an obvious impact on voter turnout and voter understanding. It?s not a surprise that the special election in New Jersey had extraordinarily low turnout ? just 24 percent of registered voters, which was lower than any general election in New Jersey history, including years when only the state Senate and state House were on the ballot. That dispersion of voter energy also contributed to a plunge in turnout during Christie?s reelection. The turnout on Election Day was less than 40 percent of registered voters, making it the lowest turnout for a gubernatorial election in state history and more than 7 percentage points lower than in Christie?s first win in 2009.

hero69 wrote:
i'm not surprised people most politicians in nj turned a blind eye to christie...nj politics seem to be just dirtty..it seems to me that there are just higher standards in ny, ct and pa.

Monroe wrote:
The politically motivated attacks on Christie are waning, he had a very good week. He raised more money ever in a month for the Republican Governor's group, the silly purported GWB helicopter fly by was proven to be the figment of the looney left's imagination, and AP did a study of all the emergency response logs and found not a single person was injured by the lane shutdowns that he had nothing to do with.

Monroe wrote:
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hero69 wrote:
well, they said romney and mccain were gonna win

Well, the press wasn't as, say, curious about the IRS targeting conservative groups (which Obama later apologized for) or about Obama lying about 'like your doctor, keep your doctor', or about the lying of Susan Rice about the terror attack in Benghazi that the administration tried to say was over a video, as they are about a traffic jam in Ft. Lee.

Monroe wrote:
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Annod wrote:
It's a snowstorm. Do you know where your governor is?

Where is Christie?

The big snowstorm (the one DeBlasio took all the heat for first, telling everyone to stay off the streets and then made kids go to school!) was done. The dusting we had yesterday was nothing. A guy can't take a vacation with his family during a dusting of snow? Jeez.

JCbiscuit wrote:
Another one bites the dust: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/christie-ally-lane-closures

07310 wrote:
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JCbiscuit wrote:
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drifterx wrote:
And yeah, bringing in DeBlasio to a conversation regarding NJ issues makes total sense.

almost as much sense as trying to engage Monroe in a reasonable discussion.

JC List wouldn't be complete if we didn't have a close minded far right partisan hack.

07310 wrote:
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JCbiscuit wrote:
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drifterx wrote:
And yeah, bringing in DeBlasio to a conversation regarding NJ issues makes total sense.

almost as much sense as trying to engage Monroe in a reasonable discussion.

JC List wouldn't be complete if we didn't have a close minded far right partisan hack.

JCbiscuit wrote:
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drifterx wrote:
And yeah, bringing in DeBlasio to a conversation regarding NJ issues makes total sense.

almost as much sense as trying to engage Monroe in a reasonable discussion.

drifterx wrote:
And yeah, bringing in DeBlasio to a conversation regarding NJ issues makes total sense.

Annod wrote:
It's a snowstorm. Do you know where your governor is?

Where is Christie?

07310 wrote:
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hero69 wrote:
he'sbusy raising money for gop governors

Those governors are busy running away from Christie as fast as they can.

hero69 wrote:
he'sbusy raising money for gop governors

hero69 wrote:
isn't christie just plain dirty. i'd vote for romney 100x before christie.

hero69 wrote:
well, they said romney and mccain were gonna win

12345 wrote: