During Christie's term, Democratic boss George Norcross has become more powerful than everSo far this weekend, crackpot right-wing governor Paul LePage (R-ME) and crackpot ex-Governor Jan Brewer (AZ) endorsed Herr Trumpf in the wake of Chris Christie joining Team Trumpf.
Bonnie knows what team she's playing for-- New Jersey's working familiesWhen Blue America decided to endorse Bonnie Watson Coleman one thing that weighed heavily on our decision was how-- when the climate was tough-- Bonnie stuck with Barbara Buono while the Linda Greenstein was running ads touting her fealty to Christie. It drove many of us at Blue America up the wall at the time and it made our endorsement of Bonnie pretty much inevitable.
Symbols of New Jersey's transpartisan and all-pervasive corruption: Norcross (D) and Christie (R)One of my personal favorite candidates last year was Barbara Buono. It wasn't just because of her sparkling personality and her warmth and her courage, it was also for her forward-thinking ideas and her amazing platform.
On Meet The Press yesterday, Chris Matthews ended the segment on the rapidly expanding Chris Christie scandal by pointing out that Christie's greatest hit in the eyes of the general public was how much of an activist, on-the-ground leader he was when Hurricane Sandy devastated wide swathes of New Jersey. Matthews pointed out the incongruity of Christie's supposed nowhere-to-be-found posture when his aides shut down the George Washington Bridge for 4 days.
"They are the children of Buono voters."When Blue America endorsed Barbara Buono for governor of New Jersey last year, it wasn't because she's pretty and it wasn't because she's a Democrat. It's because she's an outstanding, principled progressive and because she was running against the corrupt transpartisan New Jersey political machine headed by one of America's worse governors ever, Chris Christie.
The race most people were most interested in today was the lesser-of-two evils gubernatorial election in Virginia. As expected, the lesser of two evils, Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe, won.
Today everyone thinks it's wonderful that the Clinton's corrupt bagman, Terry McAuliffe, is going to win the Virginia governorship. Even I can admit that he's probably better than the Republican alternative, Ken Cuccinelli, an extreme right-wing ideologue and crazy-eyed fanatic. But what a heartbreak that election is! It's the ultimate "lesser-of-two-evils" choice. In New Jersey, the election is anything but that-- a Republican that hides his Cuccinelli side and poses as a "moderate" and one of the best candidates the Democrats have put up for any election, anywhere.
Let me say that Blue America has enthusiastically endorsed state Senator Barbara Buono for governor of New Jersey. We've seen what a terrible governor Chris Christie has been and what a consistent and independent voice for progressive policies Barbara has been and it was really a no brainer. And we're glad Barbara has put his polling lead in half.
I feel badly that we haven't found any good progressive women running for Congress yet and that so far all the Blue America-endorsed candidates are men. On the other hand-- aside from the cycle being young-- all of our candidates for governor are women.
Rahm Emanuel was never a big fan of Hillary Clinton. Perhaps that's why he's been giving the thumbs up to his wealthy Wall Street supporters who want to write checks to Chris Christie's gubernatorial campaign, like hedge fund crook/billionaire Ken Griffin, one of Emanuel's top supporters.
