The State of the New Jersey Voter

2011 is an important election year for the Garden State.  This should have been New Jersey voters’ big opportunity to turn things around.  Yet, according to pundits in the Media, they’re not hearing anything about the candidates.  If they don’t know anything about the candidates, you can be sure the voters don’t.  If hadn’t been for our former 8^th District candidate friend, Roland Stratten, we wouldn’t have, either.

What’s the problem?  Well, Gov. Christie’s announcement that due to Democrat redistricting, the elections will yield very few positive results for Conservatives didn’t help.  You can just hear the Reluctant Republican voter out there saying, “See?  It’s hopeless.  I told you so?”  (Isn’t that right, J.D.?)

J.D. is your consummate reluctant voter.  When I addressed the Morristown Tea Party in March 2009, he was my model for my argument about targeting the voters, not the politicians.  A registered Republican, he didn’t vote in the last election.  Fortunately for him, the Republican candidate in his district was a shoe-in.  However, unless I’m mistaken, those non-votes count in redistricting plans.  Use your vote, or lose it.  Every single vote does count.  He works very hard, is very good at what he does, and is a devoted husband, father, son, and homeowner.  But he’d rather be at his daughter’s soccer game than a political meeting.  Just like just about everyone else in New Jersey.

Another reason for the silence is there are few conservative voters because they’ve moved out of the state.  Wealthy people aren’t going to pay punitive property and income taxes.  They’re going to move to Texas, or some other place that believes in individual success and freedom.

Then, too, northern New Jersey is within the black-hole vicinity of the liberal New York Media.  The New Jersey media is a lost cause.  Yesterday, we learned that the editor of The Bergen Record (and they’re mild compared to the rabidly Democrat Star-Ledger) was either terminated or resigned under duress.  The less the Republicans say, the better.  Anything they do say will only be turned around.  The Democrats’ voters are secure.  The Republican voters are largely moderate, like J.D., and can be depended upon to go along to get along (I’m sorry, J.D.; I said I would beat you up.) 

But your job is now secure.  For now.  You know the company is looking at the Optional Federal Charter (the Community Reinvestment Act hasn't done us any favors, either).  What do you think is going to happen to your job when it goes through?  Your job has been secured at the cost of all of us outside your door here.  Not that I have a problem with that.  Sooner or later, you know you’ll be expected to leave New Jersey if you want to keep your job.  If you want to stay here in New Jersey, you might want to rethink joining the fight, joining up with the Morristown Tea Party.  They could use your help.  If the company tells you to support the OFC, you know you’ll have to – and you will – and then say farewell to your comfortable house there in western Morris County.

Maybe by the time that happens, your other kid will be in college and it won’t matter so much.  But you were the one who told me and LF, as we were driving through the rolling countryside of Pennsylvania that you’d never want to live anyplace else.  You’ve been to our Midwestern office.  You know what it’s like there.  You know what other people have said about what living in that part of the country is like.  How do you think you’ll like living there.

Our company is in transition.  Our co-workers who thought there might be a chance of staying here in New Jersey with this company have now been disabused of that notion.  Those who said they wouldn’t leave are either reconsidering or panicking.  There are no jobs in New Jersey.  I just drove through an industrial park in Oakland the other day, to return my fancy set-top box for the standard version, that doesn’t carry an $11 per month surcharge on it, just the $7 a month rental fee.

Many of the buildings were empty.  These are the small businesses that are supposed to be the bulwark of our economy.  There are more of them in Totowa and Fairfield.  You see them everywhere you go in New Jersey: nearly empty industrial parks and shopping malls.  The trains and trucks are going through, which is a good sign, or would be, if they weren’t all headed for the city.  One suspects the box cars are filled with stimulus dollars – fake money.

Take a look at the fake bricks in the supply closet, J.D.  That’s the foundation.  That’s New Jersey’s foundation.  That’s our country’s economic foundation.  Hollow bricks.  The Democrats and moderate Republicans are building the foundation for hope and change with hollow bricks and fake money.  When I took those pictures, everyone was smiling, weren’t they, J.D.?  Where are they now?

The company must do what it must do precisely because our New Jersey politicians compromised.  Our politicians compromised because we compromised.  When you finally leave for headquarters, you’ll probably have to sell your house at a loss (although the company’s compensation plan is quite generous, I hear) and it will be occupied by someone who couldn’t have afforded it otherwise, isn’t as talented, hard-working, or honest as you are, and has stood by waiting as you dig them out of a hole they dug for themselves.

It’s not too late for you to do the right thing.  If you do nothing else for our state, at least vote on Election Day.