Christie's strategy should maximize the chances of a Republican Senate seat pickup in the special election in October, maximize Christie's vote total in November, and maximize the Republican vote for NJ state Senate and Assembly elections in November.
The Democrats should not be happy. They have been put into the position of arguing that less choice is best for NJ voters. Christie's voter choice argument is also a dig by Christie at what the NJ SC did when Robert "The Torch" Torricelli resigned and the SC let the state Democrat party substitute Lautenberg on the ballot. If this works it was a brilliant move by Christie.
Thanks for your insight on this move by the big man. I’ll reserve judgement.
Good post. In addition, appointing someone until Nov. 2014 wasn’t really an option, because the Democrat-controlled Supreme Court of New Jersey would have ruled that the special election couldn’t wait 18 months, and had to be held this November at the latest. By scheduling the election for mid-October, Christie still will get to pick someone to fill Lautenberg’s Senate vacancy; the only difference is that his term will end two weeks earlier than had the special election been scheduled for early November 2013.
Christie needs the GOP to win back the state senate in order to be able to appoint judges to the two Supreme Court vacancies (the Senate has blocked his prior nominations) so as to make the SCONJ less reflexively liberal; having a higher-turnout election this November (which would have been the case had there been a U.S. Senate election, particularly one with Cory Booker running, on that date) would have hurt the GOP’s chances of winning back the state senate.