Posted on 12/05/2017 6:33:21 PM PST by GuavaCheesePuff
Forty-four years ago, Brendan Byrne was elected New Jersey governor, amassing a record plurality of 721,378 votes and, in the process, driving the Republican membership in the General Assembly to a historic low - 14 seats.
The partisan divide - 66 Democrats and 14 Republicans - meant the Democratic Party held 83 percent of the seats in the Assembly. For every one Republican, there were five Democrats. It was the kind of electoral beatdown that is almost impossible to absorb and still survive.
Senate Republicans were spared the devastation because the state Senate was not on the ballot that year.
The leader of this tiny band of Assembly Republicans was Tom Kean, an Essex County Assemblyman who served as speaker in the two years prior to Byrne's landslide.
Ironically, it was Kean 12 years later who surpassed Byrne's plurality, winning re-election in 1985 by 794,229 votes, a victory margin unlikely to ever be exceeded.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Yeah, RINOs like the Keans will save the NJ GOP.
That explains DC,Maryland,Virginia and most major cities.
I'd bet the clothes on my back that the majority of NJ's voters get a government check.
He could start by joining the Republican party.
Not the one of the donors, but the one of the people....
Not only are there plenty of gubmint workers here, but over the past couple of decades taxpayers and their employers have been fleeing the state - and they are being replaced for the most part with imported Third World welfarians.
Yup,there are many types of government checks printed each month.Pay checks,retirement checks,military pay,military retirement,Social Security (the *original* type,not SSDI)...
...and welfare checks.Lots,and lots,and lots of welfare checks.
After 50 years of Lynch, Torricelli, James, Menendez, Corzine, McGreevy and dozens of lesser lights, the Ledger has still yet to notice the endemic corruption of the state Democratic Party.
The pension ones in particular are killing us; more and more current revenues have to pay for people who retired 20 years ago. Those obligations will doom these states; nobody will move here if it means just buying a share of a MASSIVE IOU.
A local Boston talk host spoke a few months ago about retirement at the MBTA,Greater Boston's public transit system....funded,of course by riders *and* taxpayers.
He mentioned it to put the word out that a bus driver...a BUS DRIVER...had recently retired,in his early fifties,with a pension of $97,000 a year.
A bus driver.
Also,there's a big politician in Massachusetts named Billy Bulger whose brother is Whitey Bulger;serial killer,FBI 10 Most Wanted,subject of the true story film "Black Mass".Billy was once called to DC to testify before some House or Senate committee and took the Fifth several dozen times.Billy is now getting a state pension of $250,000 a year.
My guess is the NJ isn't much different (except,maybe,for the FBI 10 Most Wanted part).
I think our biggest problems are cops & teachers; the cops in particular can load up OT in their last years to inflate pensions (though this is widely known now and discussed, it still goes on), and both often get paid 6 figures in unused sick time.
Taxpayers are sick of working for our government worker caste...
News here reported yesterday that nearly 1/3 of Jerseyans (30.4%) speak a language other than English at home. While they can speak what they wish, this is indicative of a long-term problem for this state: These foreigners aren’t coming here to fund the retirements of ageing Americans, and they expect the fading American population to continue maintaining the infrastructure in perpetuity. Also, more and more of the school population is foreign children, and those bills are crushing the remaining Americans - they are 3/4 of our property taxes (the highest in the nation).
Who want to come here to pay the bills for this growing population that wants to contribute little to nothing?
Replacing makers with takers...Sigh. It’s a race to the bottom.
Yup - and it speeds up the fall. Nobody wants to be saddled with the bills of people who don’t want to pay for ANYTHING...
I live in NYS. We’ve been losing House seats for decades. Lost 2 after the last census. Scuttlebutt is we’re gonna lose 1 to 2 more after the next. How’s NJ doing in the Congressional district department?
We lost one after the last census; I’m not sure what to expect now because our population is stable (maybe slightly higher) ONLY because of illegal immigrants (both parties agree on this). I’m not sure how they are counted; maybe it is something like the 3/5 compromise (five braceros = 3 Americans).
Well, the good news for the nation’s red bits is that our states are losing juice in the chamber with the power of the purse. Sucks to be us, but it’s better for them.
That’s true, as long as red states stay red...
Well, we’re making a list and checking it twice. For when we escape New York. :-)
I’m afraid by the time we leave even Texas will be blue...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.