A new poll out today shows a close race in the New Jersey Senate contest. Things are tied up.
Tommy Kean Jr. is not a good candidate, it just so happens that his father was a decent man and by luck of the draw, he got the same name. The voters are confused, they think they’re voting for Tom Kean, not his little boy, Tommy.
Senator Robert Menendez is a good candidate. He will win this race. DoubleSpeak will be be in New Jersey this weekend. We’ll be talking about this race, as well as other important races in the state. Stay tuned.
There they go again. The Republicans running Thomas Kean’s campaign for U.S. Senate in New Jersey are now outwardly saying that they’re producing a swift-boat like film trashing Democrat Senator Bob Menendez. This is disgusting and truly astonishing that they’re so willing to admit to this brand of trash politics.
Mr. Kean’s chief campaign consultant, Matt Leonardo, a strategist for Republican candidates, disclosed the plans in an interview and said the film would be “very similar” in purpose to the commercials used to attack the military record of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race.
Nevertheless, the Kean campaign will challenge that biography in “a long-form film,” Mr. Leonardo said, just as commercials broadcast in 2004 attacked Mr. Kerry’s military record. Those commercials, relying on claims by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, purported to expose Mr. Kerry’s military decorations as exaggerated or fraudulent. Although the premise and many elements of the Swift boat advertisements were strongly disputed, as a whole they were seen as successful in hobbling the Kerry campaign.
The media, obviously more aware of this type of slash and burn politics, is already fact checking these accusations- something that took much longer for them to do during the ‘04 cycle.
Mr. Kean’s charges are not, however, supported by the public record and were repudiated by independent authorities including the four assistant United States attorneys who prosecuted Union City officials of that era for racketeering and corruption. There is no truth, those former officials say, to the Kean campaign’s charge that Mr. Menendez made a deal to keep himself out of prison.
This is disgusting and I hope the Menendez campaign is ready to fire back.
Finding challengers for every CD, no matter how small or how staunchly Republican is an important part of the 50 State Strategy. For Democrats and progressives to take back control of our country, we need to win on every level: school district, municipal, state, congressional, and Presidential. By challenging entrenched GOP candidates we force the RNC, the NRCC, and the NRSC to spend money in places they would otherwise ignore. And as candidates like Paul Hackett and Mark Warner have shown, the Democratic message can have tremendous resonance even in places that have always be considered Republican bastions.
DoubleSpeak can’t wait to get out to New Jersey to talk to some of these candidates and help them win in ‘06! If you are blogging about one of these races or work on the campaign staff for one of these candidates, drop us a line.
UPDATE: According to MyDD, Democrats have challengers in place in 412 districts, nine seats more than they’ve ever challenged before and only seven seats short of breaking the Republican record from 1994.
