Monmouth County was supposed to be a Republican bastion. They turned out huge pluralities for Chris Christie and turned municipalities from Democrat to Republican control. So why was the chairman only re-elected by a slim margin? And why did their handpicked candidate for Congress to take on Frank Pallone fail despite outspending her opponent by a huge margin? It’s because the Tea Party movement is really drawing more than just Republicans in Monmouth County….
It started when Monmouth GOP Chairman Joe Oxley and dean of the Monmouth delegation, State Senator Joe Kyrillos concocted the plan to run Rumson millionaire Diane Gooch against Congressman Frank Pallone. Granted Pallone had been a key architect of the Obama-care legislation that will put tremendous strain on the ability of small businesses in the Bayshore to keep the employees they have, so it would have been a great contrast. The career politician whose signature legislation is killing jobs along the coast, or the entrepreneur who knew how to create jobs, and had actually done it as well.
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Tom Kean Jr. Abdicates to a Democrat Favored O’Toole?
Did Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean, Jr. lose his position to Kevin O’Toole? Or did Kean simply abdicate his authority to negotiate on behalf of the caucus?

Kevin O’Toole upped his already significant profile among New Jersey Republicans by directing traffic during the Senate Budget committee votes to release the compromise budget and revenue-enhancement proposals when Mike Doherty went off the reservation and refused to be a part of the proceedings. His leadership on this issue lead us to a question. Was it the Senate Republican Caucus who chose O’Toole for this position, or was it Steve Sweeney…

So it looked like Governor Christie had a sure fire loser on his hands. He made an appointment that upset the Democrats who were tasked with advice and consent on her nomination. They had the votes to defeat her, and could have made a media zoo out of the clients she represented. They could have turned the hearings into a terrible distraction for a governor who has been riding high on his assault on the teachers union.

But then, the brain trust that runs the Democratic establishment decided it would be a good move to refuse to even hold hearings, evening the playing field. Christie was exercising his full constitutional authority when he chose not to re-appoint Wallace. Just because “it’s never been done that way before”, isn’t enough justification for this governor…

With the decision to forego re-appointing Justice John Wallace, Governor Christie has broken with precedent and has begun exploring new territory in the relationship between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government in New Jersey. We applaud the decision to break with a past that has not served the citizens of New Jersey. And we are not persuaded by the weak arguments of the Administration’s detractors that “That’s not the way we do things around here.”



We must raise concern though with the Administration’s choice to navigate this difficult course and the spokesmen they have trotted out to support the nominee. 
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Well, the hot topic of the moment is whether or not Governor Christie will
reappoint NJ Supreme Court Justice John Wallace. The rhetoric is getting
pretty heated on all sides. Mulshine and Lonegan are working hand in hand
to agitate the right over this appointment…

This week, the NJ State Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion upholding the ability of a school administrator to search a student’s car parked on school property using a reasonableness standard of proof, rather than more stringent probable cause standard that would apply to a police offer search. The decision matches numerous decisions issued by plenty of state courts throughout the country, and supported by the U.S Supreme Court’s decision in the seminal search and seizure case at schools, which coincidentally arose from a New Jersey case back in the early 1980s. …