Beck wins Christmas Tree debate

Karcher pays nearly $25 thousand dollars a year in property taxes, the place was a farm when she bought it, and Beck lied about the fact that it's 6 acres not trees. Having a politician who is too ethical rather than one who is a lying Trenton insider will suit the district just fine. By the way, Karcher is all over TV which is what counts in the real world.

Just for the record, I hardly consider The Asbury Park Press an objective assessor of state politics: Instead, it is widely known that APP is a mouthpiece for the state Republican Party.

APP almost invariably endorses Republican candidates -- I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they'll endorse Beck over Karcher, even though the latter is much more qualified than the former -- and they feature conservative syndicated columnists over progressive ones by a margin of 3-1. APP, along with its sister newspaper, The Courier Post, are two of the most egregious examples of conservative editorial practices in the state, and Media Matters covers how APP and the Courier Post are two papers that feature conservative columninsts much more than progressive ones.

http://mediamatters.org/reports/oped/newspaper/702

So now the Asbury Park Press is the final arbiter of who wins political debates?

This state is going to hell.

WOW, you dems can spin anything...the Karcher camp is in red alert as her loyalists see a crack in the ethics armor she wears so proudly. Maybe she's not the perfect, defender of good she has conned you all into believing. Put the koolaid down and step away from the keyboard.

Ellen Karcher made 2 big mistakes on the Christmas tree tax break.

First of all, she blamed her husband for the faiulure to report the tax break. That is offensive to women in particular and to voters generally. The public is far more forgiving of a politican who admits a mistake than they are of someone who tries to weasel out of it by blaming someone else. For a woman to blame her spouse strikes an even more dischordant note.

The second mistake was to invoke Whitman by saying that she [Karcher] is more of a hands-on farmer than Whitman. Whitman won the political fight on her farm 14 years ago by bringing the entire press corps out to the farm to see the crops and livestock and to eat lamb burgers and other products from the farm

Karcher is lucky that Witman seems to be out of state at the moment or I'm sure Whitamn would have challenged Karcher to a hay-baling or cow milking contest at which point Karcher would have been made to look even more foolish.

BP

You are absolutely right. Karcher wins in the real world because she is on TV all the time. The fact that she grows trees doesn't diminish that she had to go undercover for the FBI to protect her family and cleanup corruption.

     I'm not sure what the intention of that particular "tax break" was, but I know numerous people in Monmouth County who adhere to the requirements to recieve the break.  As a result, they grow hay, corn, strawberries, and other crops, albeit in minor scale.  Still, by meeting those regulations, they are a)keeping the land from being otherwise subletted or developed, and b) contributing their part to the agricultural economy of central and south jersey, albeit in minor scale.  This is NEW JERSEY, and land is an asset.  If it weren't for tax breaks like this, you would see those 6 and 8 acre plots of land sectioned off into 10 or 12 new lots for building new houses.  Maybe you should live in Monmouth County before you criticize their policies.  Or maybe you should suggest high-density developments there...that should win you plenty of votes.