August 25, 2008 - 10:05pm
News

Roberts: Lonegan is "preposterous"

DENVER -- Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) said that members of the unofficial legislative committee figuring out how to salvage the Clean Elections program have met at least once and are “rolling up their sleeves to do everything they can to keep the program.”

Clean Elections faces a potential constitutional hurdle and the fierce opposition of conservatives, who went looking for what they called a “secret” committee meeting. Conservative activist Steve Lonegan’s Americans for Prosperity even made a video documenting their search for the committee’s meeting.

Although Roberts convened the committee, he doesn’t know where they met either (he’s not actually a member).

“It might have been somewhere in the statehouse.”

Roberts took issue with Lonegan’s representation of the meeting in the video, and called Lonegan’s stance hypocritical.

“I think Mr. Lonegan is preposterous. I think it should be noted. Somebody brought this to my attention that he decried public money for legislative campaigns but had no problem accepting it when he ran for governor,” he said. “I think a small group of folks who listen to him and believe in him will probably believe anything he tells them. A small group.”

MATT FRIEDMAN is a PolitickerNJ.com Reporter and can be reached via email at matt@politicsnj.com.

Comments

Calling the kettle black.


Joe Roberts can throw stones when he supports public financing of Democratic Primaries in the Fifth Legislative District.

In a year and a half he will be the former Speaker and no one will care what he thinks.

08/26/08 2:43 am

Keep up the Good Work


Keep up the good work, Steve Lonegan. Obviously you're getting under Roberts' skin (and quite a few other pols). That's a good thing. Keep it up.

There are lots of political shenanigans that should be brought to light.

08/26/08 9:23 am

Roberts is the epitome of what is wrong with NJ


He gave an address to the CIANJ a couple of years ago suggesting that we need to raise taxes because we don't have a surplus to handle emergencies.

I asked him why do you need a surplus when you have no conscience about reaching into our pockets at will? He said that I was insulting. Duh, that was the point.

 

"Study the Constitution, Let it be preached fom the pulpit, proclaimed in the legislatures,and enforced in courts of justice." ~ Abraham Lincoln

08/26/08 9:50 am

Roberts is the preposterous one


Hmmm, let's see, Robert's wants to spend our tax dollars on welfare for politicians and Lonegan wants us to be able to keep that hard earned money. Seems to me the only one of the two who is preposterous is Roberts. He also has a heck of a lot of nerve and I mean nerve in a bad way. He thinks the taxpayers are too dumb to know how to spend their own money.

08/26/08 3:04 pm