September 30, 2009 - 10:52am
News

Lesniak: having a Speaker and Senate President from the same county would be 'unprecedented' and 'not good'

CORRECTION:  The original version of this story contained the line "Lesniak says he won’t get entangled in the affairs of the lower house, but if Oliver becomes the next speaker, many legislators will have an easy excuse to vote for Sweeney over Codey."  The second clause of the sentence was written by the author for explanatory purposes and was not said by Lesniak.  The way the sentence was structured, it came off that way.  PolitickerNJ.com regrets the error. 

Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver’s (D-East Orange) sudden frontrunner status to be the next Assembly Speaker has direct implications for the Senate leadership contest: she and Senate President Dick Codey (D-Roseland) are both from Essex County.

“I can’t imagine that either house would be interested in having both leadership positions from the same county – that would be unprecedented and not good.  But that’s stating the obvious,” said state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Elizabeth), who is a key vote in the Senate leadership contest between Codey and state Sen. Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford).

Lesniak says he won’t get entangled in the affairs of the lower house.

At the time Lesniak made the statement to PolitickerNJ.com, he was undeclared as to who he would support for Senate President.  An hour later, Sweeney released a list of his supporters that included Lesniak.  

“Getting this behind us is very, very important. The sooner we resolve this, the better.  Although I would very much like Steve and Dick to have a standstill agreement, neither of them are going to stand still until after the election.  So quite frankly it would be naïve to propose or even think it’s possible,” said Lesniak.  “The next best thing would be to make a decision sooner rather than later.”

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

Comments

Norcross Plan to Knock out Christie


ATTN: Christopher Christie/Norcross is planning on helping Corzine knock you out and here’s how.

Norcross Plan
Get control of all South Jersey Legislative seats. Get Codey Out, Bring in Sweeney as Senate president for the next four years before running him as Governor. Make a deal with Corzine that if we get Union and African American Support by cutting deals with Black Legislators like Oliver by making her speaker of the house we can then gain those votes and get rid of Christie. Once Corzine is elected, we then control it all. After the four years Corzine is safely in Washington or maybe he can just go a year, then resign to work with Clinton after she overthrows Obama and Sweeney takes over New Jersey as Governor. Greenwald will get a shot of taking Senate seat. Moriarty will take Maddens seat. Redd will move up to God knows what. The bottom line is EVERYTHING will stay the same, but the kings people will all get heavy rewards and move in new places. The state will still get screwed and the democratic party will continue playing the smile in your face game while screwing the people like they have been for decades. The fools will vote for us because we have money and we can bully, slander and destroy anybody who gets in GEORGE NORCROSS’S WAY.

Norcross brother and the rest of the good old boys maintain control of New Jersey and King Norcross stays in control. Never getting arrested or any feds do anything to him because he is so untouchable.

09/30/09 5:21 pm