Bill Baroni

State Sen. Bill Baroni will chair the New Jersey Delegation to the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis
Republicans tonight elected State Sen. Bill Baroni to serve as Chairman of the New Jersey Delegation to the Republican National Convention. Baroni is the Chairman of John McCain’s New Jersey campaign. Atlantic County GOP Chairman Keith Davis and Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose were named to the Platform Committee.

On the flight to Puerto Rico, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) turned to former President Bill Clinton and told him one of the reasons his wife was losing was because the campaign too often allowed Sen. Barack Obama to frame the issues.

When Clinton ran in the 1990s, he stayed on message - most famously with his "it’s the economy, stupid" rundown of the first President Bush. He won, Menendez observed, because Clinton forced his opponent to respond to the issues on his terms.

A flummoxed Bush was left marveling at supermarket product scanning devices while Clinton told voters, "I feel your pain."

Sixteen years later, his wife didn’t capture the issues and present them aggressively enough, in Menendez’s view, and she suffered the consequences.

Now, as he shifts gears from Clinton to Obama, Menendez is on the offensive, trying to frame the immigration and ethics debates against Sen. John McCain, a day before the presumptive Republican presidential nominee lands in New Jersey for a Burlington County campaign rally.

let something slip that had previously been undisclosed: presumptive presidential nominee John McCain plans to open a staffed headquarters in New Jersey.

State Sen. Bill Baroni, who chairs McCain’s New Jersey campaign, confirmed the news, although he's not sure when and where it will open.

Banroni said that it’s proof McCain plans to play in New Jersey.

State Sen. Kevin O’Toole’s chief-of-staff, Dominick Fiorilli, is leaving that position to become John McCain’s Deputy Northeast Regional Campaign Manager.

Fiorilli, 27, will be working directly under Bill Stepien, the current regional campaign manager who worked as former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s national field director and ran state Sen. Bill Baroni’s campaign for Assembly in 2003. 

Fiorilli starts next week.  He will help coordinate the campaign in New York and New Jersey. 

As PolitickerNJ.com begins a subjective tournament to choose New Jersey's Smartest Legislator, state Sen. Leonard Lance could be the early front runner. Lance has faced some criticism from members of his own party for being more of a statesman than a politician, but several statehouse watchers and former legislators say he may be one of the brightest people in Trenton.

"Leonard Lance is the one guy who sits in the legislature today that could have sat in the Senate in the late 1960's and early 1970's," said lobbyist/public relations executive Alan Marcus, who served as Clerk of the General Assembly in 1969, at age 21. "Leonard is a throwback to that era of the noblesse oblige, of quiet brilliance -- of people who don't speak on every issue, but who become conversant on every issue."

Lance isn't the only name that comes up in discussions about smart legislators. In the Senate, the most repeated names were Raymond Lesniak, Nia Gill, Kevin O'Toole, Bill Baroni, John Adler, Dick Codey, and Barbara Buono.

In the Assembly, Joe Roberts, Michael Patrick Carroll, Joe Malone, David Russo, and John Wisniewski were frequently mentioned as among the brainiest.

State Sen. Bill Baroni endorsed Goya Foods heir Andy Unanue for U.S. Senate tonight, just an hour before the Mercer County Republicans’ executive committee meets to endorse a Senate candidate.

Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo, one of the sponsors of the Assembly version of paid family leave, which came out of committee today. 

The lobbyists' feeding frenzy continued in Trenton today as representatives from both the business and labor communities zeroed in on lawmakers in the hallways of power and attempted to elicit the promise of a yes or no vote on the issue of paid family leave.

The measure would extend state liability insurance to employees for up to six weeks, enabling workers to care for themselves, a newborn or a sick relative. Funding would come from the workers contributing on average a dollar a week from their salaries.

As Jeanne Fox prepares for her Senate confirmation hearings following her nomination to another term as President of the state Board of Public Utilities, it is interesting to note that her husband, Steve DeMicco, was the consultant on the 2007 campaigns against two Republicans who now serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  DeMicco worked for Ellen Karcher and Seema Singh, who lost to Jennifer Beck and Bill Baroni, respectively. 

Sen. Bill BaroniUnlike a lot of his party brethren who were all but lining up to give Gov. Jon Corzine Statehouse high fives following his speech, State Sen. Bill Baroni (R-Mercer), emerged from the Assembly chamber today worried about Corzine's budget proposal.

"The governor's targeting rank and file public employees," said Baroni, referring to Corzine's preliminary proposal to scrap three state departments and eliminate up to 5,000 public jobs through a combination of layoffs and early retirements.

Baroni said that as long as Corzine is willing to keep 50% of the political patronage jobs on the state payroll, the senator could not support what he sees as Corzine's balancing act on the backs of civil servants. Many state workers live in Baroni's hometown of Hamilton, which is adjacent to Trenton.

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