Thomas Kean

Kean:The State of the State is in Severe Decline
Urges Governor to Enact Property Tax, Fiscal, and Ethics Reform

The Republican Whip, Senator Tom Kean, Jr., (R-21), issued the following statement today regarding Governor Corzine’s State of the State address.

STATE PRIORITIES IN DISARRAY ON CORZINE'S WATCH
New Jersey Natives Voting With Their Feet And Fleeing The State

Senator Thomas Kean, (R-21), issued the following statement regarding Governor Corzine’s upcoming State of the State Address due to be delivered next Tuesday.

Among the most stunning upsets of the 2006 campaign was the defeat of Linden Mayor John Gregorio, described by the Star-Ledger at the "iconic lion of Linden politics ... a controversial and bare-knuckled Democrat whose career was punctuated by a criminal conviction and an extraordinary comeback." The 80-year-old Gregorio lost to Councilman Richard Gerbounka, a former Democrat who ran as an Independent, by 74 votes.

Gregorio was first elected Mayor in 1967 and served until his 1983 criminal conviction; he was elected to the State Assembly in 1973 and 1975 and won races for the State Senate seat in 1977 (defeating incumbent Thomas Dunn, the Mayor of Elizabeth) and 1981. On his final day in office in 1990, Governor Thomas Kean pardoned Gregorio, enabling him to run again for Mayor later that year.

Gerbounka, 60, a retired Police Captain and onetime Gregorio ally, won a Council seat in 1994 as a Democrat. He split with Gregorio four years ago and won re-election to the Council as an Independent.

Congressman Donald Payne took a sort-of shot at former Governor Thomas Kean by holding a news conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a controversial urban ballot security program that was likely the key factor in Kean's scant 1,797-vote victory over James Florio in the 1981 gubernatorial race. "New Jersey was the birthplace of modern-day voter suppression tactics with the Ballot Security Task Force," said Payne. "It was a disgraceful episode that signaled the start of organized efforts by Republicans to intimidate voters in minority communities. We wish we could say it is part of distant history but the sad truth is it is part of living history and has continued for 25 years."

From GOP State Chairman Tom Wilson: "I guess in honor of Halloween the Democrats decided they'd try to scare minority voters again with 25 year old tales of voter suppression. Their press show today was a sad effort to excite minority voters with scare tactics because Bob Menendez's record as self serving crooked politician is turning off voters of every race, color and creed."

Just when you thought the US Senate campaign in New Jersey couldn't get any uglier or degrading, it exceeds our expectations.

When I first saw the TV ad with the cheesy looking guy in a fake alley-way in a leather jacket muttering, "We gotta problem . . . Bada bing, we're in it -- but deep." I was thinking it was some sort of cheap commercial for a product I was sure I didn't want to buy. But the 30-second spot, which is a bad "Sopranos" take off, was actually put out by a conservative political action committee taking a shot at incumbent U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), and apparently trying to help Republican state Senator Tom Kean Jr..

The goof ball spot has the fake mobster crying the blues about how the mob's friend Menendez is the subject of a federal investigation. As the bad actor paces the alley-way he says, "And worse, this guy Tom Kean wants to clean things up, even cut taxes. Hey, where's our take in that? We need to get the bosses to fix this."

Bob Torricelli's name is thrown in there, as a friend of the fake mobster who is clearly intended to be some sort of Italian-American who is "connected." To make matters worse, this idiot doesn't even sound remotely like the mob guys or "wanna-bes" I grew up around in Newark. I'm betting he's not even Italian. Of course, the ad finished with a professional announcer saying, "Tell Bob Menendez his high tax record is a crime."

The spot is disgusting, degrading, and disrespectful to Italian-Americans, to New Jerseyans and to the entire political process. I find it impossible to imagine people actually sitting in a room conjuring it up and then paying $200,000 to get it on the air!

That's exactly what happened with this spot in a state that has been maligned across the country as a haven for corruption and with an established history of organized crime, which thankfully isn't what it used to be. The ad was put out by a group called "The Free Enterprise Fund Committee." I'm hoping the Kean Campaign knew nothing about it before it hit the airwaves. Unfortunately, all Tom Kean Jr. would say is that he has problems with the ad but refused to do anything to try to stop it. When pressed about going directly to "The Free Enterprise Fund Committee" to demand they stop running the ad, Kean's official spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker, said, "We have no control over what these groups do. We put out a statement. I'm sure they saw that."

That won't get it done. Not even close. Obviously the ad takes an ugly shot at the Italian-American community, an unbelievably dumb move given what a huge voting block they are. Further, there's no way such a spot would ever have been aired if it were a parody of someone who is Black, Jewish or Asian, etc.

Look, I'm not a big Italian-American "anti defamation guy." I love The Sopranos and The Godfather (except Godfather 3). But this is different. This is a campaign for the US Senate and Tom Kean Jr. should know better.

The Kean campaign says it has no influence over this group, which is why they won't press them to pull it. That may be true, but Kean also has no direct influence over whether Donald Rumsfeld stays as Defense Secretary, but that hasn't stopped him from boldly calling for his resignation. Tom Kean Jr. has no direct influence over House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), but he has said Hastert should immediately step down over the Mark Foley-Congressional Page e-mail scandal.

The Kean campaign wants its cake and wants to stuff its face, too. Kean wants to come across as clean-cut, above the fray; a fresh face who isn't ethically challenged, like his opponent. That's exactly the way I saw him when this race began. But he continually proves he is willing to do anything to destroy Bob Menendez, the Democratic incumbent who clearly has problems.

Ironically, before this ad hit, my sense was that Menendez had issues in the Italian-American community because of his opposition to Sam Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. Menendez voted against 'Alito's confirmation because of the abortion issue. (Alito is pro-life.) I thought it was a bad vote, because Sam Alito is eminently qualified to serve on the high court, regardless of his stance on abortion. Sam Alito is the finest the state has to offer and someone who makes many Italian-Americans proud – including me.

But the Italian-American voting dynamic has changed because in the past few days virtually everyone I know whose name ends in a vowel and has seen the fake Sopranos TV spot is appalled. This visceral reaction is much more powerful than any anti-Menendez sentiment brought on by the Sam Alito vote.

It may not have been a Tom Kean ad, but he surely mishandled its aftermath. He too has insulted many Italian-Americans by refusing to demand that this off-the-wall, conservative political action committee pull the spot now and apologize immediately.

Somehow, my gut tells me Tom Kean Sr. would have known how to handle this, but this latest episode makes it clearer than ever Junior is not Senior. You blew it Tom Jr. I only hope you realize it and apologize immediately. My instinct is you won't. Maybe you just don't get it.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ...

Credit Assembly GOP for focusing on reform

Editorial, The Courier-Post, October 23, 2006

The Republicans' push for political reform during the campaign season appears self-serving. But at least they've got everyone's attention.

With their U.S. Senate candidate in a tight election race with incumbent U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-Hoboken, Assembly Republicans' all-out push to clean up state politics might appear more business as usual for New Jersey.

Republicans have done their best to tie the incumbent U.S. senator to Hudson County politicians and supporters accused or convicted of ethical and criminal abuses.

The Assembly Republicans' effort to eradicate New Jersey's legendary corruption might be viewed as more self-serving politicking, coming as it does in the middle of such a contentious campaign between Menendez and state Sen. Thomas Kean Jr., R-Westfield. But if Republicans can get legislators fired up about finally ending the culture of political abuse, does it really matter if New Jerseyans must hold their noses while lawmakers get to work?

A handful of people actively involved in Hudson County and Statehouse politics in the mid 1980's argue strongly that the success of Robert Menendez's political career was a result of bad staff work by a political operative who worked for then-Governor Thomas Kean.

Republicans had made huge gains in Hudson County in the early 1980's, when Ronald Reagan formally kicked off his campaign against Jimmy Carter in Jersey City and won 45% in the county. Reagan carried Hudson with ease in 1984, helping the GOP pick up two Freeholder seats. When Kean won a huge (65%) victory in Hudson the following year, Republicans won four Assembly seats. Meanwhile, Democratic State Senators William Vincent Musto (the Mayor of Union City) and David Friedland had gone to prison.

Kean and the state GOP decided to put some effort and money into Hudson for the May 1986 non-partisan municipal elections, and dispatched a top Kean staffer, Andrew Consovoy, to run the show there. In Union City, the GOP backed an anti-Musto alliance ticket that included Republican Assemblyman Ronald Dario, Republican Manny Alcober, Democrat Bruce Walter, Independent-turned-Democrat-turned Republican Charles Velli, and Menendez, a former Musto aide who ran against him unsuccessfully in 1982. Republicans ran the campaign and raised the money with an understanding that if the slate won, Dario would be the Mayor.

All five won, and the heroic Consovoy headed back to Trenton -- while Menendez and Walter convinced Alcober to vote for Menendez for Mayor; Alcober reportedly insists that no one ever asked him to anyone else. Dario showed up at the reorganization meeting on July 1 expecting to become Mayor and was shocked by Menendez's victory.

Kean, Consovoy and the GOP didn't go back to Hudson that fall; their candidate for Congress, an young Cuban American named Albio Sires, was beaten badly in his campaign for Congress agains incumbent Frank Guarini. In 1987, Republicans lost their two Freeholders and their four Assemblymen; one of the freshman Democrats elected to the Legislature that year was Bob Menendez.

The Democratic response to former Governor Thomas Kean's charges that U.S. Senator Robert Menendez was unethical and part of New Jersey's culture of corruptuion: an attack on Kean's 1971 legendary deal with a Hudson County Democrat to become the new Assembly Speaker.

Kean was the Assembly Majority Leader in 1971 when Republicans lost twenty seats in Governor William Cahill's mid-term election, giving the Democrats a 40-39 majority; the last seat was won by an Independent candidate, Anthony Imperiale of Newark. S. Howard Woodson, an African American Minister from Trenton, was slated to become the new Speaker.

But Kean forged a coalition with four Democratic Assemblymen -- David Friedland, Silvio Failla and David Wallace of Hudson County and Joseph Higgins of Union County -- to win enough votes to become Assemby Speaker. Those four Democrats all received Committee Chairmanship and a small share of the tiny amount of Assembly patronage.

At the time, Friedland was the Assembly Minority Leader, but Democrats declined to pick him as their candidate for Speaker because of a scandal involving a loan sharking case that caused him to lose his law license for six months. Democrats won 26 more seats in 1973; Woodson was elected Speaker -- the only African American to ever hold the post -- and Kean became the new Minority Leader.

But some Statehouse watchers from the 1970's say that Kean had less to do with the Friedland deal than people think, arguing that the coalition was formed with then-Assemblyman Richard DeKorte -- and that when Friedland realized that Kean, not DeKorte, would be Speaker, he suggested that he might have been double-crossed.

Friedland, called "entirely too comfortable with members of organized crime" by the Deputy State Attorney General, did not run again in 1973, but won a State Senate seat four years later when he defeated incumbent Joseph Tumulty (whose uncle had been Woodrow Wilson's Secretary) in the Democratic Primary. He was removed from office in 1980 after his conviction on federal corruption charges; just before his sentencing, he faked his death in a scuba diving accident off the coast of India and remained free until his capture in the Maldive Islands several years later.

Failla was murdered by a pimp and a prostitute outside a bar in Neptune in 1971, while Wallace and Higgins lost party backing for re-election in 1973.

GOV. KEAN TO ATTEND ATLANTIC GOP TRIBUTE TO KEN LEFEVRE

FOR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION
Date: September 27, 2006
Contact: Annie Mayol
(202) 445-8266 cell

Paterson, NJ Today, State Senator Tom Kean, Jr., candidate for U.S. Senate, and Jose Sandoval, candidate for U.S Congress (NJ-08), visited the offices of ACE Reprographic Service, Inc in Paterson, New Jersey where they spoke to employees about their plan to reduce taxes and help make New Jersey more affordable to its residents and, especially to small business owners.

New Jersey has become unaffordable. Last year, 57,000 more people left our Garden State because they couldn’t afford to own a home, raise a family or start a new business, said Kean. New Jersey is tied with three other states for the highest state sales tax. We have the fastest rate of tax increases and the highest property taxes in the nation. That’s unacceptable and it’s getting worse.

According to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group, New Jersey is having the second worst tax climate in the nation for business.

As a small business owner, I know how difficult it is to do business in New Jersey, said Sandoval. The voters want someone in Washington that will fight to reduce the tax burden and find ways to help improve our economy so no more people have to leave the state. Sandoval added, When Tom Kean and I win this November 7th, we will make sure to make tax reform our first priority.

Kean added, Contrary to our opponents, Jose and I will support making the tax cuts permanent and we will vote in favor of eliminating the Death Tax, added Kean. New Jersey can no longer afford Bob Menendez and Bill Pascrell.

Ace Reprographic Services is a family owned business that has been operating since 1933, providing high quality blueprints to the architects, engineers, builders and contractors of the New York/New Jersey area. Now, in the digital age, Ace is not only keeping up with serving the fast paced world of computer generated architecture and design, but they are leading the industry in digital blueprinting, plotting, large and small document scanning and duplicating, and web-based file management softwares.

Jose Sandoval is running for New Jersey’s Eight Congressional District. Jose is of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent, and immigrated to the United States in the early 1970s, where he has been a resident of New Jersey ever since. Jose has a BA in Economics and Finance from Rutgers University, and a law degree from Cleveland State University. He owns an urban real estate company in Passaic, New Jersey.

Jose and his wife, Amy, have four children.

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