Thomas Kean

By Steve Adubato, Ph.D.

State Senator Tom Kean Jr. is in a very tough spot. He thought he had cleared the way without any opposition in the Republican Primary for the US Senate seat in New Jersey. He thought he was going to get a clean shot at incumbent Bob Menendez, who is doing all he can to act like a well-entrenched veteran US Senator.

Tom Kean Jr. thought he could save some money by not having a primary fight and not having to stake out his position on sensitive and controversial issues like abortion and stem cell research, as well as foreign policy and defense--more specifically Iraq. But Tom Kean Jr. didn’t count on John Ginty, a guy virtually no one knows, but who is coming from the far right and clearly intent on making Tom Kean Jr.'s life absolutely miserable.

Just look at what happened this past week when former Governor Christie Whitman endorsed Kean for the Senate. Normally it would be no big deal. The moderate Whitman who is on a crusade to save her Republican Party from the far right was expected to endorse Kean. She has a long history with his father, Tom Kean Sr., our distinguished former governor who headed up the 9/11 Commission.

But as soon as Whitman’s endorsement of the younger Kean was announced, John Ginty pounced on it saying that Kean should "disavow" the Whitman endorsement. Ginty said that Whitman's record as governor between 1994 and 2001 was abysmal as she "racked up a miserable record of exploding state debt, ballooning state spending, and waste, fraud and abuse tied to the EZ-Pass project and auto inspection system…If Tom Kean views Christie Whitman as a model of fiscal rectitude, folks ought to hold on tight to their wallets."

Further, Ginty blasted Whitman on the issue of abortion, which clearly is the cornerstone of his very long-shot candidacy. According to a Ginty press release put out this week; "The most egregious part of Christie Whitman’s meager legacy remains her veto in 1997 of a state law designed to outlaw the brutal practice of partial birth abortion. Against the wishes of the then Republican Majority in the state legislature, Whitman exhibited her militant 'pro-abortion at all costs' ideology by vetoing the attempt to make illegal the unnecessary and diabolical process in which a late-term baby's skull is punctured and its brain vacuumed out prior to removal of the rest of the body from the womb." You’ve got to be kidding me. Remember, this is Republican against Republican.

Ginty finally stuck it to Kean by threatening him if he wants to "reach out to the vast majority of Republicans who support the ban on partial birth abortions" by saying he must disavow the Whitman endorsement. What a nightmare.

John Ginty has every right to run for the US Senate. He calls himself an "ideologue" and clearly he is a hard-core conservative on social and moral issues. But New Jersey is a very moderate state and in order for Tom Kean Jr. to win this Senate seat, he must position himself as a reasonable moderate much like his father, who is principled but practical. That is going to be very hard to do with John Ginty consistently calling the younger Kean out and demanding that he make his position clear on hot button, no-win issues like abortion and stem-cell research.

Ginty clearly knows he can’t beat Kean and that Kean will be the Republican nominee to take on Senator Menendez. But increasingly, winning is not the game for this small but tightly-knit faction within the Republican Party that is committed to making the lives of moderate Republicans a living nightmare.

Tom Kean Jr. says he is not going to debate John Ginty. That’s his right, but I’m not sure it is a smart move. I say take him on. Clarify your position on these and other issues. Do it now so that those who say your positions are unclear will have nothing to complain about later. Take Ginty on as a warm-up for Bob Menendez whose take-no-prisoners, in-your-face, approach to public debating is no place for untested debaters.

Yes, John Ginty's goal may be to galvanize the far-right of the Republican Party and once again sabotage the candidacy of another statewide Republican. But Tom Kean Jr. can turn this all around by taking the Ginty challenge head on right now and showing that he stands up for what he believes, even if what he believes is not always popular with most New Jerseyans. He has a chance to show he is tough, articulate and savvy. That doesn't happen over night, so why not start now instead of hoping that the John Ginty’s of the world will go away, which they clearly won’t. What else do the Ginty's of the world have to do other than make life difficult for mainstream Republicans like Tom Kean Jr?

Ginty Calls on Kean to Disavow Whitman Endorsement

Whitman’s Poor Fiscal Record in New Jersey Damaged the State Republican Party

Whitman’s Radical Pro-Abortion Agenda Disillusioned Major Portions of the Republican Base

Ridgewood - Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Ginty today called on his primary opponent, state senator Thomas Kean, to disavow the endorsement of Kean and his campaign by former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman. Whitman’s comments appeared in the April 17 edition of the Newark Star Ledger.

Ginty said that Whitman, the state’s governor between 1994 and 2001, “racked up a miserable record of exploding state debt, ballooning state spending, and waste, fraud and abuse tied to the EZ-Pass project and auto inspection system. She effectively laid the groundwork for a series of statewide losses for the Republican Party in later years, as the Republican base in the state became increasingly disillusioned.�

The Tom Kean for U.S. Senate website touts the endorsements of 66 regular New Jerseyans, including Matthew Ahearn, a former Democratic Assemblyman. "I had the pleasure to serve with in the NJ Assembly - from across the aisle," Ahearn wrote. "Darn shame he is a Republican, but he will get my vote in spite of that fact, any chance I get, because he earned it from what I saw first hand in Trenton. I trust him not to sell out the people of NJ in Washington in favor of partisan games to hold onto power for its own sake. I just can't say the same for my own party's team from Hudson County with a strait face." Ahearn was elected to the Assembly in 2001 and switched to the Green Party in 2002. He is again a registered Democrat.

Kean also won the endorsement of Westfield resident Francis Quinn, who says "he will support conservative judes (unlike his father) and help reduce taxes." Another Kean backer, Leigh Maris of Sea Bright, says that Kean has a commitment to Republican values "without being pedantic and overly-conservative." West Long Branch resident Richard Osborne says that "it's about time New Jersey has a strong Republican candidate for statewide office. The last two were quite weak." Nazim Haqqani, college student from Franklin, says Kean will be a "breath of fresh air against (Bob) Menendez whose anti-Arab, race-bait politics as evident in the Dubai ports fiasco showed us the ugly side of New Jersey and national politics. Hopefully Tom Kean stands for reform on many vital issues including protecting our basic civil rights, advocating an independent and viable state for the Palestinian people, and NOT leading our nation to further disaster by supporting a war against sovereign Iran, formerly Persia."

Thomas Kean, Jr., a two-term State Senator and son of a popular former Governor, is scared to death of John Ginty, a former Republican Club President who has lost two primary bids for State Assemblyman. It is Kean's fear of a conservative primary challenger -- and concerns by some campaign advisors that he is not yet "statewide-ready" -- that led to his decision last week to run on the Bergen County Republican Organization line. Kean passed on the option of staying out of the Bergen GOP civil war entirely by running alone in a separate column. But Ginty, who won 21% of the vote at the Middlesex County Republican Convention last Saturday (a remarkably strong showing for an undeclared candidate with no money or campaign staff), remains in the race -- as long as he can get enough signatures to gain a ballot position. And Kean must now deal with several disgruntled Republicans backing Kathleen Donovan for County Executive who are unhappy that he threw their ticket under the bus (especially when he indicated that would not happen) and caved in to an ultimatum from Bergen County Republican Chairman Guy Talarico. (As one GOP party leader put it: "Apparently Junior does respond to ultimatums.")

Within the Kean campaign, there was considerabe division and considerable indecisiveness over how to handle the Bergen problem -- even former Governor Thomas Kean was on at least once conference call as the Kean team sought a solution. This was in sharp contrast to his opponent, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, who took sides in an intra-party controversy over the selection of candidates for Passaic County Freeholder.

Kean is now on a line with the BCRO candidate for County Executive, Todd Caliguire, and some Republicans are not buying his spin that running with the BCRO slate does not constitute an endorsement of the BCRO-backed candidates. Kean, sources say, did not call Donovan or her running mate, incumbent Freeholder Elizabeth Randall, to inform them of his decision until several hours after his campaign made their announcement.

There were some unhappy Republicans in Washington last week when U.S. Senate candidate Thomas Kean missed a fundraising event featuring Vice President Richard Cheney; Kean said he was not trying to avoid appearing with Cheney, blaming his tardiness on heavy Route 1 traffic. Those same D.C. Republicans are likely to be further offended by statements made by the candidate's father, former Governor Thomas Kean, who told the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee that he believed President George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have failed to deal with what the possibility that terrorists could attack the United States using nuclear or radiological weapons.

One Republican insider noted that while Kean may be accurate in his comments, his criticism of fellow Republicans on their main issue -- the war on terrorism -- won't help his son's fundraising efforts. Pundits say that the GOP has a better chance of picking up Democratic Senate seats in Washington, Minnesota and Maryland -- all states where dollars go further than they do inthe expensive New York and Philadelphia media markets.

During the subcommittee hearing, Democratic U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg asked Kean whether he supported a proposal to add $1 billion for port security to the next federal budget. Kean said he was, although he may not have known that the plan, which was rejected by the full Senate last week, was sponsored by his son's opponent, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. The Menendez amendment would have required 100% screening of all cargo going through the ports.

SENATOR BRYANT SUGGESTS KEAN LACKS CREDIBILITY ON BUDGET

TRENTON - Senator Wayne R. Bryant, Chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, made the following comment after Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., a former member of the panel, condemned the Corzine Administration's budget proposal in the context of his U.S. Senate campaign.

"Maybe Senator Kean wants to re-join our committee so he could roll up his sleeves and help us work on the budget over the next three months. That would be the responsible approach to problem solving.

"I don't put much credibility in his statements on the budget when he=s not willing to serve on the committee."

From the time he decided to embark upon his campaign for United States Senator, one of Tom Kean's greatest fears has been a head-to-head conservative challenge in the Republican primary. Kean has sought to build relationships with conservative leaders in an effort to clear the primary field, and it looked like his efforts paid off when potential conservative rivals -- Assemblymen Joseph Pennacchio and Michael Doherty, and former congressional candidate William Spadea -- decided early that they would not run.

But with just two weeks to go before the filing deadline, a conservative leader from Bergen County, banker John Ginty, is circulating petitions to run for the Senate. Ginty, who has lost two primary challenges to incumbent GOP Assemblymen in the 40th district, is a former Navy submarine officer and onetime Ridgewood Republican Club President (the same post from which Marge Roukema launched a 22-year congressional career). The genesis of his campaign is an intra-party battle in Bergen, where Kean has not yet accepted the GOP organization line in an attempt to avoid taking sides in a heated primary for County Executive, and for Republican County Chairman.

Some strategists say that a primary might be good for the 37-year-old State Senator, enabling him to get some practice before he faces incumbent Robert Menendez, a seasoned veteran of hard-fought political battles.

Conservative challenges in New Jersey GOP primaries have often been more symbolic than anything else, although there have been some huge successes: conservatives upset a moderate-to-liberal Republican Governor in 1973 and U.S. Senator in 1978, and won the 2001 gubernatorial primary. There is some empirical evidence suggesting that the most conservative faction of the conservative wing of the New Jersey Republicans represents about 18% of the vote: in 1996, months after Bob Dole (not exactly a moderate) had already clinched the GOP presidential nomination, 18% of New Jersey's GOP primary voters cast their ballots for either Pat Buchanan or Alan Keyes. Two years earlier, Brian Kennedy, a former State Senator from Monmouth County, ran to the right of pro-life Assembly Speaker Garabed "Chuck" Haytaian in the GOP U.S. Senate primary; with no money or organization support, he captured 33% of the vote. Way back in 1972, six years before Jeff Bell defeated Senator Clifford Case in the primary, James Walter Ralph, an unknown Bergen County physician, again with no money or organization support, captured 25% of the vote against Case.

PoliticsNJ.com received an interesting e-mail from a Democratic insider active in the North Jersey Jewish community suggesting that if Congressman Bill Pascrell continues to support Sami Merhi for Passaic County Freeholder, he could risk their permanent loss of support -- political and financial -- and perhaps even field a candidate to oppose Pascrell in the June Democratic primary. Pascrell has remained supportive of Merhi's candidacy even as Senator Robert Menendez and Governor Jon Corzine made it clear that they would not support the controversial Arab-American businessman even if he were to be the Democratic nominee. Merhi is under fire for comments he made at a Pascrell fundraiser equating former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with Adolph Hitler and seemingly supporting suicide bombers in Israel. Democratic County Chairman John Currie has called a special meeting of the party leadership on Saturday morning to discuss the Merhi campaign.

On Saturday morning, March 18th, The Union County Republican Committee held its annual nominating convention. Over 250 delegates representing the 21 towns of Union County met at Westfield High School to nominate candidates for U.S. Senate, the 7th Congressional District and Union County Freeholder.