Republican National Convention

Former Gov. Thomas Kean and Scott Morrison of Camden County at the Hilton: Politicker photo

MINNEAPOLIS - From Hurricaine Gustav, to the Labor Day late night cruise with the Crowleys, to Bush cringe, to the Sarah Palin story, to the Blue Grille Bar in the Hilton, to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) and back to the Blue Grille, and back to the East, New Jersey Republicans led by State Chairman Tom Wilson forged a convention of small but diehard members. 

When biotech executive John Crowley was thinking about running for Senate, it was Bill Spadea who notified party leaders and started laying the groundwork for a campaign.

And when Crowley decided that he couldn’t run for Senate, it was again Spadea who notified party leaders and started disassembling the groundwork for a campaign.

Now, Crowley is starting up the Building a New Majority PAC in a joint brain-trust with Spadea, who’s the group’s president.

“We’re lacking as a party a couple things. One, we’re lacking an organized process of identifying candidates and supporting those candidates. It’s got to be ground up instead of top down. The Republican Party has taken the approach for years that if we just have somebody strong at the top, you can pull all these local seats up,” said Spadea. “So we almost have to take a page out of the Democratic book, which is start at the school board, city council, mayor’s office, and build it up. That’s what we do.”

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- On Friday, State Sen. Bill Baroni flew in to Minneapolis/St. Paul, knowing that a Hurricane was bearing down on a town 1,000 miles south.  And through the convention, he’s been not only the point man, but the official face of New Jersey.

Last night, Baroni, perhaps McCain’s most visible backer in New Jersey, had the cast the state’s votes for John McCain.

“This has been a nine year journey with the McCain campaign.  Nine years ago I was doing advance events in Michigan and California for Sen. McCain.  Nine years later I had the opportunity to stand and cast our votes for John McCain. That’s an extraordinarily humbling moment,” he said.

Sen. Kevin O'Toole (R-Essex).: Politicker file photo 

MINNEAPOLIS - It’s several hours until Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) takes the stage downtown at the Xcel Center and one of his supporters sits in a hotel where the New Jersey delegation is housed, and he reflects on the years he’s spent in support of this man who would be president.

Soon he will again observe McCain in person.

State Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex), a state campaign co-chair for McCain, goes back to 2000 in his support. But it was during the 2008 Republican presidential primary that he deepened his respect for the Arizona senator and recognized up close what he sees as McCain’s particular leadership qualities.

"He came into Hamilton - and look, I’ve been in politics going back to 1984, I’ve been around presidents and the rest of it, it’s heady stuff - but we were sitting in the back of a bus that day in Hamilton: Baroni, and Sean Kean and others who have long supported McCain," O’Toole says. "Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman were there, and so was John McCain."

The presidential candidate talked strategy, and seated with him, O’Toole, the Essex County political insider who came up in politics the hard way, says unabashedly that he felt he was in the presence of greatness.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Chicago-based political consultant Bill Pascoe, who ran Bret Schundler’s 2001 and 2005 gubernatorial bids, said that had it not been for the need to feed the media beast, Schundler could have easily won his first gubernatorial bid.

And today, eight years after leaving office as Jersey City mayor, Pascoe believes that not only does Schundler have a good chance to reclaim that seat, but that he’s one of the leading contenders.

Sitting at yesterday's New Jersey delegation breakfast at the Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, Pascoe flashed back to early 2001. He was managing Schundler’s fledgling campaign for governor, and couldn’t gain any traction with the media. A top statehouse reporter, he said, told him that reporters wouldn’t cover Schundler’s campaign because they were convinced that he was merely positioning himself for his mayoral re-election in May of the same year. So to prove his sincerity, Schundler didn’t file to run for re-election.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Matt Mowers, who was 18 when he started his job as executive director of the Bergen County Republican Organization, has landed at the newly formed PAC Building a New Majority.

Mowers, now 19, lost his position at the BCRO after former Chairman Rob Ortiz, who hired him, lost his bid for reelection to former freeholder candidate Bob Yudin.  He’s spending the week in the Twin Cities for his new position. 

“It’s great. It’s fun. We’re targeting local races and a few county races, just trying to help them out with field plans, paper mailers,” he said.

Not long ago, State Sen. Diane Allen thought she would be headed to St. Paul.

According to Allen (R-Burlington), she informed the leadership of the Burlington County Republicans that she would like to attend early this year.

“I was led to believe that would occur.  But in the end, the leadership of the Burlington County Republicans I guess went a different way because my name didn’t turn up on the ballot,” she said. “I called Bill Layton a week before (the filing deadline) and asked what I needed to do.  He said ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it’ And indeed he did.”

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Assemblywoman Carolina Casagrande is outraged at what she sees as sexist media coverage of Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. 

“I just think that a lot of the things surrounding the Governor’s personal family life have been highlighted by the mainstream media, and amplified in their importance in a way that you would not see if this was a male candidate,” said Casagrande, a new mother herself. 

While some pundits see the “us versus them,” small town mayor versus elitist media tact that Palin took in her speech last night as nothing more than a campaign tactic, Casagrande sees it as the vestiges of an old way of thinking.

**UPDATED

MINNEAPOLIS - Three more Republican county chairs today affirmed their support for Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Parsippany-Troy Hills), who announced this week that he intends to pursue another term next year as party leader.

Rick Wright, executive director of the Assembly Republicans, said the following chairs indicated they want the 72-year old DeCroce to remain as minority leader: Essex Chairman\Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex), Monmouth Chairman Joe Oxley, and Passaic Chairman\Assemblyman Scott Rumana (R-Wayne).

Somerset County Chairman Dale Florio told PolitickerNJ.com that he wants to talk to conference leader Assemblyman Pete Biondi (R-Somerville).

"Whatever Pete decides to do, I'm going to support him," says Florio.