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All rights reserved. 17-6216 NJ-17-546 2 RETROSPECTIVE 2017 P.O. Box 66 Verona, NJ 07044 [email protected] www.InsiderNJ.com IT WAS A HORRIBLE YEAR! For Republicans not named Chris Brown. If you were a Democrat, you probably thought 2017 was great. If you’re a whopping 65% of the registered voting population of New Jersey, you don’t care...You’re bored. You wanted the general election to look like The Ten Commandments and instead it had the feeling of Exodus: Gods and Kings . Max Pizarro Editor-in-Chief To the extent that the state simply stagnated, murky, ugly and finally irrelevant. Despite [email protected] or even sank dismally in on itself like the 101.5 radio shock jock Bill Spadea’s best ef - banks of a swamp collapsing and the ensuing forts to turn the 2016 vote into a 2017 rebel - chemical reaction produced a gaseous haze lion, none of the incumbent Republicans who that blanketed our condition, we could count backed the gas tax, among them state Senator 2017 a success. Otherwise, it was another dis - Steve Oroho (R-24), who co-authored the mal 12 months in New Jersey politics. bill, and Assemblywoman Betty Lou DeCroce (R-26), had any real trouble getting back into To start with, we have a state pension system office. Pete Oneglia that is underfunded by $50 billion. General Manager If the Republicans saved their best pushing [email protected] Freed from having to worry about how his ac - and shoving for the primary before at least try - tions impact New Hampshire, Governor ing to project some (soft) party unity for No - Chris Christie crash landed back in Jersey after vember, establishment Democrats contented Michael Graham his 2016 presidential run and signed – amid CEO themselves with having secured all 21 primary train wrecks, commuter bedlam and crum - lines for their gubernatorial candidate and bling infrastructure – a gas tax hike for estate John F.X. Graham mostly snoozing through doomed challenges Publisher tax disintegration – to infuse the Transporta - from John Wisniewski, Jim Johnson and Ray tion Trust Fund (TTF) with cash. That Lesniak, before going to war with themselves Ryan Graham sparked a brawl in an already badly damaged in the general – and ultimately winning com - Associate Publisher and capsized Republican Party. Watching the fortably. In a developing post-primary GOP fight one another was like observing a statewide leadership food fight, the South scuba dive fight in a black and white movie: Continued on Page 5 3 INSIGHTS. DRIVE. RESULTS. PUBLIC AFFAIRS STRATEGY DIGITAL CAPABILITIES Immersive Research Digital Strategy Campaign and Coalition Management Social Media Issue Advocacy Creative Design Stakeholder Engagement Data-Driven Analytics Targeting Video Production Content Development MEDIA & PUBLIC RELATIONS Advertising Message Development & Opinion Research Media Training BRAND POSITIONING Executive Positioning Crisis Communications Branding Rapid Response Strategic Consulting Earned Media Public A airs Risk Management Paid Media Advertising Start-Up Incubation CHICAGO MIAMI NEW JERSEY NEW YORK WASHINGTON, D.C. 222 W. Merchandise 3250 NE 1st Avenue 608-612 Cookman Ave 200 Varick Street 1100 G Street NW Mart Plaza, Suite 2400 Suite 305 Unit 5 Suite 201 Suite 350 Chicago, IL 60654 Miami, FL 33137 Asbury Park, NJ 07712 New York, NY 10014 Washington, D.C. 20005 312. 664. 0153 305. 964. 8035 732. 280. 9600 212. 929. 0669 202. 331. 1002 4 RETROSPECTIVE 2017 bullied the North, using Middlesex as a cudgel to torment Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-32), who fought back by refusing to enable a South-stamped Christie plan to raid the re - serves of Horizon Blue Cross-Blue Shield. Having sat out a primary and the opportunity to recruit someone who actually believes in what they stand for, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) went all in with a Repub - lican factory worker from Salem County (a big Christie and Donald Trump supporter) in an effort to trip up Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3). Hanging on for dear life as Assemblyman Craig Coughlin (D-19) contin - ued to harass him for caucus votes, Prieto set his sights on new frontiers of Democratic Party conquest – LD25, LD39 and (to a lesser extent) LD40 – not because he necessarily had a beef with any of the Republicans in those districts, but because he wanted to put down the establishment Democratic Party plan hatched in South Jersey to get rid of him. The main drama of the general election con - ment got back into office on the ment, ignorance and insistence on inci - test consisted of Lieutenant Governor Kim strength of a combination of public ap - vility as a replacement for discussion, Guadagno, the Republican nominee for gov - athy, backroom deal-making, and the war as an alternative to debate, and signs ernor, warning the state about the resurrection easy angle of being able to blame the everywhere of an ailing political system of another Goldman Sachs lib, even as few lame duck Christie rather than examine increasingly supplanted by shadow seemed to care, with the face of Christie fail - the deeper foundations of New Jersey sources of unending financial wealth, re - ure more obvious and easy to scapegoat than dysfunction. member this, state Senator Brian P. the dozens of mostly unknown Christie-en - Stack still knows how to get the organi - abling Democrats who made up the legislative So here we go, into the post-Christie era zation vote out in Union City, women majority. The first Murphy-Guadagno debate with a new captain on the bridge of the had a good year and so did South Asians made Christie-Corzine 2009 look like the Enterprise (Don’t worry, Cory, you’re – signs of life on otherwise mostly mori - Lincoln-Douglas debates. The second one was still our first choice to play Captain bund terrain – and we will still have In - like a replay of the Burr-Hamilton duel at Kirk), minus Wisniewski, Lesniak and siderNJ; and wherever it is in this Jersey Weehawken, with an apparently mortally Jack Ciattarelli, and with Donald Trump Devil is in the Details land – you will wounded Murphy nonetheless ultimately pre - still in the White House. We’re looking find us in Tough Guys Don’t Dance vailing on Election Day. Armed with NRA forward to it, kind of the way those mode, committed to the political cause gun money and dumbed down atmospherics, noble Romans must have looked for - – of politics itself. Guadagno sounded the higher taxes alarm ward to the end of their civilization bell, “taxes, taxes, taxes,” while Murphy in re - while Emperor Nero fiddled away on Max Pizarro sponse simply dutifully hit the Christie- the charred ramparts. But amid the up - Max Pizarro Guadagno-Bridgegate gong over and over and heaval and political heartache and heart - over again to bolt across the finish line by dou - break, in a thicket of rapidly increasing Editor, InsiderNJ ble digits. Nearly everyone in the establish - illiteracy, and overall civic disengage - 5 6 RETROSPECTIVE 2017 LEGISLATOR OF THE YEAR: JIM WHELAN We regret that we must administer this ever constituency was at hand. The first Land,” he said in 2007, in response to a award posthumously, but we do so with a time we met Whelan, in fact, he was help - policy question, when the GOP opened sense of pride in the service of a real New ing to commemorate a street to the mem - their campaign headquarters near the chil - Jerseyan and man’s man, an educator and ory of an Iraq War veteran killed in the dren’s amusement park. But it was never athlete who distinguished himself as a line of duty. “Do you think the state sen - mean-spirited with Whelan. You just got champion of his home city of Atlantic ate can stand to have another Irish guy up the sense, even through the worst of At - City – and particularly of the youth of the there with Codey?” we asked the assem - lantic City’s travails, that he cared about city. We feel lucky to have known Senator blyman and former mayor as he prepared the people he served, and ached for better Whelan, a guy who dedicated his life to to run for the state senate. “I think so,” he days. If he was going to try like hell to im - young people. You couldn’t walk the said, unsmilingly enduring the tedium of prove the quality of life for all in Atlantic streets of that town in Whelan’s company banter. “That’s what it had for years when City but never get there, he was at least without running into his former students, Gormley served.” That was Whelan.