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Frustrated by what he sees as his opponent’s unwillingness to debate in multiple forums, State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) today chided his 7th Congressional District opponent, Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood), for canceling or refusing three district-wide debates.

“During this economic crisis, voters across Central New Jersey deserve to hear the candidates talk face-to-face about the future of New Jersey,” Lance said in a statement. “We should be having more debates, not fewer. I call on Assemblywoman Stender to stop hiding behind her false and negative advertising and join me on the stage in front of voters in addressing the important issues of the day.”
Lance said he is particularly disappointed with Stender’s decision to cancel their Oct. 24 AARP debate, where he hoped to clarify his views on Social Security.

The Lance campaign also noted Stender’s no thanks to debate invitations by the Westfield Leader newspaper and the Gateway Union County Chamber of Commerce.

Democrat Josh Zeitz wants to stop Rep. Chris Smith from winning a 15th term
In the 4th Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-Hamilton) and Democratic challenger Josh Zeitz have two joint editorial board meetings scheduled before election day. Whether those count as debates depends on who you ask.

According to Zeitz, they don’t count, and Smith has ignored legitimate third party invitations to engage in actual public debates.

“They’re not public. Members of public can’t attend them, and the public can’t ask questions,” he said.

In the 5th Congressional District, incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett will debate Democratic challenger Dennis Shulman three times this month.

The debates could provide good political theater in this potentially competitive race.  Shulman, a blind rabbi and psychologist, has unleashed his considerable campaign war chest on Garrett (R-Wantage) in the form of advertising, highlighting Garrett’s Farmland Assessment Tax Break.  Garrett, meanwhile, has kept a high profile in Washington as one of the most outspoken critics of the recently passed financial bailout package.

The first debate will take place at Temple Emanuel in Woodcliff Lake on Sunday, October 19th at 7p.m.  The candidates will debate the following Wednesday at Sussex Community College at 8p.m., followed by a Friday debate on WRNJ radio at 11:00 a.m.

In July, 2005, Acting Gov. Dick Codey appointed Assemblywoman Linda Stender to the New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission.

Since then, the commission has held 13 meetings at Rutgers University’s Piscataway campus -- 12 miles from Stender’s hometown of Fanwood.  Stender, who’s still a member of the commission, has not attended a single one of them. 

The position is unpaid, and other board members sometimes skipped meetings as well, although few as consistently as Stender.  But her opponent for the 7^th Congressional District seat, State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Flemington), argues that she didn’t do the job that was asked of her – especially in light of the nation’s economic crisis. 

“When elected officials commit to doing a job, they are expected to do it.  Clearly Assemblywoman Stender failed to show up and do the job asked of her,” he said.  “With our economy in crisis and unemployment rising, the work of the State Employment and Training Commission is more important that ever, so it’s extremely unfortunate that Linda Stender failed to attend a single Commission meeting.”

Trying to get disentangled from a corruption trial narrative that has put Democrats on the run these last two weeks, state Sen. John Adler (D-Camden) trained his sights on the Republican-engineered Burlington County Bridge Commission scandal, and urged his GOP rival in the 3rd District Congressional race to demand a return of $2.7 million in taxpayer dollars pilfered during that more local example of government gone bad.

“When it comes to rooting out corruption in Burlington County, (Medford Mayor) Chris Myers is nowhere to be found," said Mark Warren, Adler's campaign manager. "His silence is deafening."

The Adler campaign charged that Myers has kept his mouth shut on the issue despite the conviction of a lobbyist who was found guilty of over-billing the commission by $2.7 million. The convicted lobbyist, Robert Stears, headed a Trenton lobbying firm in which Tom Wilson, chair of the state Republican Party, was also a partner.

In response to Republican criticism of the way Democrats ran theSenate President Richard Codey (D-Essex): Politicker file photo state Property Tax Assistance and Community Development account, Democratic Party Chairman Joe Cryan and state Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) tonight tried to staunch the bleeding.

The Democrats took a series of GOP hits this week in the aftermath of state budget officer George LeBlanc’s courtroom testimony that former Gov. Codey’s administration applied no oversight to the way the state distributed $40 million supposedly dedicated to property tax relief.

The Democrats argue that Republicans want to act holier than thou, while they were knee-deep in the same slush fund that Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Troy Hills-Parsippany) said was not a "merit-based, competitive grant awards system as claimed by the McGreevey and Codey administrations."

"Every grant from the program was approved by the Joint Budget and Oversight Committee (JBOC), which included Republican Senator Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) and Republican Assemblyman Joe Malone (R-Bordentown)," objected Cryan in a prepared statement. "Each member of JBOC had to approve the grants, a process that included notification and approval by Sen. Lance and Assemblyman Malone."

Assessing what they say was a fund that over two years added up to $128 million, Republicans say they wanted and requested JBOC meetings, however, the meetings did not take place after the majority party waited out the ten-day period deadline.

WESTFIELD -- Assemblywoman Linda Stender today charged that her congressional opponent, State Sen. Leonard Lance, is less pro-choice than he lets on.

Stender held a pres conference in front of a pharmacy, telling about 10 supporters that Lance voted against a bill she authored that barred pharmacists from refusing to fill birth control prescriptions based on their religious or personal beliefs.

“My opponent was one of only six State Senators that voted against this law. You can’t be pro-choice and vote for a bill that will allow a pharmacy to not fill a birth control prescription,” she said. “That’s the essence of what this is about.”

Just before Medford Mayor Chris Myers announced that he planned to hold a press conference detailing State Sen. Adler’s receipt of money from a legislative slush fund, Adler acknowledged that he took some money from the Property Tax Assistance and Community Developments Grants program, but denied that the funds were used for pet projects or that he exerted any undue influence to get them.

“John Adler not only had no influence over the Property Tax Assistance and Community Development Fund, he did not know that two legislators had discretion over it. As he has since his election in 1991, Sen. Adler has fought for improvements in his district. These were not "pet projects" – again, the words of Chris Myers - but programs of importance to John Adler's constituents,” said Adler spokesman Mark Warren.

It is unclear for which specific projects those funds were used, and how much money Adler received.

On Friday, Republican Medford Mayor Chris Myers asked his Democratic 3rd District Congressional opponent, State Sen. John Adler, whether he ever received funds from a controversial legislative slush fund.

Frustrated at what he saw as a non-answer, Myers reiterated the question today.

“I called on John Adler to come clean on his potential involvement in this scam last week, and the silence was deafening,” said Myers in a press release today. “Adler owes the taxpayers of New Jersey – and in particular the 3rd Congressional District – an answer as to whether or not he was involved in this massive abuse of taxpayer dollars. A list of individual legislators – Democrat and Republican – who were involved in this scam, and the pet projects they funded should be released for public review immediately. The way politicians in Trenton abuse their power and our tax dollars is despicable and the ones involved should all be held to account immediately.”

Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) in Summit on Friday.: Politicker photoSUMMIT - Coming off a train station rally here for presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer and state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) convened a town hall meeting at the high school, where they brandished their fiscally conservative credentials in a room of about 50 voters.

Now in a race with Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) to represent the 7th Congressional District, Lance the veteran legislator underscored his tenacity fighting bloated government, including the administration of disgraced former Gov. Jim McGreevey.Former U.S. Rep. Dick Zimmer addresses voters in the Summit High School Library as GOP organizer Kelly Hatfield looks on: Politicker photo

"I am the ‘Lance’ of Lance versus McGreevey," the senator said of his suit against the former administration to curb borrowing to balance the state budget.

The New Jersey Supreme Court in 2004 allowed McGreevey to borrow $1.9 billion, or nearly 7 percent of what was then a $28 billion budget, but forbade the governor from borrowing in the future.

Talking to Summit voters Friday evening in the high school library, Lance took pride too in noting how his proposed Constitutional amendment to ban borrowing without voter approval will appear on the Nov. 4th ballot.