Campaign Not Getting County Lines Sides With Progressive Democrats. The Republican Candidate Once Maxed Out To Bill Richardson For President.

Tricia Flanagan

You read that headline right. A member of a Republican US Senate candidate’s campaign staff is now arguing we eliminate county lines, the exact same thing the progressive Democrats over at Cape May Indivisible want.

Before I continue here is a disclaimer: Mike, this blog post is NOT a shot at you or your blog, but the campaign opened the door by allowing staff to guest blog. That said, it would have been a little more informative if you had bothered to mention the author is on staff of a Senate campaign.

With the disclaimer out of the way, over on another political blog, a staffer on one of the US Senate campaigns has a two part guest blog post attacking the nominating process. Today’s post is titled, “Guest Blog: The Corrupt Nominating Process of NJ County Conventions. Part Two.”

I thought I said this before, and if I did I am sorry for repeating it. Well, okay, I am not sorry for repeating it. If your candidate is not winning county lines it is probably a bad idea to attack county committees as corrupt.

Calling for the elimination of county lines is stupid! It’s NOT going to happen, not now, not next year, not ever.

I get it you’re angry! Over the years I have been on the losing end and failed to secure lines for candidates. I was mad! I’ve also been on the winning end and my candidate secured the line. I was happy.

Bob, my co-host, is a former Cumberland GOP chairman. I was his consultant. Trust me on this, even if we wanted to fix a convention it would have been impossible. County committee members have their favorite candidates and that’s who they vote for, no matter what, because it is a secret ballot.

If you did your job as a staffer you would know the rules of each individual county and worked harder to help your candidate get the line. If a candidate doesn’t get the line it is the fault of the candidate and his or her staff. Please stop blaming the rest of the world for your problems.

And, now, because I am a county committee member in Gloucester County and the municipal chair in Greenwich Township and take great offense to a campaign staffer attacking county committee members as corrupt, I’m going to take a shot or two at the guest bloggers candidate. Fair is fair.

The author of the guest blog post is John Supino. He is a member of US Senate candidate Tricia Flanagan’s staff. It was once announced via press release, a release that only made it onto the same blog and has since been taken down:

As you can see from the Google search results above Supino, in another blog, was mentioned as “Tricia’s campaign manager.”

To be fair, I was for a period of five months a consultant to Flanagan’s campaign. Despite some people claiming something different, I quit. I quit for many reasons, among them the fact that she didn’t listen to sound advice and the fact that she refused to pay for services rendered, well except for a personal check she wrote me for a whopping $200 that I immediately cashed and does not appear on her campaign finance reports. Then again, my outstanding invoice doesn’t appear on her campaign finance reports either and, I believe, but could be wrong since I’m not a lawyer, not showing debt is a no-no when it comes to campaign finance laws.

I’m not the first person to allege Flanagan failed to compensate someone for their work. She’s been sued for not paying before, I think the case may have been settled (don’t worry, there is at least one more lawsuit out there if they want to get into a fight), but you can read about this one here, here or here and a lot of other places. If you don’t feel like clicking the links, I’ll save you the time:

And, while I’m at it maybe Flanagan should stop attacking her fellow candidates as being Democrat-lite and/or RINOs. People who wrote a max check to a Democratic party presidential candidate don’t have that luxury. Yup, it’s true, when she was married Flanagan wrote a check to Bill Richardson for President and her ex-husband wrote one on the same day, so she can’t blame it on him:

I can’t find any other political contribution from Flanagan on the FEC website. It doesn’t mean she hasn’t made any other contributions, just that I can’t find them.

And if a screenshot from the Federal Election Commission is not enough? Here it is from Open Secrets:

And her ex-hubby on the same day:

And, let’s not forget that Ms. MAGA Majority wasn’t always so MAGA. Two days before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the Untied States, in her ONLY political Facebook post on her personal page in 2015 (which I am sure I will soon be blocked from) in the entire year of 2015 Flanagan wrote, “Looks like a Rubio/Santorum ticket for me…”:

To be fair, I wasn’t always a supporter of President Trump. In fact, I didn’t decide to get behind him until October 31, 2016 when I filled out my vote-by-mail.

In closing, the moral to this story is don’t send your campaign staff out to attack the process because someone might just launch a counter-attack.

CAMPAIGN ACTION: Meissner Drops Out. Patterson Still Campaigning, But No Longer Taking Part In Screening/Convention Process

The US Senate race is down to four candidates after multiple sources reported that Stuart Meissner has dropped out of the race because he says his “narrow path to victory in the Republican primary by seeking the party lines in each of the counties does not afford us a chance to success in such efforts based on recent events.”

I’m assuming “recent events” are Rik Mehta being 7 – 0 in securing county lines.

Meissner’s exit leaves frontrunner Rik Mehta, former gubernatorial and congressional candidate Hirsh Singh, former independent Senate candidate Natalie Rivera and the other former independent Senate candidate Tricia Flanagan still in the race.

Moving on to CD2, based on a report by New Jersey Globe it appears CD2 Republican congressional candidate Bob Patterson is still running, but not competing in the screening/convention process.

I’ve been on the road a lot lately and haven’t been able to pay attention to what was going on in the campaign world, but as usual the New Jersey Globe report was right. Based on the number of times it was forwarded to me, Patterson made it crystal clear he is not taking part in the process via a campaign email.

I get it, Patterson is angry and who knows, maybe it’s a good idea for him not to compete in the county conventions and focus on getting on the ballot and run his primary race, but maybe it’s a bad idea.

The reason I think it is possible that Patterson’s strategy of skipping conventions is a bad idea is that it really is difficult to rig a county convention.

In a previous blog post I used the 2008 Murray Sabrin example that even if you believe the deck is stacked against you that with hard work you can still win conventions. Don’t forget, more recently never-Trumper Bob Turkavage won the Cumberland County convention in 2018, I’m not suggesting there was a fix, just that he worked hard and pulled off a win, I think people are still trying to figure out how he did it.

I don’t know if Patterson’s strategy is a good one. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m not judging. Patterson did use the word “apparatchik” in his email, so I’ll give him bonus points for a large vocabulary.

We’re still a long way from June 2nd and a lot can happen between now and then. I’ll just sit back and watch.

When I’m Wrong I Admit I’m Wrong. So Much For Class And Dignity.

Natalie Rivera

Agree or disagree with yesterday’s blog post, I don’t care. When I am wrong about something, I do care. Unfortunately, I was wrong about one small part of yesterday’s post and I’m admitting it.

Yesterday I wrote that only one candidate “has conducted herself with class and dignity throughout the process thus far.”

Unfortunately, accusing the folks counting the vote at a county convention of cheating is not very classy and is less than dignified.

One of our readers sent me a message last night, with a screenshot of comments on a social media post announcing the results of the Monmouth County GOP convention. The message was, “Steve just an Fyi: Natalie’s words on Monmouth Convention Results:

So, because I was being corrected, I did a little investigating and discovered the original post was our friends at NJ1ST. They simply announced results:

In the thread of comments Natalie Rivera simply couldn’t resist accusing folks of cheating saying, “Of course he will win when you have eyewitnesses watching the people in the room sending signals to one another to fix the vote…”

I believe accusing county committee people of cheating is the opposite of “class and dignity.”

To our readers and listeners I apologize for being wrong.