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Some
suggest that the State of New Jersey tends toward the
Democratic Party, and that Republicans need to run conservative
candidates to deliver the party’s message. To me,
the real question is, why would anyone vote Republican
in New Jersey at all, in light of how Republicans have
managed our state? Allow me to use a fairy tale to illustrate
my point. This is the story of “Olde Jersey,”
a democratic republic, hereafter known as the “Kingdom,”
nestled between the shores of the Hudson and the Delaware
Rivers.
Once
upon a time, in 1993, the loyal subjects of the kingdom
had just thrown out King James (Florio), who raised
the ir taxes, and thus angered them. Cries of “Florio
Free in 93” resounded throughout the land. Two
years earlier in citizen revolt, a Republican Band of
Merry Legislators had firmly taken control of the State
House.
In
place of King James, the people selected a Republican
Queen named Christie. The Queen told her subjects, “I
will use my magic powers and reduce your taxes by 30
percent!” So, she raised her magic wand, and together
with her Band of Merry Legislators, promulgated tax
reduction legislation.
Unfortunately,
her magic was not very good. It simply did not “trickle
down” to the people. While it worked for her wealthy
friends, in places like the Queen’s hometown, where
the people saw almost $13,000 in tax reductions, most
of “Olde Jersey’s” other hard-working
subjects barely realized a few hundred dollars. Still,
the Queen insisted it was good and that she had given
her subjects a benefit.
The
Queen’s Magic
Magic is a tricky business. Sometimes magic and
sleight of hand have unintended consequences. Unfortunately,
Queen Christie’s magic also caused debt in the
kingdom to rise from $7 billion to $17.4 billion in
her seven-year tenure, making it among the highest of
the many kingdoms known at the time. The people were
worried, since they knew that their children and grandchildren
would have to pay for the Queen’s failed magic.
In
fact, at the end of the 10 years that the Merry Legislators
and their Queen had ruled, the people asked, “Are
we any better off?” The answer, sadly, was “no.”
Things
in the kingdom were much as they had been before. The
property taxes in the kingdom were among the highest
anywhere in the known world, making it difficult for
the older citizens as well as for the younger ones,
to buy or keep their homes. Although she had promised
to reform automobile insurance, the Queen’s subjects
still paid some of the highest rates known anywhere.
The
people wanted to get to their jobs and back home easily,
but they could not because of heavy traffic and unplanned
suburban sprawl, for which the Queen had no remedy.
Her bridges and roads, known by her bureaucrats as “infrastructure”
were inadequate, crumbling and in disrepair, but it
simply was not a priority for the Queen, who was too
busy trying to refine her magic to make it appear as
if it had actually worked.
She
could not even effectively implement a system euphemistically
named “E Z Pass” to speed her subjects through
her tollbooths.
The
Queen and her legislators had other problems as well.
Her police had a habit of stopping certain motorists
on her highways whose skin color was darker than others,
based upon the misguided belief that they were likely
to be guilty of drug trafficking. This was known as
“racial profiling.”
Sir
Verniero
Although it had gone on for years, and the people cried
out against it, the Queen’s Attorney General, Sir
Verniero, refused to acknowledge the practice, and publicly
denied its existence, until a highway shooting forced
him to admit it had been going on all along.
Worse
yet, when the Queen selected Sir Verniero for a position
on the kingdom’s highest Court, he lied to the
Merry Band of Legislators, making false and misleading
statements to them in his quest to get on the Court.
By the time the truth was uncovered, the Queen had fled
the kingdom for what she thought were greener pastures.
Her
Party of Merry Senators, comprising half of the Merry
Legislators, were furious at then-Justice Verniero,
and yelled “Off with his head!” but the Speaker
of the Assembly, fearing further harm that the scandal
would cause to his fellow Party members and their chances
to control the leadership of the kingdom, unilaterally
blocked them, and swept the issue under the proverbial
rug.
The
people of darker skin color, and many others felt this
was just one more sign that the Party of the Band of
Merry Legislators, otherwise known as “Republicans,”
really never cared about racial profiling or their civil
rights anyway, and that this was just one more sign
that it was true.
Meanwhile,
the Republicans bemoaned the “victim mentality”
of those with darker skin, almost all of whom voted
instead for the other Party, known as “Democrats.”
What they did not understand was that in fact, these
people truly were victims of the policies of the kingdom.
This
was by no means the only indignity foisted by the ruling
Republicans on those of darker skin color. It seems
that the law of the land required that every 10 years
a census would occur, after which the districts by which
the people elected their representatives would be “reapportioned.”
The
Republican Party had created election districts which
packed those with darker skin together in tight districts,
where their impact on elections and thus their ability
to influence the government, was minimal. Long around
2001, those “Democrats” came along again,
and urged that these districts be “unpacked,”
which caused the Republicans great distress, since that
could lead to the election of more of those with darker
skin and others like them, known collectively as “minorities,”
whom the Party of the Merry Band feared and distrusted,
since they historically had avoided their needs and
offered them nothing. Unfortunately for the Republicans,
Courts throughout the land agreed with the Democrats,
causing greater fear that these “minorities”
would dilute their safe districts and turn them out
of office.
Meanwhile,
the Queen’s replacement, Acting King Donald D.,
was causing the Party of the Merry Band public embarrassment,
as it seems that he was far more ethically challenged
than any had realized, due to some shady real estate
dealings and conflicts of interest in his prior fiefdom.
Fearing that they would lose the Palace and the State
House as well, and that their candidate had more baggage
than a porter at Newark Airport, the Party of the Merry
Band prevailed upon King Donald D. to abdicate in advance,
and set out to find another candidate to put forward
as their leader.
In
his place some in the Merry Band selected a man named
Franks, who had spent years traveling far and wide to
a place called Washington. Unfortunately, Franks tripped
at the starting gate, by declaring he wanted to rid
the government of “insiders,” exactly those
who had anointed his candidacy, and had even engineered
a change in the election law, to enable him to run.
Alternatively,
some preferred a man named Brett, who, although he had
successfully governed an urban area with many of those
dreaded “minorities,” was nonetheless, too
conservative and out of touch with the general citizenry,
as he favored free markets and freedom to own guns,
but not a woman’s freedom of reproductive choice.
Could
the people of Olde Jersey really vote Republican, and
still live happily ever after?
February
25, 2002
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