Courier Post Endorses Zimmer

In the continuing saga of the New Jersey's secret Senate campaign, one newspaper has had enough.

In the spring, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg defeated U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews of Haddon Heights in the Democratic primary for the Senate nomination. Since then, Lautenberg has laid low, so low, in fact, that his race against Republican Dick Zimmer, a former congressman, has gone virtually unnoticed in a year when politics are on just about everyone's mind.

No one in this state is happy with the status quo. Whether or not the Democrats who control it want to admit it, they have performed abysmally. While other states were getting their fiscal house in order the past several years, the New Jersey governor and legislature has been simultaneously stealing the citizens blind (convictions of Democrat politicians number over 100 and rising) and bankrupting the state. They only know how to spend and have absolutely no self control. It is time for a change but the citizens in this state don't get it.

Zimmer, who spent six years in the House of Representatives in the 1990s representing Central Jersey, is not the most electric candidate in the world. But he knows the issues and he's got a pedigree when it comes to opposing any and all tax increases. And he recognizes just how off-kilter things are in New Jersey, where residents pay the highest amount in the nation in total taxes when local, county, state and federal taxes are all put together. We're first in taxes and, as Zimmer also points out, 50th out of 50 states in getting money back from Washington. New Jersey gets just 61 cents back in federal funding for projects here for every $1 in taxes we send to Washington.

Lautenberg, who's been in the Senate since 1982 except for a two-year hiatus in 2001 and 2002, has had his chance to reverse that trend and done nothing. Worse, he failed to really acknowledge the seriousness of this problem at the meeting Thursday, instead defending his performance by touting a few institutions he's gotten money for over the years.

And the biggest joke in all of this is that Lautenberg had to be embarrassed out of his hidey-hole to even participate in the debate this past week. He doesn't feel the need to address the issues and deal with voters. But then, I often wonder whether the real reason he is hiding is that he may no longer be completely in control of his faculties. If he is so proud of what he has done for New Jersey, come out and tell us Frank.

Read the endorsement here.

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