LoBiondo Faces Only Eccentric Democratic Opposition This Year
The Democratic Party leadership in New Jersey’s second congressional district was unable to muster the effort required to find a candidate to challenge Republican incumbent Frank LoBiondo this year, and so they left the space open for Gary Stein, who switched his registration from Republican to Democrat in order to grab the nomination.
Stein’s campaign web site shows a scattered kind of focus, with the theme song from High Noon playing in the background, a wind chill chart, a photograph of a cat, and a bunch of images of working men with jackhammers. Heavy use of yellow highlighter draws attention to the ideas that Stein regards as particularly important.
As a former Republican, Stein advocates a number of policies that have more of a home in the GOP than in the Democratic Party:
- elimination of taxes on corporations
- “cut, cut, cut government”
- continued drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and expansion of oil drilling into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
- a “war” by Mexicans living in the United States against the government of Mexico
- abolition of cash money
- no increase in the federal minimum wage
Stein is aware that he has very little chance of winning against LoBiondo. He refers to himself as “likely road kill”. He’s also aware that his candidacy is annoying to local Democrats, and proudly posts the following comment made about his campaign:
“LoBiondo is my congressman, and I always look forward to voting against him. But thanks to the Democrats, whose failure to even run a candidate allowed this whackadoodle Reaganite to claim the nomination, I’m probably going to end up voting for LoBiondo for the first time in my life.”
Pretty good summary of the campaign to date. Since you were there I’ve revamped the Home Page slightly. The theme from High Noon is still there, however you’d need to click on it, because a real tear jerker is now front and center. I added a “focused” description of my candidacy yesterday before I saw your short article. Keep up the good work- we got em scared silly.