Plumbing the depths of the Gov's Hudson strategy - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog)

Last week I drove up to HudsonCounty to watch the governor swear in a new mayor.

It was nice to see a real right-winger in action.

And I got to see Chris Christie too.

The right-winger in question was Felix Roque, the new mayor of West New York. Roque is a doctor and U.S. Army officer who was born in Cuba but left as a young lad after Fidel Castro came to power.

The street in front of city hall had been turned into a festive plaza and the crowd chanted "Ro-Kay! Ro-Kay!" as the new mayor ascended the stage to be administered the oath of office by the governor. In the English-language version of his acceptance speech, he described how he and his mother were unceremoniously booted off the island after his father had sought asylum in Spain. He told of "the anger I had after having to leave my country because it turned communist."

In the Spanish-language version, he discussed his disdain for communism at even more length for an audience redolent with refugees from Cuba, stating that he was "contra la comunista." Such language brings back fond memories of the Reagan era, at least for us right-wingers.

Many Democrats don't tend to feel the same way, even at this late date. West New York has non-partisan elections, so after the ceremony I asked Roque for his party affiliation.

"I'm a reformed Democrat," I thought I heard him answer.

"A reformed Democrat?"

"No," he said. "A reform Democrat."

That brought up the question quite a few political observers and pundits have been asking for some time now: Why's the governor spending so much time with the Hudson County Democrats?

In Roque's case you could argue that the good doctor is barely a Democrat at all. But then there's the case of Brian Stack.

Stack was at the center of one of the stranger episodes in recent political history. During the recent redistricting struggle, the Republicans' efforts to carve out a good district for the Democratic state senator led to rejection of their map. Tie-breaker Alan Rosenthal instead chose a Democratic map that seems to doom the GOP to another decade as the minority party.

Stack, who is also mayor of neighboring Union City, was up on the stage with Christie. So was another prominent Democrat, U.S. Rep. Albio Sires. Sires, who lives in town, gave the governor a glowing introduction in which he praised Christie for "working to reduce property taxes for all of the people in New Jersey."

All of the people? You might get that impression if you lived in West New York or Union City, both of which recently got big gifts from the state Property Tax Relief Fund courtesy of the state Supreme Court. West New York got an additional $14.74 million. Union City got an additional $32.81 million - even though it was already getting more aid than all the school districts in MorrisCounty combined.

The man from Mendham has said he'll go along with that decision, so in that sense he is indeed working to reduce property taxes for the people of HudsonCounty. But as for the people who put him into office, Christie has cut their property-tax relief far below even the levels seen under liberal Jon Corzine.

Perhaps he can pin that on the court. But there's a simple way to get around the court and it was introduced last week by right-wing Republican Mike Doherty. The state senator from WarrenCounty wants to give the voters a chance to amend the state constitution to let voters decide whether they would like to have school aid distributed equally around the state.

Christie's not commenting on the proposed amendment, even though he endorsed equal funding during the 2009 campaign. But imagine if he'd gotten up before that Hudson crowd and told them that, like their new mayor, he opposed communism. And that therefore he would fight to overturn the current funding scheme because it takes from people according to their abilities and gives to them according to their needs.

Imagine, in other words, that Christie were a real-right-winger. Now that would be fun.

In the meantime, it was nice to see the governor surrounded by conservatives.

I've never seen that before, but I hope to see it again.

Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNF_U3mw34Iwa0W_l8iWl-pjZmrhYA&url=http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2011/05/post_115.html

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