What does Conor Lamb’s victory mean for NJ7, our Congressman was asked?  “Secretary Clinton carried my district by 3,800 votes and I was honored to carry it by 38,000 votes . . . . I’m very confident the voters in my district will judge me based upon my record.”

Confident? Really? In a race that is now a toss-up?  In NJ, where voters disapprove 63-32% of the job President Trump is doing? With your A- rating from the NRA, in the year of #Neveragain?  With a proud boast of at least 39 votes to repeal, defund or dismantle Obamacare, when healthcare is again top of mind? With your 34% rating from the League of Conservation Voters?  With an 83% approval rating from a Koch brothers group, when we are thinking what we could have done with the $1.5 trillion we gave to the Kochs and their ilk??  You think?  Congressman, we will be delighted to judge you on your record!

Congressman Lance has one hope.  You won’t vote.  Or your neighbor won’t vote; or your aunt won’t vote, or your son won’t vote.  And Republicans love to put a thumb on the scales when it comes to voting.  They have perfected the gerrymander, such that 49% of votes for the House translated to 55% of the seats.They love to roll logs in the path of the poor, immigrants, people of color, all in the name of preventing wholly fictitious voter fraud.  

But this time, Congressman, we are going to find those 38,000 votes and a few more! We will find them among our large suburban base of motivated women and millennials and minorities.  We will find them in the first time voters we are registering, who expect us to take on the NRA.  And we will find them among the decent people of NJ7 who are disgusted by the fourth-rate reality TV show that is the Trump administration that YOU support.

And we WILL vote as though our lives depend upon it.  Because they DO!

Remember in November!

The SUBSTANCE and the SHADOW

Congressman Leonard Lance has allied himself with the ”Release the Memo” movement.  This, despite the fact that the Department of Justice has  warned that to do so without DOJ/FBI review would be “extraordinarily reckless.”

“I have read and reviewed the four-page memo, support its release publicly, and expect the House Leadership to authorize a vote on releasing the memo to the public soon,” said Lance, thereby jumping off the fence and onto the wrong side of history.

The Memo was prepared by members of Representative Nunes’ office, and purports to show that the FBI under the Obama Administration abused its powers to spy on President Trump’s campaign, ergo the FBI is unqualified to participate in the Russia investigation. But even Fox News anchor Shepard Smith called the memo a "weapon of mass distraction . . .  misleading, distracting and lacking context.”  

The Memo is the SHADOW.

The SUBSTANCE is that our President is about to be interviewed by Special Counsel to determine whether he obstructed justice, colluded with the Russians, and possibly other crimes.  

The SUBSTANCE is the news recently leaked that the President tried to fire that same Special Counsel in June, and was only dissuaded from doing so by the threat of resignation from his own White House Counsel, a report confirmed by the Washington Post, Fox News, amongst others.  It is NOT “Fake News” as the President claims.  Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough: “Trump’s attempts at obstruction of justice break new boundaries.”  Former Republican Congressman David Jolly:  “If the New York Times story is validated and Republicans look the other way to protect Trump from obstruction of justice charges, the GOP deserves to lose in November and Democrats should hold impeachment hearings”.  Conservative commentator Bill Kristol:   “[This] may well mean Trump recently returned to this idea, and this is a desperate attempt by McGahn to stop him again.”

The SUBSTANCE is that that all of our principal intelligence gathering communities concurred that the Russians meddled in our democratic process during the 2016 electoral campaign.  

The SUBSTANCE is that we need to protect the country against a serious threat. And to ensure that future elections are not compromised. 

To take the Shadow for the Substance:is “to accept something false, deceitful, shallow or insubstantial in place of something true, meaningful, or valuable.”

Vote for a SUBSTANTIAL Congressperson in 2018.

Someone once said, “Politics is ethics in public.”  Don’t you wish!  For the Republican party, ethics are out the window and morality has been shown the door.  They have been replaced by political expediency and crony capitalism.  

We saw it in the 2016 election, when the “Access Hollywood” tape emerged with public denunciations followed by a decision to brush the subject under the rug.

We saw it in when allegations by 19 women of sexual harassment by their presidential standard-bearer were ignored.  

We are seeing it now with the decision of the RNC and the President to resume support for Roy Moore, rather than give credence to the women who have come forward at personal cost to expose his criminal predation on teenage girls.  

We saw it in the statement by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah that he thought children and pregnant women who receive federal healthcare assistance did not deserve such help because they “won’t lift a finger” to help themselves.

We saw it when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

We are seeing it now, when after eight years of preaching financial rectitude, fiscal responsibility is tossed aside in favor of rewards for the donor class.

We see it in our Congressman, who makes “principled stands” when allowed to, but does what he is told when it counts.

But many Americans, on both sides of the political divide, have had enough.  Can’t we come together and hold our representatives to a higher standard?  Can’t we assert that we want America to provide moral leadership in the world?  Can’t we insist on good government, effective government, efficient government, while recognizing that some citizens have more needs than others? Can’t we agree that we all want to give all our children the possibility to succeed in realizing the American Dream?

We can, and we must.  Let’s find and support a candidate for NJ7 who will bring to Washington the ethics and moral standards we all try to bring to our private lives.

Leonard Lance does not represent the values of the citizens of NJ 7th Congressional District and should not be elected for a sixth term. Amid a slew of GOP Congressmen announcing that they will not seek reelection, Leonard Lance has announced that he will run. According to the 528 Vote Tracking study Lance continues to support the Trump agenda 93.3% of the time. His few outlying votes (most notably the GOP backed repeal/replace bill) seem designed to portray him as moderate when in fact the sum of his record paints a very different picture. He has repeatedly voted to rollback Obama regulations that protect us. Notable examples are:

• Repeal of Ozone standards
• Dismantling fiduciary protections in Dodd-Frank
• Repeal of rules requiring overtime pay
• Repeal of stream protection rules
• Opposition to Net Neutrality, voting to give ISPs the power to throttle and censor internet usage.

Lance voted to take away the healthcare of thousands of constituents via repeal of ACA over 50 times. It took persistent public pressure to get him to vote No after he voted the destructive ACHA out of committee in January.

Although Leonard Lance has been touted by the media as moderate, his voting record is anything but. He is apparently adept at presenting himself as a voice of reason within the GOP while continuing to vote with an extreme right agenda. The citizens of NJ7 deserve someone who better represents our interests. Please join us as we work to take back our district.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rep-leonard-lance-will-run-for-sixth-term/article/2634249