Dump Mike Ferguson (NJ7)

It's not as catchy as "Stender is a Spender," but it turns out Mike Ferguson is a spender – and he's a tax raiser, too! Looks like he may have lost his only campaign item against Linda Stender should she decide to run again in 2008.

Because last week Mike voted for the Democrats' Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act (HR6) which the House Republican Study Conference calls, "$7.7 billion in tax increases over ten years, PLUS $6.3 billion in new royalty payments over the same period. (CBO, JCT)"

In all her years in the Assembly, on the Union County Freeholder Board, and as a Fanwood Mayor and Councilwoman Linda Stender never voted for an unbalanced budget. Sometimes that required voting for increases in taxes, but all 20 years of votes combined didn't add up to this single vote of Mike Ferguson's.

Assuming Stender runs again in 2008, Ferguson will now be unable to trot out the tax increasing, spender image he tried to tar Stender with because he'll just be further demonstrating his hypocrisy. We know he's increased spending and deficits in his time (see below), and now he is raising taxes.

And after he had signed a pledge for Grover Norquist saying he would never vote to raise taxes. Norquist gave Ferguson an award he'll probably be taking back now, and we've got the art to prove it!

And remember that in addition to voting for this nearly $10 billion tax increase, Ferguson has been a wicked spender in his first six years. Dump Mike chronicled his record back in August:

Ferguson has increased federal spending by more than $3.3 trillion over his six years in Congress, and increased the debt by $2.8 trillion.

That's right. Not only did Ferguson vote to spend a trillion more dollars a year, but to pass the buck from himself and his rich parents to your grandkids and mine. It's as if he stole our family credit cards and put every single American by more than $9,000 each.

Addendum: This is not to suggest that the energy bill passed this week is a bad bill. The tax cuts and giveaways it rescinds were ludicrous in the first place as the oil companies were running huge profits, and the added revenue for the federal government will go toward encouraging development of renewable energy.

The point is that Ferguson ran his entire campaign last year on Linda Stender's record on taxes and spending, and that one of the first things he does in the new Congress is break his pledge and show himself to have raised spending and taxes more than Stender ever has.

Posted by admin at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mike Ferguson (R-NJ7) has repeatedly talked about how wonderful his support of the district is because he delivered $5M for the Green Brook Flood Control Project, though we've noted that at that rate it will take 86 years to complete the $430 million project. Ferguson appears to have figured that out himself, because this year he is asking for $25 million. From the Courier News:

Rep. Mike Ferguson has requested $25 million be included in the new federal budget for the Green Brook Flood Control Commission.

In a letter to Robert Portman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, Ferguson wrote that "without an additional $25 million, this project will not protect the people of Central New Jersey from massive flooding and possible loss of life in a Katrina-like event."

Ferguson also wrote that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the project, has said that $25 million is needed over the next two years to complete the first phase of the project.

Ferguson didn't tell us in the past that his $5 million was just 20 percent of what was needed, but that's OK. We knew that the money was just a partisan political gift from the Republican majority so he could claim success in the campaign, even though it did little or nothing to actually help his constituents.

But now he is calling publicly for the full funding for the next two years. It's time to see if he is really the back bencher the NY Times called him, or if he can really support his district with the funding we need to protect our lives and property. He's on the record with the request, and we'll follow it all the way through.

Anything less than $25 million is a failure, from the mouths of both the Army Corps of Engineers and Mike Ferguson himself.

Posted by admin at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

OK, we've heard it all before. Two years out from the election the DCCC is announcing that it will "aggressively" target the 7th district and Mike Ferguson. But the DCCC is promising to be in our district again in 2008.

At the DCCC we are aggressively on offense and working to put thirty-five Republican seats in play. I am in the process of targeting open seats, districts where Republicans won by less than 5%, seats won by Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election and districts occupied by ethically challenged incumbents. We have already begun working with Democratic State Party Chairs and local leaders to actively recruit candidates in key districts across the country. ....

While we have begun to make significant gains in the suburbs history shows that presidential year turnout will amplify our support there by turning out marginal voters who do not turn out for off year elections.

Specifically districts like Mike Ferguson (NJ-07) outside of New York City and Deborah Pryce (OH-15) outside of Columbus will benefit from the added turnout in the suburban areas.

Yet in the past three elections they've made this statement early and then been strangely absent when the chips were down. It's been frustrating and galling to hear the words repeatedly and then to watch the money and support go elsewhere. This is why we started Blue 7th in 2005, to show that there was a real grassroots effort on the ground to get things moving and shaking. We wanted the DCCC to show that we were doing for ourselves, and that their resources would help put us over the top. Our message didn't quite get through, but it did permeate a little.

For 2006 they did more than ever before. Linda Stender was put on the Red to Blue list and she received a good bit of logistical and data support. But at the end when a big media buy could have picked up the 1.5 percent Linda needed to win, the DCCC spent millions on campaigns in districts that lost by 5, 6 and more points. Had just a little of that money gone into television and radio spots hitting Ferguson hard on his callous disregard for diabetes and spinal cord injury sufferers in his district, we would be cheering Linda's floor arguments during the first 100 hours.

Please visit the DCCC Contact Us Page and tell them that they need to come to New Jersey's 7th district. This is fast becoming a swing district, a place where we can win an replace a right wing true believer with an honest, aggressive progressive like Linda Stender.

Posted by admin at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mike Ferguson (R-NJ7) once again cast his vote against embryonic stem cell research, continuing his desire to prevent cures for his constituents suffering from spinal cord injuries, diabetes and other maladies for this research is said to promise cures.

I'd write a longer post, but the links say it all.

Posted by admin at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Here's Rep. Mike Ferguson trying to have it both ways about the President's plan to escalate the War in Iraq with another 21,500 troops.

"I'm not yet convinced about President Bush's plan to increase U.S. forces because the longer we bear the chief burden for Iraq's security, the longer it delays Iraqis from making the hard decisions about dealing with the terrorists," said Rep. Mike Ferguson, R-Warren.

Not yet convinced? Just a few months ago he was 100 percent behind the President and the Stay The Course plan. I guess the election and his win by less than 1.5 percent sent a message.

Posted by admin at 07:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Blue Jersey is holding it's annual Best NJ Blog contest, and Dump Mike is on the list again! Last year we were a runner up, but this year we did a lot more. Please vote for Dump Mike!

Why should you vote for Dump Mike Ferguson? Because we were not only an excellent blog but we were also very effective.

Dump Mike was a pain in the butt for Mike Ferguson all the way through the 2006 campaign. We tracked his votes, his statements, his media appearances, his lies, his poor constituent support, and on the last weekend his failure of a bus rally tour where there were more people on his bus than showed up at any of his stops!

That same weekend Linda Stender's put out a call for quick funds -- $12,000 -- to help expand her Get Out The Vote program, and Dump Mike's reader's came through. We raised a little more than $3,000 in just over two days, more than 25 percent of what they needed.

We can't take all the credit for the way things turned out, but Mike Ferguson was kept under 50 percent of the vote at 49.42 percent, and Linda received 47.94 percent or the vote -- less less than 1.5 percent meant the difference in the campaign. Dump Mike was a big part of that success.

So please, go to Blue Jersey and -- if you haven't already -- sign up for an account so you can vote for Dump Mike for the 2006 New Jersey Blog of the Year.

Posted by admin at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1948 President Harry Truman labeled the Congress "Do Nothing" because they only met 110 days the whole year. In 2006, the Republican Congress blew that record away by meeting a grand total of 94 days. As a result of missing so many work days, there was a lot that just didn't get done.

One of the things that didn't get done was passing a budget for the 2006-2007 fiscal year, instead passing what "continuing resolutions" that maintain the spending of the previous year. This is usually done as a stop-gap effort as the Congress works to complete the bills. That means that four months into the fiscal year we don't have a budget determining how much money will be spent on what programs.

Essentially, they wanted to pass the buck to the new Democratic majority to let them make the hard decisions the Republicans were not willing to make. It was a political, partisan decision meant to make the Democrats look bad.

Now the Democrats are in control and are looking to pass a budget that is responsible and doesn't increase the deficit. And one of the ways they are doing it is by removing all the earmarks put in last year.

For us in the 7th District that means that the inaction by the Republican Congress in 2006 may cost Mike Ferguson's district about $4.15 million this year for a variety of projects that Ferguson had bragged about getting. In short, he bragged about the funding before he and his colleagues did the work to get the funding, and now it may be lost.

The list of potentially lost funding in our district is taken from the Record list of New Jersey's endangered earmarks. Where possible we linked to Ferguson's bragging on the funding.

Posted by admin at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Congressional Quarterly noted that there were only 15 races nationally that were within five points this year, and the Linda Stender/Mike Ferguson squeaker in NJ7 is one of them. Their analysis decides to mention Emily's List support while completely ignoring Blue 7th PAC (and this blog, Dump Mike), Democracy for America (and the great NJ for Democracy and Hunterdon for Democracy), and the Netroots that combined to raise far more than $100,000 and provided the bulk of volunteers for the campaign.

It also notes the frustrating fact that Ferguson's support from the national Republican party organs (RNC, NRCC, Tom DeLay Inc., etc.) was far better than Stender's support from the national Democratic party organs (DNC, DCCC) to the tune of a million dollars. Some losing Democratic campaigns saw three or more million dollars kicked in by the DCCC, and just a piece of that would have gotten Stender another 1.5 percent of the vote.

We need to raise money early (contribute to Blue 7th here) and put pressure on the national Democratic party to get involved here in NJ7 early and often. Our -- and I mean all the grassroots groups and Linda's campaign -- efforts for the 2006 race proved that we are close to turning over this district. Now the national groups need to step up and get more involved.

New Jersey’s 7th

Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson defeated Democratic state Rep. Linda Stender 49.43 percent to 47.95 percent, a margin of 1.5 percentage points, to secure a 3rd House term.

Ferguson was largely absent from national competitive race charts at the beginning of the year: He had won with 57 percent of the vote in 2004 in a district that favored Bush by 53 percent that same year.

But Stender capitalized on the national climate that favored Democrats and portrayed Ferguson as too closely tied to the Bush administration. Stender also focused on issues she believed would earn her bipartisan support, including her backing for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research, both of which Ferguson opposed.

But Ferguson argued that he is not a doctrinaire conservative, and he benefited from an incumbent’s fundraising advantage that may have proved crucial in a district located in the suburbs of the hyper-expensive New York City media market. Though Stender received significant financial assistance from EMILY’s List — a feminist group allied with the Democrats — and the national party, Ferguson’s early start allowed him to finish $1 million ahead of Stender in receipts. — Rachel Kapochunas

Posted by admin at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)