Winners Gamble and Gopal is Betting on Buono

Last week, Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vin Gopal was named as one of PolitickerNJ's Winners Of  The Week, for coming out early and endorsing the campaign of Sen. Barbara Buono for governor before South Jersey Democratic leader George Norcross III and Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo issued statements of support for Buono.

Monmouth Dems Chairman Vin Gopal

Now in an article posted yesterday on NJ.Com, Gopal is being called a gambler after he "rolled the dice" backing Buono for governor before many other Democratic County Chairmen or party leaders in the state -  who have preferred to wait for some other, higher profiled candidate such as former governor Dick Cody or Congressman Bill Pascrell  step forward.

In explaining why he came out and supported Senator Buono for governor early, instead of waiting for some other candidate to eventually emerge Gopal stated:

“I have a lot of respect for Dick Codey and the other people thinking about running, but our county committee and municipal leaders support Barbara Buono 100 percent, she is still the best candidate, and the greatest contrast, to Governor Christie.

With Barbara Buono, you have a strong, progressive woman who has been Budget chair in Trenton, who has been Majority Leader, who has raised a significant amount of money in a short period of time, and who is overly qualified for this position. Some of the men in the party are a little nervous, but she’s going to attract women voters all over the state. She’s going to connect with working-class families, who are dealing with a 9.6 percent state unemployment rate, the second-highest foreclosure rate in the country, and property taxes that continue to go up. She is on the right side of all of these issues, including marriage equality, which the governor vetoed....”

Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murrary also sees Gopal's gamble on Buono as a positive rather than a negative and helps him stake a claim as a  future statewide power broker:

"Even if Dick Codey ran and got the nomination, it’s still not going to come back and bite Vin Gopal that he went out early for Barbara Buono. If Codey runs, wins the nomination, but loses to Chris Christie, it’s probably going to be his last hurrah. The party leaders are going to look beyond that, and nobody is going to hold a grudge against Gopal for not supporting Codey in a primary.

“Gopal has been working almost council seat by council seat to build up the Democratic base in Monmouth County. Now, he’s also making a statement with his support of Barbara Buono – Monmouth County should no longer be ignored by the Democratic power brokers as an afterthought.”

 So, is Gopal's decision to back Senator Buono really such a gamble? I think not. His decision was both  a  bold and smart political move on many levels. It has allowed the Monmouth Dems to have a significant say in defining the values that progressives in the state feel are important for their gubernatorial candidate to have and it focused attention of Party stalwarts Monmouth's way, showing them that Monmouth County, under Gopal's leadership, can't be taken lightly.

The Monmouth University Polling Institute invites you to…

“A Conversation with…”
prominent national political commentators


The series kicks off with two well-known cable television personalities
who will discuss what’s at stake in this year’s national election.


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Monday, October 1, 7:00 pm – Wilson Hall

A Conversation with … MONICA CROWLEY

Monica Crowley is a host and political and foreign affairs analyst for the Fox News Channel, and the host of the nationally syndicated radio program, The Monica Crowley Show. She has also been a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group and an anchor on MSNBC. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller, What The (Bleep) Just Happened? The Happy Warrior’s Guide to the Great American Comeback. She served as Foreign Policy Assistant to former President Richard Nixon from 1990 until his death in 1994, and wrote two bestsellers about her experiences, Nixon Off the Record and Nixon in Winter. She has also written for the New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Newsweek. She holds two Master's degrees and a doctorate from Columbia University.

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Thursday, October 18, 7:00 pm – Wilson Hall

A Conversation with … STEVE KORNACKI

Steve Kornacki is a co-host of MSNBC’s ensemble show The Cycle, which airs weekday afternoons. He is also Salon.com’s senior political writer. Before that, he wrote for the New York Observer and covered Congress for Roll Call. He also spent three years in New Jersey, chronicling the state’s political world for PolitickerNJ.com and co-hosting Power & Politics, a television weekly show on News12 New Jersey. His work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Boston Globe, Daily Beast and Capital New York. He is a native of Groton, Massachusetts and graduated from Boston University.

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Monmouth University Polling Institute’s “A Conversation with…” series gives students, faculty, and the larger community the opportunity to interact with high-profile political figures from the national stage. The discussions are led by Polling Institute director Patrick Murray, with a period for audience Q & A.

These events are free and open to the public

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Patrick Murray: Interpreting the School Budget Vote

posted by Patrick Murray on his Real Numbers and Other Musings blog

Yesterday, New Jersey voters did something they haven’t done in more than 30 years: defeated a majority of school district tax levies. [Note: I’m calling them “levies” here because that is more accurate. Voters don’t really have a say on the spending portion of the operational budgets of their local schools. They only get to vote on the amount in property taxes that the district proposes levying for the year.]

They also turned out in record numbers. The final statewide vote count hasn’t been compiled, but it is somewhere north of 20% of all registered voters. That may not sound like much, but the previous high for school elections, going back to at least 1976, was 18.6%. 1976 was also the last time a majority of school levies failed. That year, 56% went down. This year, it looks like 59% have been tossed out by voters.

A Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll released last week found that 29% of registered voters – if they did vote – would support their local school levies, while 37% would oppose them. Based on a sampling of county returns, it looks like that 8 point margin may hold up in the final statewide vote.

There are some other interesting findings as well. Taking Middlesex County as just one example, compared to the April 2009 election, turnout in this one county was up by 65%. The number of “No” votes went up by 90%. But the number of “Yes” votes also went up, albeit by a lower 40%. In other words, turnout increased on both sides of the issue.

So what does this all mean?

Chris Christie and his supporters have claimed victory, saying that New Jersey voters sided with the governor in his battle with the state teacher’s union, the NJEA. However, the governor urged voters to defeat budgets in districts where the teachers made no concessions – and a good number of these actually passed. On the flip side, in the few districts where teachers actually agreed to wage freezes or other concessions – the districts one would expect to be rewarded if voters were out to show support for the governor – a good number (anywhere between 6 and 13 depending on what you count as a "concession") of the school budget levies failed.

The NJEA claims that the school vote was a repudiation of the governor’s draconian cuts in school aid which forced school boards to raise property taxes in order to maintain needed programs and services. Maybe, but polls also indicate that the public expected teachers to be willing to take pay freezes and pay for their benefits.

Local school boards say the vote was the product of a rush to make drastic cuts in a short time frame with few available tools to lessen the pain for both the educational system and the taxpayers. They may be partially right, but polls consistently show that voters believe there is a whole lot of waste in school spending to begin with.

So, here’s what we know about the New Jersey public:
1. They think the size of the cuts in state aid to local schools is unfair.
2. They think the teachers’ unions should be willing to come to the table and agree to a wage freeze and benefit contributions.
3. They don’t want educational programs cut.
4. They don’t want their property taxes raised.

All of these are reasons why Garden State voters voted yesterday. They are the reasons why more people than usual turned out to vote “No.” And they are also the reasons why more people than usual turned out to vote “Yes.”

Anyone who claims with certainty that any of these reasons is the main factor behind a majority of school levies going down yesterday is just blowing smoke....

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Patrick Murray is the founding director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute and is a frequent media commentator on politics and public opinion,

Patrick Murray: Conflicting Polls on the Teachers' Union? Not Really.

Patrick Murray, who is the founding director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute and is a frequent media commentator on politics and public opinion, has posted on his blog an explanation for the seemingly conflicting poll results that were released last week dealing with Governor Christie's budget, school aid cuts and state unions. He points out that even though the three polls seem to tell conflicting storys. they don't. The separate polls "really tell separate pieces of a cohesive – but nuanced – story."

Here's what he has to say:

A trio of polls were released last week on Governor Chris Christie’s budget, particularly focusing on school aid cuts and state unions. According to at least one report, these polls were “seemingly at odds” with one another (also here). But if you look at what the three polls actually asked, they really tell separate pieces of a cohesive – but nuanced – story.

The Eagleton Poll (and here) found 57% of New Jerseyans feel that school aid should not be cut and 72% are opposed to “making it easier” to lay off teachers to solve local budget problems.

The Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll found 68% of the public see the cuts as being unfair to some groups (with teachers being among the top “victims”) and Governor Christie is seen as the more negative party in the NJEA dust-up, and ultimately more responsible for the impending teacher layoffs.

The Rasmussen Poll found 65% of likely voters favor having school employees (including teachers, administrators and other workers) take a one year wage freeze to help make up for the deficit in state funding.

I really don’t find anything too contradictory in those results. Public opinion is rarely black and white (as national polling about the health reform debate dramatically illustrates). The real difference in these three polls is that each chose to cover a different facet of the issue.

Both the Eagleton and Monmouth polls asked residents about their opinion of the governor’s proposed budget and how it will affect them personally.

Eagleton also asked quite a few questions about what areas of the budget should or should not be cut and what, if any, tax increases the public is willing to accept in order to avoid those cuts (none, apparently).

Monmouth’s survey included questions on impressions of Christie’s budget in comparison to Jon Corzine’s first budget (trends are a wonderful tool for providing context) and a focus on communication with the general public, including the NJEA battle and reaction to key terms used to describe the budget (e.g. “tough” and “fair”).

Rasmussen’s poll asked four questions, mainly focused on state worker concessions to deal with the budget crisis.

In terms of election polling, Rasmussen has a very good track record and, by my reckoning, had the most accurate final pre-election poll in last year’s gubernatorial race. [And admittedly, Monmouth, along with Zogby, YouGov, and Democracy Corp, came up with the wrong end of the stick in the final days of that campaign. Eagleton did not issue a final election poll.]...

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