November 9, 2013

People living outside the NY and PA media pods may not understand just how often this taxpayer-paid commercial was pounded into the psyches of viewers in the most expensive media market in the country - conveniently enough, while Christie was running for reelection.

So Gov. Chris Christie won a resounding victory, and the fawning media has done everything but anoint him a la Ted Cruz as the next Republican candidate. After all, he won 60.5 percent of the vote!

But when you look a little closer, it wasn't anywhere near as fantastic as the media (and Christie) would like you to believe. Here's the thing: This was the lowest gubernatorial turnout ever in NJ:

With 99 percent of the voting precincts counted, 2,073,642 voters cast ballots for governor, according to the Associated Press. That's a shade less than 38 percent of the state's registered voters.

The voter totals will go up because they don't include provisional ballots yet to be counted, as well as those who may have voted for other offices but not governor. The record low for a governor's race is 47 percent, set four years ago.

The special U.S. Senate election held three weeks ago set the record for lowest turnout of any Jersey state level-contest: 24.5 percent.

Let's see if this puts things in perspective: Barbara Buono got 50,000 more votes than Corey Booker did in last month's special election.

One of the criticisms of Buono is she had a lousy campaign. You know who handled her campaign? The firm David Axelrod founded. It was so bad, it was almost as if the people she paid were actively sabotaging her campaign. Instead of attacking Christie, they had her attacking the state Democrats!

Now, the NJ Democratic organization is famously corrupt, which is why Democratic voters took a chance on Christie the first time. But who in their right mind thought she could win this election without dirtying him up? After all, one of the reasons he's so popular is that people don't really know how much dirt there is on him.

Why, it's almost as if Buono's campaign consultants wanted Christie to win. Why? Honestly, I don't have a clue. But as Sherlock Holmes once said, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

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