WHO’S UP 

Loretta Weinberg

No stranger to embroiled political situations, and never at a loss to create a chance to leap over a barricade when others in her midst found the prospect intimidating, and so perhaps appropriately in the middle of a pandemic while the U.S. House of Representatives impeached a president for inciting a riot, her own voice added to the cause, state Senate Majority Leader Weinberg of Teaneck this week announced her retirement from the state senate at the end of her current term. A state leader on women’s rights, progressive causes, and the main senate driver behind marriage equality for gays and lesbians, who fought the machine in her home county of Bergen at the height of her anti-establishment period, and backed Baraka Obama against the grain in the 2008 primary, Weinberg will retire at the end of 2021 as one of the most consequential state elected officials of the millennium.

Mikie Sherrill

The congresswoman from the 11^th district showed leadership qualities in the aftermath of the heinous assault on the United States Capitol on January 6^th, leading over 30 Members of Congress in requesting an investigation from the Acting House Sergeant at Arms, Acting Senate Sergeant at Arms, and United States Capitol Police into the suspicious behavior and access given to visitors to the Capitol Complex on Tuesday, January 5, 2021 – the day before the attacks on the Capitol.

Bill Pascrell

The 9^th District congressman reacted to multiple news reports that Arizona Republican Congressman Andy Biggs (AZ-05) worked with far-right extremist groups to help organize the violent mob that attacked the United States Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people including a U.S. Capitol Police Officer from New Jersey. In typical Pascrell fashion, he did not mince words. “It is despicable enough over two-thirds of the House Republican Caucus voted to overturn the election hours after we were rampaged by fascist rioters,” said Pascrell. “But if any Members of Congress actively participated in planning the attack, that is treason. It is rich that Mr. Biggs demanded my censure and criminal prosecution for ‘threatening the livelihoods of American citizens’ after I sought the disbarment of Trump attorneys including Rudy Giuliani for filing frivolous lawsuits. He used those exact words and it turns out he was describing himself. Any elected official found to be aiding insurrection is unfit to serve and should be ejected from Congress.”

Bonnie Watson Coleman

Recovering from COVID-19 in the aftermath of despicable, Trump-incited attacks on the United States Capitol, the Congresswoman from the 12^th District showed her endearing qualities of leadership and courage as she identified some of the culprits in her professional midst. “Over the past day, a lot of people have asked me how I feel,” she wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “They are usually referring to my covid-19 diagnosis and my symptoms. I feel like I have a mild cold. But even more than that, I am angry. I am angry that after I spent months carefully isolating myself, a single chaotic day likely got me sick. I am angry that several of our nation’s leaders were unwilling to deal with the small annoyance of a mask for a few hours. I am angry that the attack on the Capitol and my subsequent illness have the same cause: my Republican colleagues’ inability to accept facts.”

Sterley Stanley

Backed by the Middlesex County Democratic Committee, the East Brunswick Council President prevailed this week in a duel with Edison Councilman Joe Coyle to fill a vacancy in the Legislature caused by the retirement of Assemblyman Nancy Pinkin (D-18), now the Middlesex County Clerk.

WHO’S DOWN

Donald Trump

After reacting to his decisive election loss like a spoiled child, like an individual who never attained maturity, inciting seditious bedlam alongside his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who called for “trial by combat” at the same pre-riot rally, the President looked around and found himself a dishonorable political grave, the only president in United States history twice impeached.

Doug Steinhardt

Trying to run for governor as “the Trump guy”, the Florio Perrucci attorney mercifully ended his bid for governor, sparing the COVID-19-ravaged state a lurch into the absurdity of defending the indefensible.

Tom Kean, Jr.

After running a campaign for congress in the 7^th District in which he said nothing and allowed Trump-connected operatives to run a scorched non-substantive campaign, the senate minority leader provided another glowing example of anemic GOP leadership when he tried to hide behind a joint-non statement about the seditious riots that he issued with Weinberg, and failed to identify the primary role Trump played in attacking the United States of America.

Mike Lavery

The “statement” issued on the infamous evening of January 6^th by Republican Chairman Mike Lavery represented a common theme expressed in the squall of supposedly conscience-easing releases barfed into cyberspace by the Republican Party’s “leaders,” as they presented the illusion of attempting to rubber band back into the real world out of the Trump era. Newly the chairman of the NJGOP, Lavery’s non-statement condemning violence offered no promise of leadership to New Jersey, which, as always in its byzantine, subterranean culture of subservience to bossism, desperately needs leadership.

Chris Christie

The former governor of New Jersey legitimized Trump at the outset when he endorsed the TV game show host to run the country, an exercise in terrible, irresponsible judgment, dangerously ratified when grifter Trump squirmed out of the 2016 GOP Primary and hoodwinked his way through the general. Then as most urgently now, those people who truly care about this country, our foundations and the decency of those teachers who came before us and the future of those precious and vulnerable ones in our hands, should not listen to those who ever urged support for the twice impeached Trump.