{"id":40802235963,"date":"2013-11-01T14:09:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T18:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2013\/11\/01\/candidate-buonos-legacy\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:05","slug":"candidate-buonos-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2013\/11\/01\/candidate-buonos-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Candidate Buono\u2019s Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes you can win by losing.\u00a0 The 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial election is not one of those times.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, Barbara Buono will suffer a significant defeat on Tuesday.\u00a0 The writing was on the cards from the very beginning.\u00a0 For a whole host of reasons \u2013 the post-Sandy inevitability of Chris Christie\u2019s re-election, Buono\u2019s standing as an outsider in the state party, etc. \u2013 the Democratic establishment was never going to throw resources into this race.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, Buono should have realized that her best shot was to run an \u201cagenda\u201d campaign.\u00a0 This is not to be confused with what Buono actually did \u2013 try to tackle every issue under the sun.<\/p>\n

Her approach to an agenda was encapsulated by her debate performances.\u00a0 She spoke in shorthand and tried to cram multiple issues into each of her responses.\u00a0 This left viewers \u2013 and voters \u2013 confused about what she would do as governor.<\/p>\n

Her responses also gave Chris Christie a range of options on how to \u201crebut\u201d her.\u00a0 He invariably chose the fattest pitch offered up by Buono and slammed it out of the park.<\/p>\n

In its endorsement of Christie\u2019s reelection, the Star-Ledger editorial board summed up their decision by saying, \u201cBuono simply did not make the case<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buono spent the past years highlighting at issues which independent swing voters \u2013 consider second or third tier priorities. \u00a0Or issues which are really non-issues (e.g. same-sex marriage has been decided by the courts and the minimum wage will be decided by the voters).<\/p>\n

Knowing that she would lose, Buono could have done more in terms of leaving a legacy by putting an item that has been ignored onto the state\u2019s political agenda.<\/p>\n

Political leaders rarely, if ever, change the public\u2019s mind on an issue.\u00a0 But they can incite the public to demand action from their elected officials on important issues that have been percolating below the surface.<\/p>\n

Other losing candidates have done this with varying degrees of success.\u00a0 Jim McGreevey\u2019s bid to unseat Christie Whitman in 1997 is one such example.\u00a0 Regardless of the question he was asked by a reporter or voter during that campaign, McGreevey turned every answer into an unwavering call for auto insurance reform.\u00a0 Suddenly, auto insurance was the top issue on voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n

Property tax reform is another issue put on the state agenda by a candidate in a losing effort.\u00a0 Contrary to popular belief, \u201cproperty taxes\u201d has not always been at the top of voters\u2019 minds as the state\u2019s most pressing problem (as the chart here illustrates<\/a>).<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t happen until 2005.\u00a0 During that year\u2019s gubernatorial race, Republican Doug Forrester made \u201c40 in 4\u201d the centerpiece of his campaign.\u00a0 In other words, he promised to cut property taxes by 40 percent in four years.\u00a0 Democrat Jon Corzine was forced to respond with his own \u201c30 in 3\u201d plan. <\/p>\n

Property taxes then jumped to the top of the list of issues that New Jerseyans said concerned them most.\u00a0 And it stayed there. \u00a0Forrester put an important issue on the public agenda.<\/p>\n

Once elected, Gov. Corzine called a special session of the legislature specifically to come up with bold ideas to bring down property taxes.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he pulled the rug out from under the legislature and decided to put all his eggs into a toll road monetization basket instead.\u00a0 And the rest, as MF Global investors know all too well, is history.<\/p>\n

In 2009, independent candidate Chris Daggett tried to take the \u201cwin while losing\u201d approach.\u00a0 The unveiling of his bold property tax plan led to a momentary spike in the polls for Daggett.\u00a0 However, his message got lost in the anti-Corzine sentiment that brought a new governor into office.\u00a0 This allowed candidate Christie to avoid addressing the issue in his campaign, and the most we got in policy reform from Gov. Christie is a cap on annual growth.<\/p>\n

Concerns about property taxes have not gone away though.\u00a0 Even in the depths of the recent economic recession, it remained in the top spot or tied for number one among issues the public wanted to see addressed.\u00a0 Even Superstorm Sandy couldn\u2019t knock property taxes as the issue that most concerns New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Polls have shown that Gov. Christie has been able to escape most of the blame for the ongoing property tax problem, but that it remains a potential Achilles\u2019 heel for him.\u00a0 The governor realizes this as well, as his ferocious reaction to a recent NJ League of Municipalities proposal demonstrates.<\/p>\n

The right message and the right messenger could have put this issue \u2013 or indeed any other single priority issue \u2013 on the campaign\u2019s front-burner.\u00a0 This \u201cagenda setting\u201d approach could have changed the entire dynamic of this race and indeed the governing priorities of the next few years.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for New Jersey, 2013 lacked both the message and the messenger.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Barbara Buono, who has served admirably as a public servant, this will be her campaign\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ Sometimes you can win by losing.\u00a0 The 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial election is not one of those times. By all accounts, Barbara Buono will suffer a significant defeat on Tuesday.\u00a0 The writing was on the cards from the very beginning.\u00a0 For a whole host of reasons \u2013 the post-Sandy inevitability of Chris Christie\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802235963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802235963"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802244182,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235963\/revisions\/40802244182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802235963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802235963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802235963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}