Christie-Lonegan war chest breakdown

Dear Friend,

Some interesting news stories have been published the past couple of days. Mr. Corruption Fighter seems to have some ethics problems of his own.

from The American Spectator
New Jersey's State of Contributions
By J. Peter Freire

Just came across this little item in the New Jersey Governor's race.

It's complicated, but the short version is that if you give someone a no-bid contract for work and then you run for a federal office, you can't take campaign contributions from them. The same is true for state office.

New Jersey's State of Contributions

Just came across this little item in the New Jersey Governor's race.

It's complicated, but the short version is that if you give someone a no-bid contract for work and then you run for a federal office, you can't take campaign contributions from them. The same is true for state office.

But there's no law that says you can't take a STATE contribution from someone you gave a FEDERAL no bid contract to. And that's exactly what Chris Christie, the GOP favorite to get the nod to take on Jon Corzine in the Fall has done. As U.S. Attorney, Christie gave the firm of Stern and Kilcullen a 7 million dollar no-bid contract. Now that Christie's running for Governor, the partners and their wives contributed $23,800 to Christie's campaign. Since New Jersey has 2-1 matching funds, it's more like they gave him over $70,000.

While this is not illegal, it sure looks terrible, especially when you consider that Christie has based his entire campaign on ethics and cleaning up New Jersey. If Steve Lonegan is smart, he'll take this story and try to turn Christie's strength on ethics into a weakness. If that happens, Lonegan might just be able to change this GOP Primary from a coronation into a fist fight.

This Star-Ledger video lays out the differences between how Steve and Christie are doing their fundraising. Steve has far more donors than Christie and Christie is going after the big bucks from very few, including a couple of huge donations from people who benefited from a no-bid contract Christie awarded them. Looks like a little tit-for-tat, while Steve is appealing to the grassroots rather than the status quo Republican establishment.