2011 Power List and Year in Review - PolitickerNJ.com

PolitickerNJ.com
year in review 2011
Loser of the Year, Runners-Up
Jon girgenti
It helps to have allies in politics, and
Girgenti had one in fellow veteran state
Sen. Dick Codey (D-27). But when Codey
lost his senate presidency, Girgenti had no
contingency plan. When it came time to cut
up districts and create room for Latinos in
elected office, Democrats had little difficulty
making a casualty out of Girgenti, whose
back was uncovered.
Domenick
DiCicco, Jr.
From the day in 2009 when he won election
to his 4th District Assembly seat, DiCicco
started vying with Assemblyman Vince
Polistina for the role of future South Jersey
Republican senator. Like Polistina, DiCicco
slapped his name on high profile legislation
as he attempted to make his mark with voters
in hopes of one day challenging state Sen.
Fred Madden (D-4). DiCicco never even got
an audition with voters as Democrats on the
redistricting commission secured a map that
dislocated DiCicco from his own district and
prevented him from mounting a challenge to
Madden that was two years in the making.
DiCicco, who was moved to the 3rd District,
went on to run for re-election to the Assembly.
He never stood a chance as the Democratic
incumbents there routed him.
The
Republican
Party
Anytime an entity works as
hard at lowering expectations as
the state GOP did this year, you
know things ain’t good. With a
devastating loss on the legislative
map, the GOP went into
legislative mid-terms downplaying
their chances of picking up
a seat – rightly so it turns out –
and quoting decades of statistics
showing mid-terms are not kind
to the sitting governor. Short of
another wave of public corruption arrests,
the GOP stands little chance over the decade
to come of picking up enough seats in either
house to take control.
Public sector
workers
It was Assemblyman Tom Giblin (D-34)
who stood outside the State House Annex
this year and told New Jersey’s legions of
public soldiers that they were getting kicked
in the ass. It was true. By the time Christie and
his Democratic colleagues finished, public
workers would pay more for their pension and
health benefits, despite months of angry back
and forth between the unions and the governor.
In losing the battle, the unions lost some
of their ferocity, with at least one member
lamenting that collective bargaining had been
reduced to “arguing over bathroom breaks.”
Barbara
Buono
The senate majority leader
proved a feisty foil to state Senate
President Steve Sweeney
(D-3), and paid for it, too, when
she was given the heave-ho out
of leadership. The stealth factor
made Buono’s plummet out of her
leadership chair that much more
shocking. One minute she was the senate majority
leader – and the next she was watching
fellow progressive state Sen. Loretta Weinberg
(D-37) eagerly bypassing her for the secondin-command
sash. The diss dropped Buono
at a time when she continues to try to build a
platform for a 2013 challenge of Christie.
34 PolitickerNJ