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This years elections to determine who represents you in the New Jersey Legislature saw the lowest amount of spending in a decade for state legislative races, a new report shows.

And while Democrats shelled out three times as much cash, Republicans ended up gaining seats for the first time in 10 years.

Candidates and outside groups spent nearly $25 million on the races, the lowest price tag on a legislative election since 2009, according to preliminary numbers released Tuesday by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.

On the ballot were a special state Senate seat in South Jerseys 1st District and all 80 seats in the state Assembly.

Its a significant decrease from 2017s pricey legislative election the most expensive in the states history which saw a total of more than $67 million in spending, according to ELEC. That year featured all 120 legislative seats, including the entire Senate, in which the chambers president, Stephen Sweeney, fought to keep his seat. And it was a gubernatorial election year.

But this years races were more low-key, with the Assembly, the Legislatures lower house, topping the ticket.

Outside groups funneled in more than $5.8 million, down from $23 million in 2017 and about half of what was spent in 2015 at $10.9 million, ELEC reported.

Nearly half of that came from General Majority PAC, a political group tied to Democrats, which spent about $2.7 million, according to ELEC. Democratic power broker George Norcross has significant ties to its backers and the candidates it supports. It was also a top spender in 2017, 2015 and 2013, ELEC determined.

This years election was the most low-key legislative race in a decade, said Jeff Brindle, ELECs executive director. It followed one of the most controversial, expensive legislative races in history in 2017. Maybe campaign donors needed a break.

He noted that parties and independent groups may be saving their money for next years presidential election and campaigns to fill 12 state congressional seats.

Democrats spending blew other parties out of the water at more than $4 million. Republicans spent less than $1 million, and a mere $800,000 came from other party affiliations, according to ELEC.

Still, Democrats lost three legislative seats the Senate seat and both Assembly seats in the 1st District. But they will still hold sizable control both chambers come January, when the new lawmakers are sworn in.

Swing districts that can go to either party saw the most spending, and more than 60 percent of spending went to the top ten districts. More than $2 million was poured into each of the 1st, 21st and 8th legislative district races.

Nearly $3 million went into South Jerseys 1st district, which flipped its Senate seat from blue to red when Republican Mike Testa defeated Democratic incumbent Bob Andrzejczak. The election was to fill the seat vacated by Democrat Jeff Van Drew, who moved up to the U.S. House of Representatives last year.

North Jerseys 21st district had the second-largest amount at $2.7 million, where Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick fended off Democratic and independent challengers. It was the most expensive Assembly-only election, according to ELEC.

And the 8th district held onto by incumbent Republican Ryan Peters and his new running mate, former Burlington County Sheriff Jean Stanfield saw $2.1 million in spending.

The races in the 8th and 21st districts ranked as the fifth and tenth most expensive Assembly-only elections respectively, in state history, based on numbers adjusted for inflation, ELEC reported.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report.

Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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N.J. Dems spent 3 times more than Republicans on state elections. But they lost seats. - NJ.com

Republicans will seek to craft rules governing a potential impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on their own if they cant reach an agreement on guidelines with Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

The Kentucky Republican has already declared that the GOP-controlled Senate would follow through with a trial should the House impeach Trump. He has also suggested that the Senate would not cut short such a trial, allowing evidence against Trump to be presented.

What remains far less clear, however, is how such a trial would be conducted which witnesses, if any, will be called to testify, which senators will be allowed to speak and for how long, and how much power Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who would preside over the proceedings, will wield.

There is no answer at this point to such questions, McConnell told reporters at his weekly press conference at the Capitol.

Should he fail to reach an agreement with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the outset of a trial, McConnell said he would probably come back to my own members and say, OK, can 51 of my own members agree how were going to handle this. If that fails, McConnell described a hypothetical jump ball scenario in which the Senate would vote on witnesses on a case-by-case basis.

During the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, the Republican-controlled Senate reached a bipartisan agreement governing some of the proceedings. It failed, however, to reach a deal on witness testimony. That decision was put to the entire Senate in a series of votes. In one of those votes, the upper chamber voted 70-30 not to call Monica Lewinsky as a live witness because many feared the salacious details involved in the case would tarnish the Senate.

In advance of a Trump impeachment trial, some Republican lawmakers and other allies of the president have expressed a desire to see former Vice President Joe Biden and perhaps his son Hunter Biden testify. They argue that the two would be key witnesses in the case, given that Democrats pushing for impeachment argue that Trump abused his power by allegedly withholding congressionally approved aid to Ukraine in exchange for that countrys leaders announcing an investigation into the Bidens Ukrainian business dealings.

Other possible witnesses floated by some Republicans include the U.S. intelligence community whistleblower whose concerns that Trump pushed for such a quid pro quo in phone call with Ukraines president kicked the impeachment push into high gear. Another of the potential witnesses wanted by the Trump allies is House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who chaired the impeachment hearings in the lower chamber and helped author his panels report citing overwhelming evidence of misconduct by Trump in the Ukraine matter.

If the White House chooses to call witnesses in its defense, and obvious potential witnesses include Hunter Biden or the whistleblower, I believe the Senate should allow the White House to present its witnesses, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Tuesday.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Schiff would be one of my favorites on a list of possible impeachment witnesses.

But McConnell acknowledged Tuesday that its possible Republicans would encounter difficulty in getting the 51 votes needed to call some of those witnesses. Joe Biden, for example, is a former senator with decades of relationships with several of the chambers members. He also happens to be running for president in 2020. Insisting he or his son testify could sow further discord in the upper chamber and alienate a small group of moderates and frequent Trump critics who have expressed distaste with his conduct regarding Ukraine.

I dont think that is likely appropriate, but I want to see all of the evidence before making any decisions in that way, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told a reporter last week when asked if either Biden should testify in an impeachment trial.

Republicans have a slim hold on the upper chamber, 53-47, meaning theyd need nearly all their members to sign off on either a rules package or individual witness testimony.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said the trial cant just be a dog and pony show, adding that its got to be serious proceedings. When asked if he wants Hunter Biden to testify, however, Manchin declined to rule out supporting such a motion, saying, Anything that is relevant to this trial should be heard.

Schumer said Tuesday he had not yet begun discussions with McConnell about an impeachment trial. But he added that he hoped the Senate could avoid a partisan proceeding, which appears on track to take place sometime next month.

The best way to do something as important and almost a hallowed procedure as this is in a bipartisan fashion, Schumer said.

CORRECTION: During Clintons impeachment trial, the Senate was controlled by the Republicans not the Democrats, as a previous version of the story mistakenly said.

REAL LIFE. REAL NEWS. REAL VOICES.

Help us tell more of the stories that matter from voices that too often remain unheard.

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Republicans To Go It Alone In Impeachment Trial If Senate Can't Agree On Rules - HuffPost

Despite the constant posturing by its elected officials, Connecticut has no "crisis" in transportation infrastructure. The transportation problem has nothing to do with transportation. The transportation problem -- state government's problem generally -- is only that state government's personnel costs can't be controlled, since government long ago lost the necessary courage.

This was demonstrated last week when the leader of the Republican minority in the state House of Representatives, Themis Klarides of Derby, proposed removing personnel costs from state government's Special Transportation Fund. Reporting Klarides' idea, the Waterbury Republican-American's Paul Hughes noted that nearly 30 percent of the $1.7 billion allocated to the transportation fund by the state budget this year is spent not on infrastructure but on the ordinary operating costs of the transportation and motor vehicle departments and the boating division of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection -- salaries, benefits, and pensions.

This has been going on for a long time. While the Special Transportation Fund was established in 1984 to cover infrastructure costs, within three years state government was incurring budget deficits and began spending the fund on transportation personnel as well. Neglecting infrastructure was a lot easier than controlling personnel costs, since the employees involved were members of the unions that controlled and still control the state's majority party.

Because Republicans and a few conservative Democrats commanded a majority on the budget last year, an attempt was made to bolster the transportation fund. Last year's budget placed in the fund the revenue from sales taxes on motor vehicles. But this year an enlarged Democratic majority in the General Assembly and a new Democratic governor diverted the motor vehicle sales tax revenue from the transportation fund back to the General Fund, thereby creating the "crisis" its perpetrators now decry.

But Klarides and other Republican legislators deserve little credit for acknowledging this budget shell game. For just shifting money from the General Fund to the transportation fund, as the Republicans propose, is useless, since it fails to explain how the General Fund revenue is to be replaced or done without. That is, the Republicans do not specify what non-transportation spending must be cut and priorities changed to protect the transportation fund.

Cut spending? Change priorities? Nobody can do that, neither Democrats nor Republicans, since Republicans are just as scared of the unions and other special interests as the Democrats are. The Republicans won't even seek audits of the most expensive state government policies -- education, welfare, urban, government employee labor -- no matter how obvious the failure of those policies becomes.

The Republicans have lost the last three elections for governor -- not by much, but three elections they should have won -- and haven't won a majority in the state Senate in 23 years and in the state House in 33 years. They got close in the 2016 legislative election but last year were smashed back to their normal irrelevant numbers.

Republicans have not elected anyone to Congress from Connecticut in 13 years, though not long ago half the delegation was Republican.

So Republicans have nothing to lose by telling the horrible truth about state government's desperate circumstances and its subservience to special interests. For by itself it will mean nothing even if the Republicans win an election on account of disgust with the Democrats. Connecticut can be saved only by reversing its direction.

-----

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer.

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Connecticut Republicans have nothing to lose but the state itself - Journal Inquirer

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz is being prevented from offering powerful testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on behalf of President Trump because establishment Republicans are too fearful about his past work for Jeffrey Epstein to let him speak, Rep. Matt Gaetz said.

"I suggested we call Dershowitz. I think Dershowitz should have been on our list," the Florida Republican said during an appearance Monday on the pro-Trump podcast War Room: Impeachment, which is hosted by Steve Bannon

"There were some establishment Republicans who were, like, Oh no, we can't have Dershowitz because of these Epstein allegations." Gaetz said. Dershowitz helped arrange a 2008 plea deal for the convicted sex offender, who died in jail earlier this year after being arrested on separate charges.

Gaetz protested what he described as Democrat-leaning academics using scholarly voices, which Dershowitz could have contested, to give legitimacy to the hearings, which begin Wednesday.

"They are going to bring what I can only perceive as pious, condescending, law professor, 'act of omission'-types to talk down to the Congress and really talk down to the MAGA movement. You bring Dershowitz right in there and make Democrats look at a civil libertarian-style Democrat, and I think Dershowitz would have carved them up," Gaetz said. "But, because they are worried about the [Epstein] allegations, there was consternation about calling him.

I think that was a mistake, he said. I don't think there is anyone we could put in that chair better than Alan Dershowitz. There's a decent chance Dershowitz would have been the professor of some of the Democrat witnesses."

In a letter over the weekend to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York, ranking member Doug Collins of Georgia called for the panel to expand its list of witnesses and add more Republicans.

"To ensure fairness and restore integrity to the ongoing impeachment process, I request an expanded panel and a balanced composition of academic witnesses to opine on the subject matter at issue during the hearing," wrote Collins.

"The Committee will hear from only four academic witnesses during its consideration of the question of impeachment. This is less than a quarter of those called to testify during the Clinton impeachment," he said.

The four witnesses, all constitutional law scholars identified for the first time Monday, will appear Wednesday. Critics note an imbalance that privileges the Democrats.

Last week, a Republican aide reportedly said Nadler had not responded to four recent letters from Republicans with questions about the impeachment proceedings.

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'Dershowitz would have carved them up': Matt Gaetz says fearful Republicans blew it by not letting Harvard professor testify - Washington Examiner

WASHINGTON House Democrats pressed forward on Monday with the next phase of their impeachment inquiry, putting the final touches on an Intelligence Committee report expected to form the basis of their case that President Trumps effort to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations of his political rivals was an abuse of power that warrants his removal from office.

Lawmakers from the panel reviewed the staff-written report for the first time on Monday evening, ahead of its public release and a scheduled Tuesday evening vote to transmit it to the Judiciary Committee. It will conclude that Mr. Trump, working with allies inside and outside his administration, used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to do his bidding in order to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential race.

Though the factual conclusions are likely to closely track public witness testimony in recent weeks, key elements of the majority report remained shrouded in mystery on Monday night. It was not yet clear, for instance, whether Democrats would use the document to call for specific impeachment charges against Mr. Trump, or whether it would simply outline evidence of presidential wrongdoing and leave it to the Judiciary Committee, the arbiter of impeachment proceedings past, to make that judgment.

Either way, the vote on Tuesday will largely bring to a close more than two months of investigation by the intelligence panel and shift the case against Mr. Trump into the judiciary panel, which will oversee the drafting and debate of articles of impeachment in what is likely to be a messy public spectacle suffused with partisan rancor.

You get to a point in an investigation where you can tell it is going to be a long time before you get the next valuable increment of information, and youre at a decision point, Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC. Mr. Schiff added that his committee would continue to investigate and could file supplemental information to the Judiciary Committee if appropriate.

As the Democrats prepared their case, House Republicans moved to seize the narrative and spin it in the presidents favor, releasing their own report arguing against impeachment based on the facts both parties have reviewed.

In a 123-page document that echoed the defiant messaging that Mr. Trump has employed in his own defense, the Republicans did not concede a single point of wrongdoing or hint of misbehavior by the president. Instead, they concluded that Mr. Trump was acting on genuine and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine and valid concerns about possible corruption involving Americans, not political self-interest, when he pressed the country for investigations of his Democratic rivals.

Mr. Trump, who spent much of the day traveling to Britain to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, appeared to be preoccupied with the coming fight. He posted on Twitter from Air Force One about the weakness of the Democrats case and the strength of Republican unity. Not long after landing in London, the president lavished praise on the Republicans report, which he said he had read, and raised the prospect of unilaterally asking the Supreme Court to stop the House impeachment proceedings, a process enshrined in the Constitution, in its tracks.

Great job! Mr. Trump tweeted of Republicans. Radical Left has NO CASE. Read the Transcripts. Shouldnt even be allowed. Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?

The Constitution puts the chief justice of the Supreme Court in charge of overseeing any impeachment trial in the Senate, but empowers the House and the Senate to carry out the proceedings as they see fit. The Supreme Court has no purview over the process.

As Washington re-engaged in the impeachment drama after Thanksgiving, the timetable for the process remained unclear. House leaders announced they would remain in session until Dec. 20, more than a week longer than initially planned, leaving open the possibility of a vote to impeach Mr. Trump days before Christmas. But with the Judiciary Committee scheduling only one hearing for this week, Democrats were facing a calendar squeeze that could make it difficult for them to complete the intricate impeachment process before years end.

The Judiciary Committee unveiled the list of constitutional scholars its members plan to question on Wednesday, when they convene their first formal impeachment session to help inform the debate over whether Mr. Trumps conduct was impeachable.

The witnesses are Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School, Michael J. Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina Law School and Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School. Mr. Turley was invited by Republicans on the panel.

The Justice Department filed a brief before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, seeking to block impeachment investigators from gaining access to secret grand jury evidence gathered by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russias 2016 election interference and the Trump campaign.

Lawyers for the House have argued that they need to see that material in part because it could further illuminate the question of whether Mr. Trump lied to Mr. Mueller, a matter they have said is part of their impeachment inquiry. But the House is likely moving too quickly for the courts to settle the case before an impeachment vote.

In the Republicans dissenting views, they argued that after two months of investigation, the evidence does not support that Mr. Trump withheld a coveted White House meeting for Ukraines president or nearly $400 million in security assistance for the country as leverage for securing the investigations.

The conclusion is at odds with sworn testimony from senior American diplomats and White House officials who said they believed Mr. Trump sought to use American influence over Ukraine to suit his domestic political purposes, repeatedly pressing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an unproven claim that Ukraine conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.

Rather than take those assertions at face value, the Republicans charged that they came from civil servants who dislike Mr. Trumps agenda and style and are therefore allowing themselves to be part of a push by Democrats to undo the results of the 2016 election and thwart Mr. Trumps re-election chances in 2020.

The Democrats impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system, the Republicans wrote. The Democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected president based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trumps policy initiatives and processes.

The argument mirrored one made at the White House on Monday by Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trumps counselor, who sought to portray Democrats case as flimsy.

One out of 12 people had ever talked to the president of the United States and met him or discussed Ukraine with him that is just mind-boggling to me, Ms. Conway said, referring to the number of current and former government officials who testified publicly in the inquiry. And we are supposed to impeach the president for high crimes and misdemeanors for that reason?

Ms. Conway also dared Mr. Schiff to testify publicly during the Judiciary Committees proceedings about his handling of the case. If he did, she promised to show up on behalf of the White House, which on Sunday declined to participate in the hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

Democrats are expected to argue the virtual opposite of the Republican report.

The Democrats case centers on a July phone call in which Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden and the claim that Ukraine worked with Democrats to subvert the 2016 election. It is also likely to charge that Mr. Trump conditioned the White House meeting and military assistance money on a public commitment to the investigations.

Mr. Schiff indicated as much Monday when he said that the Republican report ignores voluminous evidence that the president used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rival by withholding military aid and a White House meeting the president of Ukraine desperately sought.

He added, In so doing, the president undermined our national security and the integrity of our elections.

The minority report was compiled by committee staff for the top three Republicans on the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform Committees.

It essentially formalized a range of defenses Republicans road-tested last month during two weeks of public impeachment hearings in the Intelligence Committee. For members of the Judiciary Committee and the larger Republican conference in the House, it provided several alternative tacks for defending Mr. Trump or at least arguing against impeachment.

If the Democrats case hinges on linking actions by Mr. Trump and his agents to a unified pressure campaign, the Republican defense is staked on pulling those pieces apart and offering an alternate explanation for each.

Many of the actions in question, Republicans argue, stem from Mr. Trumps longstanding, deep-seated skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption.

Understood in this proper context, the presidents initial hesitation to meet with President Zelensky or to provide U.S. taxpayer-funded security assistance to Ukraine without thoughtful review is entirely prudent, the Republicans wrote.

Likewise, they argued, there was nothing wrong with asking serious questions about Mr. Biden and his younger son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm when his father was vice president, or about Ukraines attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Though some officials who testified before the inquiry said that Hunter Bidens role had prompted concerns about the appearance of a conflict of interest, no evidence had emerged to support any accusations of wrongdoing. And Mr. Trumps own former national security advisers testified that the concerns he raised to Mr. Zelensky about 2016 were conspiracies promulgated by Russia to absolve its own interference campaign in 2016 and harm American democracy. They said the president had repeatedly been told as much.

Republicans also argued there was nothing inherently improper with Mr. Trump empowering Rudolph W. Giuliani, his private lawyer who led the push for investigations, to help steer Ukraine matters, despite testimony that there was widespread alarm at Mr. Giulianis involvement.

The report also repeated familiar Republican grievances about the denial of fundamental fairness in the investigative process put forward by Democrats. Mr. Trumps decision to discourage participation in the inquiry, they wrote, was a legitimate response to an unfair, abusive, and partisan process, and does not constitute obstruction of a legitimate impeachment inquiry.

Democrats do not see it that way, and have prepared a catalog of all of the ways that Mr. Trump has obstructed their inquiry that could form the basis for its own article of impeachment.

Michael D. Shear and Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

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Democrats Ready Impeachment Report as Republicans Argue Trump Did Nothing Wrong - The New York Times