State's Democratic committee has created web site detailing controversial statements, political stances, affiliations of Recall NJ leaders
Jim McGreevey and U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, Leonard Lance and U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg during the memorial service for Bob Franks at the Cathedral Basilica of The Sacred Heart in Newark on April 17.
TRENTON — The state Democratic Party is going on the offensive against a tea party group that’s trying to recall U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), saying its leaders hail from the “extreme right wing.”
The New Jersey Democratic State Committee has created a web page detailing controversial statements, political stances and affiliations of leaders of the group, Recall NJ. One of its top members questioned whether Obama was born in the United States.
“It’s a fringe element of the Republican Party. It’s an uber-right part of the party,” said Democratic State Chairman John Wisniewski.
But even if the group wins the right to start a petition drive, it faces the difficult task of collecting the signatures of 25 percent of the state’s registered voters — about 1.3 million people.
The Democrats especially highlighted comments the group’s media chairman, James Bridge, made on ResistNet.com, a tea party website. Bridge wrote that President Obama has “links to people who assisted in the murder of police officers, to Islamic terror spokesmen, and to racist blacks.”
“Then there's that thing about his birth certificate,” wrote Bridge.
Democrats also tied the group to conservative on-air personality Glenn Beck, the gun lobby and the Conservative Bible Project, which was started by Recall NJ’s counsel in the Menendez case, Andy Schlafly. The project uses the Wikipedia-like website Conservapedia.com, also founded by Schlafly, to re-translate the New Testament without “liberal translation distortions.”
RoseAnn Salanitri, the leader of the recall effort and the Sussex County Tea Party, is also targeted in the Democrats’ page for her belief that the earth is 6,000 years and that humans and dinosaurs once co-existed.
“That’s accurate,” said Salanitri. “Yes, I’m a person of faith, I believe in god, I believe in the bible and I don’t apologize for that. It’s unfortunate that Sen. Menendez is seeking to destroy someone’s faith rather than defending his own record.”
Salanitri said if Bridge believes Obama is not a citizen, he is not speaking for the Sussex County Tea Party or the recall group.
“He didn’t say that on behalf of Recall NJ, I can tell you,” she said. “The Tea Party activists who have sponsored this are fiercely independent individuals, and everyone holds their own opinions.”
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