These are the political missteps that merit NJ political turkeys for 2023 | Stile

Every Thanksgiving we collect our favorite political "turkeys" — misstatements, missteps, hypocrisies and hyperbolic nonsense that have cluttered the New Jersey political discourse over the past year. I collected 10, but this only scratches the surface.

Here they are:

Chris Christie and 'Donald Duck' Trump

Here is a turkey for a lame duck joke.

"Donald, I know you're watching. You can't help yourself. I know you're watching," former Gov. Chris Christie said while peering into a camera from the podium of the second Republican presidential debate in September.

"You're not here tonight because you're afraid of being on the stage and defending your record. You're ducking these things,'' he continued. "And let me tell you what's going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore."

Then the over-rehearsed Christie paused for dramatic effect before delivering the kicker. "We're gonna call you Donald Duck."

I wasn't inside the Ronald Reagan Library that night, but I think its a safe bet that there were more cringes than laughs. If Christie's idea was to earn a memorable sound-bite takeaway from the debate that had people talking the next day, he succeeded, but perhaps not in the way he intended. The "duck" line was roasted on social media.

Steve Dnistrian and his moral compass on abortion

Steve Dnistrian, the Republican state Senate candidate who was trounced by state Sen. Vin Gopal, the Democratic incumbent in the Monmouth County-based 11th Legislative District this month, offered a novel answer when asked about his position on one of the most contentious issues of our times: abortion.

He refused to disclose his position when confronted by NJ Spotlight TV’s Brenda Flanagan. Dnistrian, a devout Catholic, said his positions would be shaped by the preference of a majority of voters.

“I’m going to let my constituents tell me where they stand, because I’m supposed to represent them," said Dnistrian. “That’s what representative democracy is all about.”

It's also true that campaigns in a representative democracy are about giving voters a chance to gauge a candidate's positions, ideology and moral compass. On this issue, Dnistrian’s moral compass was spun by any which way the wind blows. And he paid dearly for it on Nov. 7. Dnistrian wins a turkey for his inability to communicate his position.

Corruption and Jersey: Do they always go together?

And now a turkey for New Jersey's reputation as a toxic pit of corruption:

In an early, focus-group-style campaign video, U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Andy Kim, D-Burlington, asks one participant how the news of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez’s latest indictment made him feel.

“Like a New Jerseyan," the man replied.

Joey Torres' ongoing state of denial

While on the same topic, former Paterson Mayor Joey Torres' comeback attempt earns him a state-of-denial turkey. Most attempts to regain the glory and perks of lost power usually fail, but rarely do they become the subject of a criminal indictment.

But that's what happened in July when state Attorney General Matthew Platkin indicted Torres for formally seeking a return to the mayor's seat despite a court order barring him from doing so.

Torres pleaded guilty in 2017 to using city employees to work on businesses linked to relatives. Taxpayers footed the bill for overtime, authorities said. As part of the agreement, Torres was barred from seeking or holding public office. But seek he did, showing up at the clerk's office with a stack of nominating petitions in 2022.

“That is bold," Platkin said. "And, according to the grand jury, it is also indictable.”

South Jersey's 'phantom candidates'

"Phantom candidates," who seem to roam the South Jersey political landscape with alarming frequency, earned a political deceit turkey this year.

Phantoms are usually third-party candidates who appear on the fall ballot with no political profile and with the sole purpose of siphoning votes away from legitimate candidates. Phantoms haunted Republican candidates in the South Jersey races in the 2nd and 4th Legislative Districts this fall.

Here is an excerpt from a legal filing in which Republican lawyers allege that Guiseppe Costanzo of Clementon was enlisted as a phantom to harm the Republican Senate candidate Christopher Del Borrello in the 4th District.

"On June 6, 2023, a nominating petition was filed on behalf of Costanzo to run for the office of state senate in LD-4, using the slogan '“'Conservatives South Jersey’ despite the fact that no record exists of Costanzo participating in public life or the political process generally at any point in time prior to doing so.”

Although Del Borrello lost to Democrat Paul Moriarity, it doesn't appear that Costanzo's candidacy was a factor.

Darius Mayfield's 'uncomfortable' social designs

At a rally in Freehold in August, Darius Mayfield, who lost in a bid to unseat Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-Mercer, in 2022, didn't pass up the chance to pander to a crowd of socially conservative "parental rights" activists outside the Monmouth County Courthouse.

“I know nowadays, it's kind of harder to be a straight man or woman than it is to be an LGBTQ man or woman, and that's designed," he said. "It's designed to make us start to feel uncomfortable.”

Mayfield offered no evidence or examples of how straight people are more oppressed than LGBTQ people. But his appearance did earn him this year's male entitlement grievance turkey for unabashed whining.

New Jersey's GOP: 'Save the whales'

A turkey for the most disingenuous enviro-posturing goes to the Republican State Leadership Committee for its heart-tugging television attack ads about the dead whales that washed up on the Jersey Shore over the last year.

"Hunted to near extinction, they rebounded against all the odds,” a narrator of a five-figure RSLC ad buy says. “But a new peril lurks beneath the waves: offshore wind.”

After the ad shows images of a dead humpback being dragged off a beach, the narrator goes full-on Greenpeace mode.

“Save the whales,” says the narrator, who sounds like a stuffy Brit of a PBS "Masterpiece Theater" variety. “Dump New Jersey Democrats.”

The RSLC, awash in big oil campaign money, cried crocodile tears over dead whales up throughout the fall race in an attempt to tap voter unease over Gov. Phil Murphy's clean-energy push to install wind turbines off the Jersey Shore.

Over the summer, Republicans argued — without a shred of evidence — that the early seismic testing of the ocean floor caused the alarming string of whale strandings, when, in fact, most whale necropsies indicated that they had collided with super tankers. In any case, the attack targeted Gopal but was used to target Democrats in other competitive districts.

The issue became largely moot when the Danish energy company Ørsted pulled the plug on its ambitious wind farm project in the final week of the fall race.

Bob Menendez and his faux outrage

Menendez receives a faux outrage turkey this year.

Shortly after first lady Tammy Murphy announced her campaign for the U.S. Senate — and possibly a challenge to him in a primary next year if he doesn't resign by then — Menendez fired off a fierce attack that could easily have been pulled from the Republican Party's anti-Murphy playbook.

Among the issues that "she and the governor" will need to "finally address" is "why so many veterans died in state-run nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic."

The Murphy administration's mishandling of the crisis is fair game, as is the Democratic Party's unified effort to stay mum on the issue amid calls for empaneling a legislative committee empowered with subpoena power. Menendez was among the silent Democratic Party team players. But he's speaking up now when his own political life is in danger.

The Pru's UFC 288 match

A turkey for most questionable slab of pork goes to the Prudential Center for the UFC 288 match in May.

There is little doubt that President Joe Biden's administration doled out billions in no-strings-attached pandemic relief funding to jump-start the nation's long recovery. But it's hard to believe that earmarking $3 million for an Ultimate Fighting Championship spectacle — where modern-day gladiators maul and maim each other into ground beef — truly reflected the spirit of the program.

For one thing, the Prudential Center was apparently doing well without the extra aid OK'd by Murphy's administration. And the money, strangely enough, was routed through the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which doesn't manage the Newark-based arena.

Why not beef up the allocations to fire departments, hospitals and schools rather than fritter it away on a fight?

Gary Wilcox on TikTok

The turkey for exhibiting poor taste (and talent) in public goes to Superior Court Judge Gary Wilcox, who found himself in hot water with the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct for posting on TikTok 11 videos of himself lip-syncing songs with explicit and misogynistic content, sometimes recorded in his chambers in Bergen County. He also performed under the alias "Sal Tortorella," the committee's complaint said.

In one video, the judge was wearing "a 'Beavis and Butt-Head' T-shirt while walking through the courthouse with 'Get Down' by Nas playing in the background," the complaint said.

The judge apparently posted these videos for the public to see. Perhaps his biggest mistake was his failure to keep up on pop music history. He would have known that lip-syncing is a career killer — the duo Milli Vanilli went down in flames in the 1990s for lip-syncing.

Charlie Stile is a veteran New Jersey political columnist. For unlimited access to his unique insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: stile@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ politics: Here are Charlie Stile's political turkeys for 2023