principle that we all pretend to live by that. that is where he gets caught here. if you re going to do it, not giving the republicans the big long run of the appointed senator because that s legally risky, you better do this according to some kind of principle that you can claim you live by. and there goes the problem again, therein lies the problem for chris christie. conservatives don t believe he is a true principled conservative who has a set of principles they can believe in. for him to say out loud he doesn t care about how much this is going to cost, first of all, that s a sound bite that will be played back. i am sure barbara bono s people are cutting that tonight. he alienated from the republican base that claims to care about fiscal discipline. we have known they don t really care about it, they say that because they want to beat up barack obama. now he doesn t have a big lead over that issue.
choose someone that would be anti-democratic, he didn t do that. he split the difference. he will allow the public to speak and allow the voters to choose someone. but he doesn t want to be on the ballot with cory booker because all of his supporters may elect barbara bono. yeah, you can vote but then you have to vote again in three weeks. i think the newspaper had it right. it is his attempt to fatigue democratic voters. like okay, vote for a real contested election, which will be the senate seat, and then we re hoping few of you will show up a couple weeks later, we re hoping we have polls that indicate christie has a big lead, why bother showing up. sure. there s going to be voter fatigue. i would say may not be just self interest, though i think it plays a role. he could be looking at races in the state, trying to flip statehouses that are democratically controlled.
the special election a few weeks earlier in october, but including the senate election in the general election on november 5th would have meant probably a larger turnout of democratic voters supporting cory booker for the senate seat or whoever the democratic nominee turns out to be, and that probably would have meant fewer votes for chris christie and his re-election campaign against democratic challenger state senator barbara bono. today he pretended he didn t have any idea how much his choice would cost new jersey taxpayers. i don t know what the cost is and i quite frankly don t care. i don t think you can put a price tag what it is worth to have an elected person in the united states senate and i will do whatever i need to do to make sure those costs are covered because all of the people of the state of new jersey will benefit from it, we are not going to be penny wise and pound foolish here. the editorial board of the biggest new jersey newspaper called christie s choice a
it. the focus for the most part is on one conference that the irs had for over 2,000 employees in anaheim, california, 2010. they spent $4 million. let me go through some of the specifics which again are shocking. they spent on outside event planners $66,500 each, what each was paid. they were hired outside though the irs has a division inside to do exactly this. not just that, they got 5% commission on hotel rooms. so no incentive at all to negotiate lower prices. in addition to that, there were speakers brought in. one of them was paid $17,000 for what was called leadership through art. what that speaker did was painted real-time u2 s bono, lincoln, einstein and others. employees who attended got take them home, others sold for xharxhart charity. a second speaker paid $27,500
special election for this open senate seat will not appear on the same ballot he will be on and november when he s running for re-election for new jersey governor in november. and so he s spared the possibility and a lot of people have been talking about this with respect to the race that just in case it is expecteded he will, the mayor of newark, cory booker, jumps into this race, there are some in new jersey who felt that chris christie just did not want to appear on the same ballot as cory booker. now, keep in mind, these are two separate races, why would that be important? there are some thoughts out there that the governor was concerned that cory booker running for the senate seat, running for the open senate seat might draw a very large turnout and that in turn might aid his democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race this fall. barbara bono. so there are some political calculations, some say in all of this, but you heard governor