manifesto

State Sen. Joe Pennacchio never had the enthusiastic support of most party leaders for his U.S. Senate candidacy. But just as it seemed like they had no option other than to coalesce around him instead of rival candidate Murray Sabrin, the latest turn in the campaign has caused several leaders to make one last push for a Senate candidate.

The reemergence of Pennacchio’s controversial 1991 booklet yesterday as a campaign issue has worried the party leaders who were already reluctant to get on board with Pennacchio, and they have renewed their efforts to find an alternate candidate. Although the existence of the book was known to many party leaders, many had not read it until Sabrin released it yesterday. Some fear that incumbent Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg will have a field day with the material, leading to a Lautenberg landslide that could spell trouble for their down-ballot candidates.

“We’re still fishing, we just haven’t gotten a fish,” said one Republican official who wished to remain anonymous. “We’ve got a lot of bait in the water.”

It’s a valid concern, according to Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray.

“This is how Democrats win landslide elections in New Jersey -- by having the ability to paint the Republicans as ideologically out of touch with the state,” said Murray, who noted two statewide races in which Democrats were able to successfully portray their opponents as ideologues: Democrat Jim Florio did against Republican Jim Courter in 1989, as did Democrat Jim McGreevey against Republican Brett Schundler in 2001.

Some of the ideas Joe Pennacchio wrote 17 years ago may seem unusual – or to Republican rival Murray Sabrin, even “fascist.”

But Pennacchio said they’re nothing more than ideas he penned years before he held public office. Some, he says, have been proven to be good ideas. Others he’s “evolved” beyond.

The important thing, Pennacchio says, is that even before he entered the political realm, he was thinking of ways to help his country.

“Keep in mind that was written by a non-politician as a series of position papers for my own edification. I bound them together, paid for it myself and it wasn’t published,” said Pennacchio. “All it shows is that even 18 years ago I was thinking about the problems that affect this country and how we deal with them.”

Seventeen years after it was written, a booklet authored by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Pennacchio has reemerged as a campaign issue.

Pennacchio’s Republican rival, Murray Sabrin, has begun distributing copies of the book, calling it a “fascist manifesto” and demanding that Pennacchio not only drop his Senate candidacy, but resign from his state Senate seat as well. Sabrin plans to hold a press conference on the topic this afternoon.

This is not the first time that work has been raised in a political campaign. In 1994, when Pennacchio challenged Dean Gallo in the Republican congressional primary, excerpts were taken and distributed by Gallo’s campaign.

But Pennacchio argues that the book was a series of policy papers he wrote years ago filled with some ideas that he still holds true to, along with some ideas that he has “evolved” beyond.

The book, entitled The Nationalist Agenda: A Blueprint for the 21st Century and written under the pen name “Joseph Penn,” advocates setting up an organization called “The Nationalist Party” to challenge the conventional wisdom of Democrats and Republicans.