Fellow Sussex County Conservatives:

Our nation is suffering an economic meltdown – with the highest inflation in 40 years and an economy wrecked by a faith-based belief in untested technology that will leave many freezing this winter. New Jersey is one of the worst states to start a business and heavy regulation makes it tough to create jobs – especially here in the Highlands. The Democrats have ignored the Bill of Rights and have made government a bullying “co-parent” in raising children. They have turned our election process into an international joke, while enabling human traffickers and global enterprises that make profits off child labor.

We need new leadership. But despite all the data giving every indication of a popular “Red Wave”, our party institutions failed to produce one last Tuesday.

Doubtless, now there will be the usual period of public soul-searching, followed by the usual prescription trotted out by some in the GOP: That we must become more like the Democrats. We must convert to Wokeism, discard our traditional values, toss the Bill of Rights, embrace big government, allow it to regulate our lives and parent our children, and spend and tax and go deeper and deeper into debt.

We’ve seen this prescription before, after every previous disappointment this century. It has never worked and will only produce bitter division. If some in the GOP try to impose a Left-wing Democrat-lite agenda on the party’s rank-and-file members, those members will bolt the party and leave it a weak, third-place party as happened to the Progressive Conservatives in Canada.

To resist such a disastrous course, now is the time to bring forward proven conservative leaders who have been consistent in their values and who we can have confidence in. Steve Lonegan is such a leader.

Steve Lonegan built the modern conservative movement in New Jersey and made it a force in every county in the state. That movement crushed two Left-wing statewide ballot questions – one to raise taxes and another to halt taxpayer funding of embryonic stem-cell research. Lonegan stopped Governor Jon Corzine’s attempts to destroy the state’s transportation system with higher tolls and abject incompetence. Lonegan built the movement that ended the insider profiteering associated with the “Green Energy” program, RGGI, and warned Sussex and Morris Counties not to sign-up to what turned out to be a solar scam that cost Sussex property taxpayers $40 million. Steve Lonegan has been consistently in the forefront of the conservative movement in New Jersey. We know who he is and what he’s about.

Voters in Sussex County are familiar with Steve Lonegan. He’s been on the ballot here for nearly two decades. Since 2009, Steve Lonegan has never lost a Republican primary or General Election when he was on the ballot in Sussex County. Our voters chose him over Chris Christie. And he beat Cory Booker by a wide margin. He’s known and liked by Sussex County voters.

But we’re not suggesting that Steve Lonegan join the Sussex County Board of Commissioners. He’s needed at the Statewide level, in Trenton, standing alongside Republican Leaders Steve Oroho and John DiMaio, being a strong and vocal supporter of their conservative agenda.

At a time in our party’s history when we are being terribly outspent by the Democrats and the Woke corporate Left, Steve Lonegan has a proven record of raising state and national money. He has raised millions as a candidate, millions as the head of a conservative grassroots organization, and millions for conservative causes. His fundraising prowess is legendary, as is his work ethic. He’s been known to make fundraising calls for twelve hours straight, taking his meals at his desk. We need to put him to work in helping to raise what we need to take back control of the State Senate and Assembly.

There is an open Assembly seat in Legislative District 24, which is made up of all Sussex County and parts of Morris and Warren counties. We are suggesting that Steve Lonegan step up and pursue the Republican nomination on a ticket headed by Senator Steve Oroho.

This is a great opportunity for the Republican Party. We can nominate a nationally respected Conservative leader who will work like hell to flip the State Senate and Assembly.

We’re asking our fellow conservatives to join us in urging Steve Lonegan forward and asking him to consider seeking the open Assembly seat in Legislative District 24. We need his voice and his strength and his hard work to help our GOP leaders move our party, our state, and our nation forward.

-Sussex County Commissioner-elect, Bill Hayden

-Franklin Councilman Concetto Formica

-Skylands Tea Party President Joe Labarbera (Major, USA, retired)