(TRENTON, NJ) -- At a state house press conference this morning, Assemblyman Guy Gregg -- declaring that Schundler's leadership of the Republican Party is already a fact of political life -- endorsed Bret Schundler for Governor, and issued the following statement:
"The primary process isn"t just about who will be our Republican standard-bearer, it's also about choosing our Republican agenda. In this bottom-up Party of ours -- in direct contrast to the Democrats, where five party bosses make decisions on behalf of their constituents -- Republican voters won"t just be choosing their leader, they"ll be choosing their agenda for the fall campaign.
"Not all of my colleagues have acknowledged it, but the fact is, Bret Schundler has been leading our Party for a long time now.
"Four years ago, before anyone in New Jersey public life was talking about it, Bret Schundler was talking about pay-to-play reform. He laid out a specific plan, and a comprehensive ban on pay-to-play contracting is now the cornerstone of our Party's anti-corruption agenda.
"Three years ago, Bret began to talk about the need for constitutional limits on state spending growth, so that money could be reserved for property tax relief. Today, our Party's legislative leadership is again following Bret's lead, and introducing a property tax reform package that contains many of the elements Bret has already been talking about.
"We do not win as a Party when all we do is say what we are AGAINST. When all we do is criticize Democrats for their corruption and their failures, and don"t offer a positive agenda of our own, we lose. We saw this most recently in 2003, when -- despite plenty of Democrat corruption and failure on which to campaign -- we nevertheless lost seats.
"For this reason, I am today endorsing Bret Schundler for Governor, the man who's been leading our Party in defining exactly what it is we stand FOR.
"In 1993, Christie Whitman spent months and months running a negative campaign against Jim Florio. In September of that year, she was running 30 points behind, and looked like a sure loser. But then she decided to commit the Republican Party to serious and comprehensive tax cuts, and in one month, she turned that campaign around and won.
"Democrats have given us more than enough ammunition to campaign AGAINST; what we need is an agenda we can, as a Party, be FOR. The critical element to Republican victory in the fall is that we stand as a Party behind this reform agenda, because it's not what voters HEAR from politicians that matters, it's what they SEE that makes a difference. And if the voters SEE that the Republican Party from top to bottom is fighting for dramatic and permanent property tax reforms, and the Democrats are doing nothing but running negative ads against our candidates, we will win from the top to the bottom of the ticket by historic margins."
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