Homage To Jim Florio: A Farewell To NJ’s Last New Deal Democrat Who Used Government In Pursuit Of The Public Interest And On Behalf Of Workers, Communities, And The Environment
Florio’s Legacy Abandoned By Neoliberal Corporate Democrats And Erased By Right Wing Republicans
NJ As A Laboratory Of Fascism – Florio One Of The First Victims Of Faux Populism
sorry, I forgot when and where I took this photo
[Update below]
I was saddened by learning of the death of former Congressman and Governor Jim Florio and disgusted by how the media and “environmentalists” portrayed his legacy, so, upon reflection, I want to make a few points here.
The media coverage of Florio’s policy legacy is devoid of ideological and substantive content, history, and context.
It fails to explain what amounts to an actively disappeared legacy, in terms of the historical forces and political actors who reversed that legacy.
And if fails to contrast that legacy with what passes for current public policy.
All that failure is revealed in a rebroadcast 2012 interview of Florio by Michael Aron.
NJ TV political reporter Aron, in a 1 hour and 32 minute interview, conducted under the auspices of Rutgers Center on the American Governor, there was not one word – not one! – about Florio’s actual record as Governor! (other than the political backlash against his tax increase).
The Aron interview was conducted in 2012, after 3 years of Gov. Christie’s deregulation & privatization and intentional systematic dismantling of that was left of the Florio environmental legacy, after 8 years of Whitman.
The coward Michael Aron could not explore those issues with Florio because they would have put the current Gov. Christie in a very bad light, and expose the equally bad record of another “untouchable”, Christie Whitman.
NJ Spotlight also managed to trot out a disgusting quote from Whitman, of course, in his obit blurb.
I suspect that, in response to criticism, NJ Spotlight did finally do a reasonably good piece by Brenda Flanagan.
[Note on the Flanagan story: As usual, Murphy DEP Commissioner LaTourette doesn’t know what he’s talking about w/his “bipartisan” spin. Florio fought Republican Reagan rollbacks & his NJ legacy was destroyed by R’s Whitman & Christie. In 1981, Republican Tom Kean used racist police intimidation voter suppression tactics to win a very narrow margin of victory. Was LaTourette even in grade school then?]
So let me try to unpack some of that Florio history, in five easy pieces.
I) Belief In Grassroots Democracy
Jim Florio had a working class background and was born during the Depression and raised during FDR’s New Deal. He understood class politics and loyalty and integrity and public service.
He was NJ’s last New Deal Democrat, who believed in the nobility of politics as public service and in the power of strong government to improve the quality of life for everyday people.
Florio believed in grassroots democracy. He called it “retail politics”. He worked hard to listen and talk to voters. He worked hard to get up to speed on the substance of public policy issues. He would meet with, educate, organize and mobilize everyday people as well as the organizations that represented them as labor unions, environmental groups, and consumer advocates. He spurned the cynical and opportunistic advice of political consultants.
And he did this not just once every 4 years for “get out the vote” electoral politics. He did this as a way of life and of educating and mobilizing people to participate in democracy and government.
Listen to the Aron interview, where Florio proudly described his “retail politics” and his reputation as “the coffee Klatch Congressman”, a period he called the most enjoyable and rewarding time of his career.
Florio was able to abandon the old corrupt Democratic urban political machine without abandoning urban issues, urban communities, or urban people (unlike his successors).
That’s all gone now. Politics is all consultants, Big Data, Big (Dark) Money, slogans, boutique issues, feel good virtue signaling, astroturfing, gaslighting, and social media meme’s.
II) Use Of Government To Promote The Public Interest
Florio not only believed in democracy, he believed in the concept – now virtually dismissed in politics and media and government and even environmental advocacy – of the public interest.
He believed that government has a duty to promote the public interest, not corporate special interests or narrow and short term economic interests.
He wrote laws as a Congressman to do so and he used NJ’s strong Executive power as Governor to do so. He did not govern by press release, slogans and spin, like virtually all politicians and government officials today.
Today, the entire concept of the “public interest” was discredited by “public choice theory” and has virtually vanished from politics, policy, media, and even ENGO advocacy.
III) Laboratories Of Oligarchy: Corporate Faux Populism And The Rise Of The Right Wing Attack Machine
Hecklers at Congressman Holt’s “Town Hell” in Middletown NJ (8/25/09)
Florio was NJ’s first victim of the rise of the right wing corporate funded attack machine, which has morphed from “Hands Across NJ”, to the “Tea Party”, and now to MAGA.
This faux political project both contributed to the abandonment of New Deal policy and political coalitions by the corporate Neoliberal Democrats and led to the rise of Right wing corporate and cultural warriors Christie Whitman and Chris Christie.
Florio was taken down politically by a faux grassroots group, who attacked his tax increase (“toilet paper tax”). The same faux groups attacked his regulatory policy (“runny egg rule”).
(and I will never forget the disgustingly cynical pit bottom NJ politics hit when the NJ BIA, Chamber of Commerce, and the Chemistry Council (then CIC) used Catholic nuns to testify in Trenton in support of their effort to gut Florio’s Clean Water Enforcement Act).
Florio was one of the first victims and there is a straight line to today’s rising Fascist Trumpian MAGA. NJ proved to be one of the first State “Laboratories of Oligarchy”, not the cliche’d “Laboratory of Democracy”.
IV) The Abandonment By Neoliberal Democrats
Another controversial budget deal – Trenton Protest (June 23, 2011)
Florio’s New Deal, democratic, active government, public interest, retail politics were abandoned and replaced by the Clinton consultant and poll and focus group driven triangulation and incrementalism of the Clinton corporate Democrats. They abandoned class and urban and environmental interests in favor of corporate money, suburban swing voters, and hollow identity politics.
Former Wall Street Goldman Sachs executives Democratic Governors Corzine and Murphy carry on the Clinton corporate democrat legacy.
The Democrats have become what Professor Nancy Fraser has called “Progressive Neoliberals” a political project that uses identity politics to mask pro-corporate economic, trade, tax, and regulatory policies.
V) The Whitman – Christie Disaster Of Deregulation, Privatization, And Dismantling Of Government
From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that the Florio legacy was dismantled, reversed and erased, first by the Whitman “NJ Is Open For Business” slogans and policy agenda (deregulation, privatization, downsizing government, tax cuts, corporate subsidies, et al).
What was left of Florio’s legacy and the DEP as an institution after 8 years of Whitman dismantling – followed by 4 years of Corzine DEP privatization, politicization, underfunding, and neglect – was finished by Gov. Christie’s corporate agenda, more deregulation, privatization, and “regulatory relief” from “government red tape” and “bloated bureaucracy” (See Christie’s Executive Orders #1 – #4).
You can read some of the policy details in the following posts: (all written before his death and advocating for his ideas, not opportunistically after the fact issued as press releases that run away from or ignore his ideas, like the NJ Green Mafia (excepting Jeff Tittel) has done)
Homage to Gov. Jim Florio:
- The Forgotten Florio Environmental Legacy
http://wolfenotes.com/2015/10/the-forgotten-florio-environmental-legacy/……
- Florio Policy on Energy & Environment Still Relevant
- Florio’s Bold Vision Betrayed
- Chinatown In The NJ Pinelands – Florio & Byrne Legacy Is Blown In The Wind
- Florio’s Untold Pinelands History
http://wolfenotes.com/2015/12/untold-pinelands-history/
[Update: 10/30/22 – Listen toNoam Chomsky make exactly the same points I made below – far more concisely – about how the Democrats abandoned working class and poor people, beginning in the Carter Administration and leading to the current Neoliberal nightmare that is fueling Trumpian Fascist nightmare he describes as “savage class war“. ~~~ end update]