Redstate

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Of course, we had to ask him about Jim McGreevy. While there's been no shortage of McGreevy-bashing here in NYC this week, Schundler took on the Governor directly -- and stayed out of the gutter.

"McGreevy certainly made an honest man of me. As governer he did exactly what we expected -- what I said in my campaign.

But the bigger problem was that McGreevy was just doing what the Democratic leadership in New Jersey
wanted him to do. He specifically endorsed a [three key promises] -- and the minute he got elected, he walked away from them. He was the biggest spender we've ever had....I just want to keep on reminding New Jersey that Jim McGreevy was only doing exactly what the Democratic leadership
wanted."

Will there be an election in November 2004, and if so - would Schundler run forgovernor this year?

"I would.

It's the right thing to do -- for New Jersey voters to have the choice for who's going to lead them for the next one and a half years. Frankly, it's better for Republicans for him to not step down and have an election next year -- but it would be the right thing for him to do. But he
won't."

Schundler believes that New Jersey voters long ago lost hope in honest government. They don't penalize any politicians for corruption. They think both parties are equally corrupt. The only hope for Republicans in New Jersey, he believes, is to actually get citizens involved in the public policy process on issues that have broad support. And this needs to be done before an election. "Your power ends on election day," Schundler told us.

To that end, he's built a campaign around a state constitutional amendment to return funding to municipalities and localities all across New
Jersey.

I'm trying to empower voters to pressure elected officials to do what they want to do before an election. Don't trust them
-- look at whether they have a real bill on the trable. Support these things now, pass them now -- if not, we'll vote against you.

He's right, of course -- and he strikes a note that Republicans have long given short shrift: grassroots lobbying in the
legislative process is the best way to build a party in the "off years." Schundler is talking about creating an environment in which
Republicans can be competitive -- one in which state spending is limited, the state legislature is hamstrung a bit when it comes to spending all
those tax dollars -- and getting the funds back down to the local level.

Interestingly, he pointed out that they've chosen to focus this amendment on property taxes, not income taxes. In New Jersey, while only about 50% of people pay income taxes, almost 75% own homes. Spread the benefit; make it personal. Once we create this environment of not only citizen involvement, but get a few common-sense public policy victories under our belt, then we
have the opportunity to do even more.

"As the major of Jersey City, in my 9 years as mayor, we didn't run out of issues, and we had an extremely broad base of support. I was allowed by the people to do some things that didn't have such a broad base of support, because they were supportive of me personally....I'll give you an example. I was a big school choice supporter. That was popular in the cities -- people saw me fight for that. People would see me fight for cops. They would see me taking on the unions. That would allow me to do things we could not have otherwise done."

Indeed. A lesson we should all take to heart.

A New Technology, courtesy of Bret Schundler -- But how to get these citizens involved? How to give them the tools to pressure their legislators into doing the right thing? Well, the tools weren't there, so Bret Schundler built them.

"The strength of my campaign in 2001 was that I had a wonderful group of 40,000 volunteers. But we didn't have a good way to use those volunteers. Now, with new technology, we can establish distributed call centers to call every registered voter in a district or a state."

Here's how it works:

• A centralized database includes every phone number, registered and unregistered, in a district.
• Every househould receives an automated phone call from either Schundler or the local mayor. They are asked a simple question, "would you like to keep more of your tax dollars here in XYZ County?"
• If they answer in the affirmative, they are prompted to support a petition, asked for an email, and invited to follow up with the campaign.
• Now comes the fun part. Volunteers from anywhwere in the country can log into his website - and it acts as a distributed call center. Volunteers are prompted with the name of a pre-screened voter and a script. All responses are stored in the database.
• Voters are encouraged to call their legislator and threaten to vote against them if they don't support the amendment.
• Then, that voter's file is updated over time with follow up calls and emails - all to drive the same constituent call to Trenton.
• Not only that - all the interaction between activist and voter is highly personalized. "If this amendment were law, you would save $657 on your property taxes at 124 Main Street. Personalization is key.

Now consider what a system like that can do over time -- building an extraordinary datafile for activism future use -- fundraising, more activism, etc.

The best part is that since Schundler used his company to develop this software -- he plans to make it available to any candidate or campaign that wants it -- anywhere in the country. Cheap, too.

So what's next for Schundler? You bet it's another race for governor. Will he win? We certainly hope so. With a message just like this,

"I want to build a new Republican party that is based in the cities ... that has minority support, Hispanic support. The tradeoff to doing that is slowing the growth of state government. But if we tell folks we're going to put a cop on the street corner, that speaks to people. If you have these dollars coming back to the local communities, that makes a difference. These people are not being listened to, and we're going to change that."

Bret Schundler. One of the good guys, without a doubt.