Sabrin Run Questions the GOP Leadership

Maverick Republican seeks U.S. Senate seat
Monday, May 26, 2008
BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
Star-Ledger Staff

Ramapo College professor Murray Sabrin wants GOP presidential candidate John McCain to drop his support for the war in Iraq. Sabrin has called for the Republican state chairman and a GOP state senator to resign. He has demanded federal investigations of two other Republican candidates. He is running his own slate of delegates to the Republican National Convention and has targeted two GOP congressmen for defeat.

All of this is Sabrin's way of convincing New Jersey's Republican voters they should make him their nominee for U.S. Senate when they vote in the June 3 primary.

Actually, his goals are more ambitious.

"The campaign is really about rebuilding the party, reforming the party," Sabrin said. He wants "to make it a limited-government party in contrast to the Democrats."

In an open letter earlier this year, Sabrin said no New Jersey Republican has been elected to the U.S. Senate since 1972 because the party has not offered a "sharp contrast" to "failed liberal-Democratic policies." He promised to provide such a contrast and said he would run his own slate of candidates for other offices -- a direct challenge to the power of the county chairmen.

"I think we need more grass-roots decision-making rather than a handful of people making decisions for Republican voters," Sabrin said.

It is "a very unusual" method of seeking the nomination, according to Joseph Marbach, chairman of the political science department at Seton Hall University. It can be dangerous, he said, because it is the party faithful who typically vote in the primary.

"Unless there's really widespread discontentment among the average party members, it's a campaign that's almost doomed to failure from the very outset," Marbach said.

Tom Wilson, the Republican state chairman and one of Sabrin's many targets, said, "Murray has found a way to alienate virtually everyone he can in the Republican Party."

Unorthodox tactics are a standard part of Sabrin's repertoire. On the afternoon of the Kentucky Derby, Sabrin went to Monmouth Park Racetrack and bet $1,050 -- the proceeds of one hour's online fundraising -- on Cowboy Cal to win. His horse lost, but Sabrin said the bet was a winner because of the publicity it generated for his campaign.

"It was all over the internet and the Wall Street Journal online," Sabrin said. "Sometimes you have to do things outside of the orthodox playbook to get your message across in a campaign." The point of that wager -- aside from the remote chance of a 20 to 1 payoff -- was to emphasize Sabrin's support for a change in federal law that would legalize sports betting. He also supports legal access to medical marijuana. He opposes abortion but would leave it to individual states to ban it.

THE SABRIN PLATFORM

With a doctorate in economic geography, he has written extensively about public financing and has long railed against the Federal Reserve's power to "manipulate" interest rates, which he blames for creating "speculative bubbles." He would end it, as well as slash the size of the federal bureaucracy.

On foreign affairs, Sabrin sounds more like Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama than the GOP's presumptive nominee, McCain. "There's no reason we should not negotiate with anyone in the world," Sabrin said during a recent debate. He favors talks with Iran and has promised that, if nominated, he will visit Cuba. He supports a deadline -- September 2010 -- for getting U.S. troops out of Iraq. When McCain visited Liberty Science Center earlier this month, Sabrin called his own news conference to pose this question: "How is it okay for us to sacrifice the lives of brave men and women in Iraq for oil, yet you don't want to risk the potential life of a few caribou in Alaska by drilling for oil in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge)?" Given such fundamental disagreements, can Sabrin run for U.S. Senate with McCain at the top of the ticket?

"Sure," Sabrin replied, insisting they can campaign together while disagreeing on particular issues.

"I will not be robo-senator," Sabrin said. "Like John McCain, I always put country ahead of party."

Unlike his two opponents for the Republican nomination -- Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris) and former Rep. Dick Zimmer -- Sabrin has never held elected office.

Sabrin was born in West Germany just after World War II. His parents, the only members of their respective families to survive the Holocaust, came to America with Sabrin and his older brother in 1949, when Sabrin was 2. He became a U.S. citizen in 1959.

That experience influences his view that immigrants to America should follow the rules and learn English, as his family did. He opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants, saying they should return to their home countries and wait in line.

He would end the rule that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants automatically become U.S. citizens. It sets families up for heartbreak, he said, if the parents are later deported and the children have a legal right to stay in the United States. "We're creating a humanitarian crisis because of birthright citizenship," Sabrin said.