The executive director of the Democratic Governor’s Association defended his group’s decision to not spend more money in support of New Jersey state Sen. Barbara Buono’s (D) gubernatorial candidacy against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).
The comments, by executive director Colm O’Comartun, came a day after Christie won reelection and were in response to Buono accusing “Democratic political bosses” of making deal with Christie to help him get reelected. Buono did not identify who the bosses are by name.
“I’ve got a fiduciary responsibility to my members and I’ve got to say unlike the [Republican Governor’s Association] we always invest as wisely as possible,” Colm O’Comartun said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “We have a record of spending less and winning races and we have a record of not wasting money on races that we just scientifically looked at it and it wasn’t winnable. And we looked at the head-to-head and we just couldn’t see a path to victory in that race.
“And so we gave a lot of support to the candidate and her team —as much as we could, it’s just not an easy state to get money into and we invested where we thought we could get the best result,” O’Comartun continued.
O’Comartun said that the DGA got a great a great return on the $6.5 million it invested in Virginia, where Democrat Terry McAuliffe narrowly beat Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R).
“We got I think a tremendous result for the $6.5 million that we invested in Virginia,” O’Comartun said. “And we’re going to look forward to investing any money that we have left in winning these races that are vitally important to our governors and candidates in 2014.”
