Pat Allocco for Congress: The Last of the Democrat-Republicans?

Or the first of their return?

Apologies to Alisa Rosenbaum for that construction, but there’s no other way to label the platform of a candidate to succeed the Honorable Rodney Procter Frelinghuysen as member of The House of Representatives for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District.

If/when he is a Congressman, Patrick Allocco proposes to poll his district on every vote, important or procedural. Unlike so many candidates throughout history, he will use polling after he is elected rather than polling to help him get elected. He promises to use our contemporary technology to determine the wishes of the district so he votes the way it wants. The district then, Pat thinks, will replace Frelinghuysen with themselves.

He proposes to overturn Benjamin Franklin’s line, “you have a Republic if you can keep it,” once and for all. And replace it in his section of the Garden State with direct plebiscitary democracy. The return of Athens, you might say.

I knew Pat early when he was a space salesman for Barron’s and later a theatre ticket re-seller. (Nah, he wasn’t a scalper. He helped theaters sell unsold house seats through his company called All Good Tickets.) And I knew him as a concert promoter for assorted well-known musical performers. And when he was jailed in Angola because his rap star didn’t show up for a New Year’s Eve gig contracted and paid in advance by, of course, the President for Life of Angola.

So when Pat recently mentioned his interest in representing real interests of voters, I asked the obvious question:

What experience do you have in government?

“I worked for Governor Kean during the years he was without a doubt the most successful, most respected Governor in our lifetime. It was a gas playing Santa for him, but I learned by his side from the absolute best how to bring government and the people together.”

I hadn’t known of Pat’s earlier background in government other than a key stint helping to run the New Jersey Lottery for the Christie administration. He’d never mentioned it. Ever.

A few months ago, I tried to get in touch with him only to find out from others that he has a current job in state government helping individuals and small businesses to get state grants. Grants that would go toward raising employment especially in the neighborhoods that most needed it.

But as always, there is a surprise in the résumé: Pat was now deployed as part of a humanitarian effort to help the areas devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Digging a little deeper, I learned, for the past 40 years, Pat has been a part of numerous first response efforts: everything from decades with the Morris Minute Men to rescue efforts in distant places, bringing in water, food, medical supplies by helicopter, boat or any means available.

“Ya gotta throw off this modesty, Pat, if you wanna run for office,” I said when I finally managed to reach him offering him deep advice from my years in political advertising.

To which he replied with this early press notice.

For me, I thought his pitch compelling emotionally and intellectually, just short of compelling me to move to the 11^th Congressional District of New Jersey in order to actually have a vote in the House of Representatives instead of shaking my head every time I open the NY Times and see how our local Congress people voted. It would be a relief for me now a resident of what once was called the Silk Stocking District for reasons I can only guess.

If he runs, I will be in the front lines rooting for him.

If he wins, he just may be the guy who fulfills William F. Buckley Jr.’s long ago wish: “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard.”

Tom Messner worked forever in advertising. In politics, he avoided the predictable negative bent and did positive ads for Reagan in ’84 and for Bush in ’88 along with Bush’s convention film. The agency he co-founded created NASDAQ’s first branding, Volvo’s comeback, and Fox News’s “We report. You Decide.” Then learning from the pols he partnered with (Roger Ailes in particular), they brought attack ads to such formerly benign areas such as telecom (MCI). At 73, he’s doing two things he never did before: Blogging here on wildly unconnected subjects coming on the heels of last year’s adventure: the writing of his first play, a musical “Dogs” destined now for either Broadway or The Pound. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.