Running for Office

The Ocean County Democratic leadership in 2018 ran a candidate for Freeholder, Teddy Price, that endorsed Bob Hugin, the Republican candidate for Senate, even though he was the CEO of Celgene that marketed a cancer drug for unapproved uses. Causing those cancer patients even worse problems or even earlier deaths! Because the U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie, felt the case would drag on for many years through Celgene lawyers tying the case up in courts, Celgene agreed to pay $280 million for the damage they did to patients' live and agreed to be monitored.

This is the candidate Teddy Price endorsed! How could Teddy Price been properly screened???

Chris Christie then gave the monitoring contract to John Ashcroft for $50 million! The same John Ashcroft that was the former U.S. Senator and President George W. Bush's Attorney General!

In October of 2022 on a Sunday morning I noticed a flyer in my door. It was from Wyatt Earp's union endorsing the Republican county candidates! Wyatt Earp is the Ocean County Democratic Chairman and the President of the Monmouth Ocean Central Labor Council! Wyatt told me that he has no control of what the union does! Does this make sense to you?

The Ocean County Democratic screening committee has selected Kenneth Seda and Karen Sugden to run for County Commissioners in the Democratic Primary on June 4th. In 2021 when Kenneth Seda lived in Toms River, he ran in the Republican Primary for Republican County Commissioner but lost.

In 2022 Kenneth Seda moved to Manchester and ran for Mayor as a Democrat. Karen Sugden ran as a Democrat on his ticket for Council. They both lost. Two Republican factions were involved in the runoff. One faction was supported by George Gilmore and the other by Sheriff Mastronardy. Seda and Sugden urged Democrats to vote in the runoff and heavily criticized the faction supported by Sheriff Mastronardy. Although not directly endorsing the Gilmore slate, this action was an indirect endorsement! This slick move helped the faction supported by Gilmore to overcome the two thousand vote deficit in the prior election that caused the runoff! Why would Democrats help a corrupt political boss of another party gain more political clout? If anything, they should have helped the scandal free Sheriff Mastronardy slate!

Running

I am asking you to run, if it is possible, for an office. You must be of good character. We don't need more like George Gilmore, the Republican County Chairman, that was convicted of tax fraud and bank related convictions and who was reelected to his position by a majority of the Republican County Committee members!

George Gilmore did not submit his employees federal taxes and social security taxes withheld from their checks and used it for his personal use! So this tax fraud was not even coming from George Gilmore's own money!

The more Democratic candidates running in Ocean County, the more it will shore up our base. It is our democracy to lose. Just your name on the ballot will strengthen our party!

Corruption

George Gilmore even pushed John Catalano to leave his assemblyman position to run for mayor of Brick. John Catalano in 2016 violated a law to prevent jewelry stores from acting as "fences" for stolen jewelry. The Ocean County Prosecutor's office sent an agent to sell John Catalano jewelry and John Catalano did not obtain the seller's identification or issue a receipt as required by law. Whether the County Prosecutor's office had a tip or the sale was a random event, we don't know.

We do not need a political boss, George Gilmore, who breaks the law forcing other individuals who break the law, John Catalano, to run for office.

And if that is not enough, John Catalano was hired to be the Ocean County Deputy County Clerk. The County Clerk's office overseas elections. Who hired John Catalano? How did he get past a background check?

Opposition Research

The fact that John Catalano was appointed to the Brick Council in 2011 and ran for council that year without his prior arrest for a DUI in Toms River in 1996 being disclosed by the Brick Democratic Party is unacceptable!

Then John Catalano ran for Assembly in 2019 and 2021 and neither his DUI arrest nor his conviction for violating a law regarding purchasing jewelry from unknown sources was disclosed by the Ocean County Democratic Party is equally unacceptable.

We deserve to know when anyone exercises grossly negligent judgement or breaks laws is running for office! What is the campaign manager, Mitch Seim, doing about opposition research? Why was this not disclosed?

Ocean County Republican pluralities have been more then the two largest Republican pluralities combined. That is the threat we must deal with!

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Toms River

Mayor Daniel Rodrick confirmed that the new business administrator and his assistant has resigned. Scott Tirella, a former Lacey police lieutenant, had been hired January 1st at a salary of $165,000 and was less than Lou Amoroso's salary of $200,000 in the Mo Hill administration. Mayor Rodrick stated that Tirella never intended to stay long as administrator and the job's workload had taken Tirella by surprise.

Tirella's assistant, former Toms River police Lieutenant Loring Dunton, complained on facebook that he had "witnessed a scorched earth campaign unlike anything I have ever seen". Doring was the vice president of a company after he retired from the police force.

Jon Salonis, an Ocean County Democratic political consultant who had been serving as a communication director in Carteret, became the acting Business Administrator initially but is now the Business Administrator. Salonis had been appointed recreation director at the January 1st reorganization meeting when Rodrick took office. Salonis salary has not been set. Jon Salonis was a political operative with the Ocean County Democratic Party. Mitch Seim, the campaign manager for the Ocean County Democratic Party, was hired in the finance department for $92,000!

Mayor Rodrick had the backing of the Toms River Republican Club to run for mayor. George Gilmore is a member of that club and was instrumental in having that club designated as the official Republican club in Toms River. So we have a happy family of the Ocean County Democratic Party and the Ocean County Republican Party in collusion in the open.

Mayor Rodrick planned to cut two police captain's positions to save about $700,000 and then hire eight EMT personnel for about $1 million. Police captains make more than $230,000 and the town pays for their pension and health benefits. So Mayor Rodrick is saying the pension and health benefits are approximately $120,000 for each captain! Health benefits are around $36,000 so that would mean pension costs are around $84,000 a year? Maybe $700,000 is too high! Anyway why tie cutting two police captains retiring to hiring eight EMTs that are needed? Won't the EMTs bring in revenue?

New Jersey

New Jersey happens to be the eleventh most populous state. Yet we do not have the representation we deserve. Each state gets two U.S. Senators under an archaic system developed in 1787 that was dealing with thirteen colonies, not states, and three million people. The congress had no idea we would be fifty states with three hundred and thirty million people and run from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from Canada down to Mexico with Alaska and the islands of Hawaii. And this does not include the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Mariana Islands.

The nine least populated states with a population approximately eight million, have eighteen U.S. Senators while New Jersey with approximately nine million has just two U.S. Senators. These U.S. Senators vote on presidential cabinet appointments, judges appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court, Circuit Court and District Court, the budget, laws, oversight, and other business.

States like New Jersey, the Northeast, Illinois and California, to name a few, receive less back from the federal government than what they pay in federal taxes for generations while southern and interior states receive more. Because those states receive less, they make up the difference with state and local taxes to maintain their style of living.

Yet the states that get more back from the federal government than what they send have higher crime and poverty rates and lower educational scores! How does that make sense?