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George Gilmore |
Gilmore’s
Complaint: Lacey Could Be Next As Democrats Pick Up Another Seat There
GOP Chairman Gilmore’s Dilemma: How
To Keep Losing Big Ocean County Towns Without Getting Blamed For It
Berkeley, Bricktown, Lakewood,
Jackson And Now Dover, The Big Enchilada, Have Fallen Within The Last
Five Years, Mostly To Weak Democrat Candidates Running Without Any
Help From A Clueless County Democratic Organization
Dover Township: Republican County Chairman George
Gilmore has not lost a single county election for Ocean County
freeholders or Constitutional offices since he took over from former
Chairman Joseph Buckelew in 1993.
But on the local level, the story is a different one. Gilmore has
poured an estimated $2 million into local elections in big towns in
recent years, and the results have been awful.
Most Of The County’s Population Of 511,000
Now Lives In Democratic Towns
Most of the county’s population now lives in Democratic towns. More
than sixty percent of the 511,000 people who live here reside in the
five big towns that have slid down the drain during Gilmore’s tenure.
In the unexpected loss in Dover Township, pre-election polls showed
township committee candidates Virginia Haines and Michael Fiure
winning handily over Democrats Richard Larsen and Thomas Rodgers.
Democratic candidates were weak; the local Democratic organization was
in vindictive disarray, and Haines was the star-quality former
Director of the State Lottery, one of Christie Whitman’s fawning
favorites.
Nothing could possibly go wrong, but it did - and the result was
another disaster for Gilmore and a huge chunk of patronage down the
drain in the county seat.
Dover Township - The County Seat - Population 89,706
The Big Enchilada fell Tuesday, after Gilmore allowed the greediest
and clumsiest collection of political parasites in New Jersey to
surrender the local government (except for the school system which the
parasites still own) to a Democrat group that could charitably be
called “dysfunctional”.
Signs have been all over the place for years that the implosion of
Boss R. C. Clement’s sleazy little patronage empire was all but
inevitable: attendance at Republican club meetings has been dropping
ever since former GOP leader Bill Sommeling left for greener pastures
at the Casino Control Commission.
There are no members visible who don’t have some little piece of the
taxpayers’ rock tucked away in their pocket, and development interests
are everywhere.
Boss Clement Helped Violate The Election
Laws - Launder Campaign Contributions
And, as if to add insult to injury, Boss Clement helped violate the
election laws and circulate such an extreme collection of big
offensive gaudy obvious lies, that a change of government proposal,
doomed from the beginning because of the inclusion of four wards that
most folks hated, was resurrected and passed handily in spite of the
wards.
The measure was apparently passed just to get rid of Clement and his
Planning board and his disastrous public officials and the rich
developers, who kicked in over $100,000, ($15,000 from the GOP State
Senators Re-Election Fund - based in Monmouth County of all places*),
much of it laundered through to the local Republican club and
committee, and then passed on to the “Citizens For Affordable
Government”, a euphemism for “Developers For Developers”, for the
apparent purpose of shooting themselves in the foot.
Big Election, This Time For All The Marbles, In November 2003
There will be another election next year, this time with an elected
mayor and seven new council members, and there is no way and nobody
who is available to run as a Republican who will not be tarred and
feathered in advance and guilty by their association, past or present,
with Clement, and Inteso, and Haines, and Sadeghi, and Holzapfel, and
Hedinger, and the Posse, and Aldrich, and Fox, and the township
committee, and the Patronage Pigs, and Portash, and the double
dippers, etc., etc., ad infinitum, world without end. By comparison,
Dante’s Inferno had only twenty four levels. As Clarence Aldrich used
to say during one of his twenty three 30 day terms as “Mayor”: We Got
Proooooblumms. Gilmore has a problem.
Part Two of this series soon on OceanCountyPolitics•Com.
For more information on the Prooooblumms in Dover Township,
check out seventeen out of the last twenty three articles on the
WebSite. (for 11/11/02)
*Don’t be confused, Monmouth County GOP Sen. John Bennett is a
handsomely compensated Bond Attorney employed by, gee whilickers, what
a surprise, papa, River City on the big Ocean.
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