GOP gubernatorial candidate Douglas Forrester, who has vowed to erase all forms of corruption in New Jersey, is in business with a company that is being sued for fraud by New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer.

Forrester is the primary owner of BeneCard Services, which administers drug benefit plans and has received hundreds of no-bid contracts from local, county and state agencies all over New Jersey.

Forrester was an agency bureaucrat in the administration of former Governor Thomas H. Kean before he started BeneCard, the source of his current wealth, in the 1980's.

Express Scripts Is Major Subcontractor
For Forrester's BeneCard

BeneCard is a kind of middle-man in administering the drug benefits contracts; one of its largest sub-contractors is Express Scripts, Inc.

In July of 2003, BeneCard won the renewal of one of its largest contracts, a $34 million drug benefits program for the Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System.

Express Scripts is BeneCard's prime "sub-contractor," but Forrester never disclosed that the subcontractor had received a subpoena from Spitzer's office regarding its connections with drug benefits plans for New York public employees.

Attorney General Charges Fraud

The New York attorney General filed suit against Express Scripts late last year, and charged the company "siphoned off over $100 million in drug company rebates that should have been paid to the state government."

Forrester defended his decision to rehire Express Scripts, but Mark Schaffer, health insurance Administrator for the retirement system, told the Star-Ledger Forrester "was free to switch subcontractors."

Forrester Silent On Gilmore,
McGuckin and Dasti

Forrester has made ethics, integrity, corruption of both the legal and illegal varieties, influence peddling, pension system and pay-to-play reform one of the central issues of his campaign for governor, but has stopped short of criticizing the influence-based empire of Ocean County Republican Chairman, George Gilmore,  Dover Council President Gregory McGuckin, and McGuckin's law partner, Ocean County Republican Finance Committee Chairman Jerry Dasti.

Gilmore, McGuckin and Dasti are all lawyers who have received numerous no-bid contracts from municipalities and numerous public agencies throughout Ocean County.

Hired Character Assassins Include
Central School Board Member Ciullo

And, even worse, Gilmore and McGuckin have hired a gaggle of professional character assassins, including Central Regional School Board member and Berkeley Republican Club Vice President Richard Ciullo, to concoct a series of marginally credible lies to get McGuckin past the November election in which he is a candidate for re-election to the Dover Township Council.

Ciullo Specializes In Personal Smears

Ciullo's websites, two of which had to be taken down because of offensive and objectionable material, specialize in smearing his numerous critics by calling them "pedophiles," or "pornographers," or "adulterers," or "lawbreakers," or speculating about their sexual activities and practices, always without providing a shred of evidence to back up his allegations.

Forrester Criticizes Corzine

Forrester has not criticized Ciullo or any other Ocean County Republican, but has criticized his Democratic opponent, U.S. Senator Jon Corzine, for Corzine's $430,000 loan to a state employees union official he acknowledged having an affair with.

Corzine forgave the loan when he and union leader Carla Katz terminated their liaison last year.

Stay tuned for more chapters in the Gubernatorial ethics and integrity sweepstakes as  OCP marches on.

This article prepared for publication  September 2, 2005