Dem Public Defender got permission to run… AFTER winning the Primary!

By Rubashov

We’ve been keeping track of the local politics in a handful of “bellweather” towns across New Jersey. These towns are representative of a part of New Jersey and are a good indicator of trends. One such town is Ringwood, in Passaic County.

On Thursday, we reported that a Democrat candidate for borough council, Jessica Kitzman, was running for office even though she works in the criminal justice system as a public defender. Her LinkedIn page and the state’s attorneys website all indicate this, as do numerous other public documents.

A press release, issued by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office on July 23, 2021, notes that Kitzman – an “Assistant Deputy Public Defender” – was the defense attorney on a case involving a man who attempted “to lure a 14-year-old girl he met on social media for a sexual encounter. The ‘girl’ in reality was an undercover detective participating in ‘Operation Home Alone,’ a multi-agency undercover operation… that targeted individuals who allegedly were using social media to lure underage girls and boys for sex.”

We wondered how any self-respecting system of justice could allow the politicization of prosecutors and public defenders. So, we Googled can public defenders run for office in new jersey, and came up with this:

(a) All State officers and employees within the Office of the Public Defender are prohibited from becoming candidates for election to any elective public office and from accepting appointment to same (e.g. to fulfill the unexpired term of an elected public official).

According to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, Jessica Kitzman has been a candidate for borough council since March 18, 2021. So, we asked: “Is there anybody out there who can clear this up? Can a public defender run for public office? Please let us know.”

The local Democrat chairman answered our question and posted that Kitzman had received a “waiver” from the state and is allowed to run as an openly partisan Democrat for borough council. Another source produced a letter, dated July 1, 2021, from the Public Defender’s Office, giving Kitzman permission to run. The letter is signed by the Ethics Liaison Officer for the Public Defender’s Office and is copied to the chief Public Defender himself.

We found this strange, not only because Assistant Deputy Public Defender Jessica Kitzman had been a candidate (filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission) since March 18, 2021 – but also because Kitzman was a candidate on the ballot at the June 8th primary election. Kitzman won that primary and was certified the winner by the Secretary of State. Didn’t anyone pay attention to the fact that she was a Public Defender who had not yet received permission to run?

Kitzman was given permission to run months after she filed as a candidate and won the primary.

Based on this new information, will Jessica Kitzman be permitted to serve, if elected? Or will she face ethical charges for seeking permission after the fact?

Whatever the answer to those questions, there is a much larger question for the New Jersey legal establishment and the taxpayers who pay the bills to consider: Is it a good idea to turn the Public Defender’s office into an ideological redoubt for the Defund the Police movement? Or a patronage holding area for Democrat candidates? Is that what the Public Defender’s Office is for?

A partisan candidacy for local office is only the first notch in climbing the greasy poll of elected office. A successful candidate for local office will naturally consider or be considered by party insiders for higher office. Do we want those partisan political considerations to get in the way of finding the truth through the justice system?

Would a prosecutor be inclined to go harder on someone whose politics he or she disagrees with? Conversely, would he let someone else walk? Careerism has already produced prosecutors who think primarily in terms of win/loss records and not of justice. Finding out what really happened comes second to “making a case.” And the consequences of that can be terrible for both the reputation of the process, as well as for the poor souls involved.

So too, with a public defender, looking to embellish a political career. Will he or she hold back on zealously defending someone the voting public loathes? Will he or she favor the cases that elevate standing with targeted political constituencies at the expense of justice? Ever aware of changing fashions, public defenders now routinely paint the police with a broad brush – can a political public defender be expected to pay less attention to partisan opinion?

And what is the ethos of the Public Defender’s office? What are the policies that its leadership has pursued? Just what do you get when you elect someone from that institution? Well, let’s start at the top, with Jessica Kitzman’s boss. This is from his public biography on his office’s website…

“He has become an influential stakeholder in the NJ’s justice system on many issues, having spearheaded NJ’s pretrial release reform that eliminated monetary bail, advocated for sentencing reform on NJ.s Sentencing Commission, and directed the filing of three successful Orders to Show Cause in the Supreme Court for release of jail and prison inmates during the pandemic.

…handled numerous death penalty cases until the abolition of the death penalty in December 2007. He served on the Death Penalty Study Commission as a strong advocate for its abolition.”

Okay, that is a clear policy direction.

In September of last year, Kitzman’s boss wrote an opinion piece in the Star-Ledger (NJ.com) which was unambiguous as to the ideology it embraced and in the policy direction it advocated:

“Social awareness and protests are important but not enough. People in positions of power must adopt policies and enact laws that take concrete steps designed to eradicate systemic racism. It is time to act.”

“The main culprit is the so-called drug-free school zone law that requires mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenses committed within 1,000 feet of school property. We have long known that it is a discriminatory law.”

This kind of honesty is to be applauded. The voters know exactly what to expect from the novitiates of such an institution as they pursue political office.

There is a network of non-profits, funded by Democrat party interest groups, that actively recruit and train candidates for public office. Kitzman is a graduate of one such group. They openly talk about building a “bench” from which to groom future county and state leaders. That so many on this bench hold patronage positions on taxpayer-supported payrolls is a good indicator of where the Democrat Party is heading.

When you recruit public defenders, special interest lobbyists, government regulators, and corporate “government affairs” careerists – instead of average property taxpayers, blue collar workers, retirees, and small businesspeople – your party takes a different direction and you get a different kind of government.

The politicization of the Public Defender’s office should be addressed. Trying to balance the scales of justice with the demands of electioneering is a fool’s errand. It is an injustice to everyone involved and a taint on our legal system.

“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

Coretta Scott King

Are Dems using the Public Defender’s office to field anti-police candidates?

By Rubashov

We have been keeping track of the local politics in a handful of “bellweather” towns across New Jersey. These towns are representative in some way of a segment or idea about New Jersey and are a good indicator of trends. One such town is Ringwood, in Passaic County.

On Thursday, we reported that a certain candidate for borough council, Jessica Kitzman, was running for office even though she works in the criminal justice system as a public defender. Her LinkedIn page and the state’s attorneys website all indicate this, as do numerous other public documents.

A press release, issued by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office on July 23, 2021, notes that Kitzman – an “Assistant Deputy Public Defender” – was the defense attorney on a case involving a man who attempted “to lure a 14-year-old girl he met on social media for a sexual encounter. The ‘girl’ in reality was an undercover detective participating in ‘Operation Home Alone,’ a multi-agency undercover operation… that targeted individuals who allegedly were using social media to lure underage girls and boys for sex.”

We wondered how any self-respecting system of justice could allow the politicization of prosecutors and public defenders. So, we Googled can public defenders run for office in new jersey, and came up with this:

(a) All State officers and employees within the Office of the Public Defender are prohibited from becoming candidates for election to any elective public office and from accepting appointment to same (e.g. to fulfill the unexpired term of an elected public official).

According to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, Jessica Kitzman has been a candidate for borough council since March 18, 2021. So, we asked: “Is there anybody out there who can clear this up? Can a public defender run for public office? Please let us know.”

The local Democrat chairman answered our question and posted that Kitzman had received a “waiver” from the state and is allowed to run as an openly partisan Democrat for borough council. While this might be the case, Kitzman and the Democrats are certainly not advertising this on their campaign material. A recent mailer described her as a “public interest attorney with government experience.”

Why not just tell the truth? You are an Assistant Deputy Public Defender.

Heck, "public interest attorney" sounds like a lobbyist or someone pushing a policy agenda. And indeed, Kitzman does have an agenda as her statements and actions make clear, but there is a much larger question the New Jersey legal establishment and the taxpayers who pay the bills should be asking themselves: Is it really a good idea to turn the public defender’s office into a patronage holding area for Democrat candidates? Is that what it’s for?

A partisan candidacy for local office is only the first notch in climbing the greasy poll of elected office. A successful candidate for local office will naturally consider or be considered by party insiders for higher office. Do we want those partisan political considerations to get in the way of finding the truth through the justice system?

Would a prosecutor be inclined to go harder on someone whose politics he or she disagrees with? Conversely, would he let someone else walk? Careerism has already produced prosecutors who think primarily in terms of win/loss records and not of justice. Finding out what really happened comes second to “making a case.” And the consequences of that can be terrible for both the reputation of the process, as well as for the poor souls involved.

So too, with a public defender, looking to embellish a political career. Will he or she hold back on zealously defending someone the voting public loathes? Will he or she favor the cases that elevate standing with targeted political constituencies at the expense of justice? Ever aware of changing fashions, public defenders now routinely paint the police with a broad brush – can a political public defender be expected to pay less attention to partisan opinion?

And what is the ethos of the Public Defender’s office? What are the policies that its leadership has pursued? Just what do you get when you elect someone from that institution? Well, let’s start at the top, with Jessica Kitzman’s boss. This is from his public biography on his office’s website…

“He has become an influential stakeholder in the NJ’s justice system on many issues, having spearheaded NJ’s pretrial release reform that eliminated monetary bail, advocated for sentencing reform on NJ.s Sentencing Commission, and directed the filing of three successful Orders to Show Cause in the Supreme Court for release of jail and prison inmates during the pandemic.

…handled numerous death penalty cases until the abolition of the death penalty in December 2007. He served on the Death Penalty Study Commission as a strong advocate for its abolition.”

Okay, that is a clear policy direction.

In September of last year, Kitzman’s boss wrote an opinion piece in the Star-Ledger (NJ.com) which was unambiguous as to the ideology it embraced and in the policy direction it advocated:

“Social awareness and protests are important but not enough. People in positions of power must adopt policies and enact laws that take concrete steps designed to eradicate systemic racism. It is time to act.”

“The main culprit is the so-called drug-free school zone law that requires mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenses committed within 1,000 feet of school property. We have long known that it is a discriminatory law.”

This kind of honesty is to be applauded. The voters know exactly what to expect from the novitiates of such an institution as they pursue political office.

There is a network of non-profits, funded by Democrat party interest groups, that actively recruit and train candidates for public office. Kitzman is a graduate of one such group. They openly talk about building a “bench” from which to groom future county and state leaders. That so many on this bench hold patronage positions on taxpayer-supported payrolls is a good indicator of where the Democrat Party is heading.

When you recruit public defenders, special interest lobbyists, government regulators, and corporate “government affairs” careerists – instead of average property taxpayers, blue collar workers, retirees, and small businesspeople – your party takes a different direction and you get a different kind of government.

The politicization of the Public Defender’s office should be addressed. Trying to balance the scales of justice with the demands of electioneering is a fool’s errand. It is an injustice to everyone involved and a taint on our legal system.

“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

Coretta Scott King

Ringwood: Is national politics destroying neighborhood and civility?

By Rubashov

A few weeks ago, The Economist posed the question: “What gets lost when national politics eats everything?”

In an article, about how national politics is dividing a small town in Maine, the magazine cited a 2016 book by philosopher Nancy Rosenblum called Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America. Rosenblum is the Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government at Harvard University and co-editor of the Annual Review of Political Science. She studies modern political thought and constitutional law. Professor Rosenblum has been the Chair of both the government department at Harvard and the political science department at Brown University, and a member of the leadership of several professional organizations in political science and political philosophy.

In her book, Professor Rosenblum warned of imposing abstract and totalist political ideologies over the daily interactions of a community and the people who live there. Rosenblum writes: “For reciprocity among neighbors as ‘decent folk’ turns on the real possibility of disregarding precisely the social inequalities, racial and sectarian differences, and conflicting ideological commitments that citizens bring to public life.”

The Economist notes: “Passions about such matters can simplify and coarsen relations among neighbors. They collapse the generous spaces made – not always, but often enough – for eccentricities, personal lapses and political opinions, for the tolerance and empathy that sustain pluralism.”

Looking around New Jersey, you can find no better example of what happens when one group decides to erase those “generous spaces” than the town of Ringwood, in Passaic County. Yes, Ringwood, a semi-rural enclave once called Stonetown. By the 1960’s it had been transformed from farms to residential developments and summer homes. Back then there was a sort of hippie commune, called Camp Midvale.

The Sierra Club’s Jeff Tittel grew up there and provided this background: “The original founders of the camp were a European hiking group, the Nature Friends. They were pioneer conservationists. They were an open people and their camp was an interracial camp.” Ah, the sweet air of tolerance!

In 1991, the site of Camp Midvale became the Weis Ecology Center and today is the New Weiss Center for Education, Arts, and Recreation. The Highlands Nature Friends, Inc. is the non-profit membership organization that owns and operates The New Weis Center. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

But today, neighborhood groups like the Highlands Nature Friends must share the public square with groups like the Ringwood Anti-Racism Collaborative – an organization not unlike the gangs of puritan witch hunters that once roamed the countryside, looking for people to burn. Pity the person whose social media pages get noticed by this group, because you will never pass muster, never be pure enough.

From what it has posted on its own social media page, this group appears to support “Antiracism and Equity”, while opposing “Equality and Whiteness”. The group advises its neighbors in Ringwood to “treat racism like COVID-19” and to do the following:

1. Assume you have it.
2. Listen to experts about it.
3. Don’t spread it.
4. Be willing to change your life to end it.

In humanspeak, this translates to:

1. You are guilty of the original sin of skin color!
2. Shut up and listen!
3. Don’t talk back!
4. Be willing to do what we tell you to do and (most importantly) pay the price we tell you to pay!

Yep, it is little more than modern day fascism. With an economic sting in its tail that is more scam than justice.

What effect will this have on the neighborliness one hopes to find in a small town? How will it end?

Well, Professor Rosenblum has this warning for us. Citing how some Americans stood by and watched as their Japanese-American neighbors were packed off to internment camps during the World War Two, she writes: “The family next door was seen through the lens of racial and political categories, and through the miasma of mistrust thrown up by war. Pluralism gave way to totalism.”

Author and civil rights pioneer Lillian Smith offers this perspective (given when she accepted the Charles S. Johnson Award for her work):

“It is his millions of relationships that will give man his humanity… It is not our ideological rights that are important but the quality of our relationships with each other, with all men, with knowledge and art and God that count. The civil rights movement has done a magnificent job but it is now faced with the ancient choice between good and evil, between love for all men and lust for a group’s power.”

“Every group on earth that has put ideology before human relations has failed; always disaster and bitterness and bloodshed have come. This movement, too, may fail. If it does, it will be because it aroused in men more hate than love, more concern for their own group than for all people, more lust for power than compassion for human need.”

“We must avoid the trap of totalism which lures a man into thinking there is only one way, one answer, one option, and that others must be forced into this One Way, and forced into it Now.”

Unfortunately, the "anti-White" ideology of the Ringwood Anti-Racism Collaborative has been wholly embraced by the local Democrat committee in Ringwood and by its candidates. One candidate for town council, Jessie Kitzman, is a young and very radicalized Public Defender who has completely lost touch with common sense. For example, Kitzman calls for the abolition of confinement for criminals – at a time when violent crime is surging across the United States.

Except that she doesn’t believe that…

Kitzman does crazy...

What is happening in Ringwood is an example of what not to do if you value your town, your neighbors, and civility. We will be following the goings-on in Ringwood over the next months and reporting back.

Stay tuned…

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”
 
Robert Heinlein, author

Jennifer Sellitti: A study in class-based hypocrisy.

By Rubashov

Jennifer Sellitti is a well-paid, well-perked, high-ranking bureaucrat in state government. Since 2007, she has been the Director of Training and Communications for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender.

Sellitti grew up in Ringwood, where her father was the well-paid, well-perked Superintendent of the Ringwood School District. She graduated from Boston University with a degree in public relations/ image management, and then from Suffolk University Law School. She now resides in one of the richest, most exclusive towns in New Jersey. This is all public information, written and prepared for the world to consume by Jennifer Sellitti herself. Her biography reads:

“Jennifer Sellitti is Director of Training & Communications for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), where she is responsible for teaching trial advocacy and substantive law to public defenders in all of the agency’s practice areas. She works at the direction of the public defender on special projects that impact OPD clients such as forensic science education and litigation, police accountability, and pretrial justice reform. In addition, she represents clients charged with serious felonies at trials.

Prior to her appointment to director, she was the managing attorney for the Middlesex Trial Region and an assistant deputy public defender in the Essex County Adult Region. She worked as a staff attorney for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Massachusetts before joining the OPD. Jennifer began her legal career at Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, where she worked on the organization’s Prison Brutality Project investigating claims of prison violence and representing inmates housed in solitary confinement at super maximum security prisons in civil rights lawsuits against correctional facilities and individual officers.

Jennifer is a faculty member at trial advocacy programs across the country including the National Criminal Defense College and the National Forensic College. She speaks nationally at professional conferences about issues surrounding legal representation for the accused. She a trustee of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey and serves on the Advisory Boards of the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Forensic Science Major and the State of New Jersey’s newly formed Conviction Review Unit. A graduate of Suffolk University Law School, Jennifer obtained a B.S. degree in public relations from Boston University. When she is not training lawyers or advocating for clients, Jennifer and her partner operate D/V Tenacious, a dive vessel that discovers, explores, and salvages shipwrecks in the North Atlantic.”

Wow… a dive vessel. Expensive hobby.

Jennifer Sellitti has made a career of arguing that people should be given the benefit of the doubt. That even in cases of extreme and brutal violence, their rights should be meticulously protected. It doesn’t matter if the person in question raped a child or murdered a grandmother, they have rights under the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

Her partner/spouse is also an attorney. His professional biography notes that he has “successfully represented clients charged with offenses ranging from murder, aggravated assault, and drug offenses to driving while intoxicated and other motor vehicle violations. He has handled cases in municipal courts across the State as well as Federal District Court” and has “also appeared before the Family Court in domestic violence matters.”

We find it strange then, to see Jennifer Sellitti as part of a chorus, a kind of socially distanced mob, calling for the will of the voters to be reversed, and an elected member of the Ringwood School Board dismissed, simply because he said something that offended them. Is that how it works now? The next time one of her clients holds a knife to a woman’s throat while raping her, instead of a trial we should organize on social media, a few letters-to-the-editor, demand an immediate execution, and get it over with?

The target of Jennifer Sellitti’s ire is a blue-collar worker who ran on a platform of better fiscal discipline and lower property taxes. Unable to defeat him at the polls, the trolls got to work on him and found something they could complain about to demand his resignation and undo the election. What they found were instances of plain-spoken, honest, irreverent blue-collar language. A fat politician was correctly identified as fat. It was said that the Governors of New York and New Jersey were copulating (possibly fornicating) wankers, which, given the fact they are men who lost their virginity some time ago, is probably true. Again, we volunteered to pay for the Governors’ polygraphs to test the veracity of the statement. In this way, maybe, we could certify them as wankers.

In a column, published by Gannett yesterday, Jennifer Sellitti called such language “unprintable”. How very Victorian of her. Puritan even.

The target of Jennifer Sellitti’s ire is a blue-collar worker who ran on a platform of better fiscal discipline and lower property taxes. Unable to defeat him at the polls, the trolls got to work on him and found something they could complain about to demand his resignation and undo the election. What they found were instances of plain-spoken, honest, irreverent blue-collar language. A fat politician was correctly identified as fat. It was said that the Governors of New York and New Jersey were copulating (possibly fornicating) wankers, which, given the fact they are men who lost their virginity some time ago, is probably true. Again, we volunteered to pay for the Governors’ polygraphs to test the veracity of the statement. In this way, maybe, we could certify them as wankers.

In a column, published by Gannett yesterday, Jennifer Sellitti called such language “unprintable”. How very Victorian of her. Puritan even.

Sellitti went on to attack the accused for accessing a social media network called Parler, which she called “a platform disabled by Apple and Amazon because it fueled misinformation, incited violence, and exacerbated racial divides”. Instead of such a rush to judge, maybe Sellitti should take a moment to consider what a civil libertarian like Pulitzer prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald has to say…

In her Gannett column, Jennifer Sellitti offers a great many summary judgements against the accused, stated that his “divisive words on Parler matter, and he should pay the cost of speaking them by forfeiting his position.” Sellitti claims that he “incited violence” but does not explain how. Sellitti, who has argued on behalf of some very terrible people, who has asked judges and juries to remember their humanity, and for the possibility of redemption… denies all of that in this case:

“None of (the accused’s) excuses or apologies matter. It does not matter that he made the comments in his free time or that he was fired up about politics when he made them. As an attorney, I am keenly aware that people have the right to Free Speech. (The accused) is free to spew whatever hateful speech he wants. He does not, however, have the right to avoid the consequences of that spew. The emphasis (the accused’s) supporters put on freedom of speech is misplaced. It is not about speech. It is about accountability.”

It is about accountability! That sounds like an argument for mandatory minimum sentencing, for expanding the prison system, for the death penalty.

Sellitti then pronounces sentence: “There is no place in the educational system for a man like (the accused). Anything short of his immediate dismissal is a tacit admission that slurs can be tolerated, especially when made by a white man in a position of power.”

White? Why the racialist terminology? Power doesn’t come from skin color. Power comes from money, and from position.

When your neighbors elect you to represent them on a school board, that is less power and more chore. School superintendents have real power. So do lawyers. So do high-ranking state bureaucrats. Regardless of their skin color.

Jennifer Sellitti posts BLM images on social media, and she is evidently a fan, but the Marxism expressed by BLM’s founders misses the point of Marx if it negates class in favor of surface “identities” possessed by so many members of the One Percent. Take away the component of economic class and what is BLM? A species of religion?

Does Sellitti understand this? Whatever the case, she doesn’t appear to be against “offensive” speech in all instances.

For example, when two New Jersey judges came under fire for making comments that appeared to minimize the trauma of rape victims, Jennifer Sellitti was featured in an NJ.com story about public defenders and criminal attorneys coming to the judges’ defense. Judge Marcia Silva came under fire for her comment that the rape of a 12-year-old girl was not “especially heinous or cruel.” Judge James Troiano drew rebuke for saying a defendant, accused of raping a girl at a party and sharing video of it with his friends, “comes from a good family who put him in an excellent school where he was doing extremely well.”

Protests ensued, citizens demanded their resignation. State legislators called for disciplinary action, with both leaders of the New Jersey Legislature saying the judges should quit or be removed from office. But Sellitti and her colleagues were more understanding. The state’s top Public Defender argued: “Vilifying or seeking the removal of judges who make unpopular or even erroneous decisions threatens the independence of the judiciary.” NJ.com quoted Sellitti:

“Obviously, any allegation of sexual assault is a serious allegation,” said Jennifer Sellitti, the public defender’s office’s director of communications. “But one of the things a judge is charged to do is to look at a crime, whatever crime is charged, and to look at underlying facts.”

Hey, we get it. Rich lawyers deserve the benefit of the doubt. Blue-collar guys who the taxpayers elect to a school board… not so much. Marx would recognize it. This is about class. Economic class.

And it is a timely lesson on how hate works. Societal hate, institutional hate, systemic hate – it is always top down. For hate to flourish, you need permission to hate. Permission and societal support.

Hate is always with us. It is the object of hate that changes. Based on fashion. It was once fashionable to mock Irish people. Just look at some of Thomas Nast’s cartoons. It was popular to hate the Irish – and lucrative, those cartoons sold well. The ruling elites of their day looked on when mobs (real, not virtual) burned Roman Catholic Churches and lynched Italians. Quakers were burned at the stake by the good people of Boston. They held the wrong opinions, you see. It was once fashionable to abuse Black Americans and Jews and Mormons.

Today, it is fashionable to hate the white working class. They are the new “those people”.

Hate remains. Merely the object of hate changes. And it is with this perspective that we view Jennifer Sellitti and all those miserable hangdog faces, without mercy, out to destroy someone in Ringwood.

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?”

“The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything.”

-George Orwell

N.B. We welcome a conversation on this and all topics raised on this website.  Jersey Conservative is entirely open to your ideas and opinions.  To submit a column for publication, please contact Marianna at Marianna@JerseyConservative.org.

Did Jay Webber abandon Passaic County conservatives?

In Bergen County, conservative Steve Lonegan has a full slate of county candidates running against the dregs of the BCRO and its hapless leadership, led by Paulie "the hand" DiGaetano.  There is a weirdness within the Bergen County political establishment -- Democrats and Republicans -- in that they derive great pleasure by mimicking the folkways of a traditional Mediterranean criminal elite.  We don't get it, but it seems to turn them on.

Over in Essex County, Assemblyman Jay Webber has his own slate of county candidates.  Webber, who has taken the phrase "Reagan Republican" and made it his own, was expected to link up with Lonegan in Passaic County -- where they both faced the county machine.   Whether this "machine" is the remnants of the once powerful organization that totally dominated Passaic County or the reconstituted second coming of the same remains to be seen, but it is still formidable nonetheless.  And so it made all the sense in the world for the two conservatives to link up in common cause.

But in the rush towards the April 2nd filing deadline, they failed to agree on ballot slogan and Webber raised objections to some of those candidates recruited by Lonegan.  "It became the Jay show," said one conservative activist. 

Webber bracketed his campaign with that of Brian Goldberg, a candidate for U.S. Senate.  Goldberg is running as a fiscal and social conservative this year -- a curious conversion from the social liberalism he displayed when he ran for the same office in 2014.  Lonegan was left with the conservative insurgents running for county clerk and freeholder.  Essentially, Webber split the movement and cut the conservative insurgents off his ticket.

The only way the county-level conservative insurgency was going to have a chance at winning was to be led by well-financed conservative congressional candidates in districts 5 and 11.  They have Lonegan in District 5 -- but that is just two towns (Ringwood and West Milford).  Webber booted them from his ticket in District 11 -- that's eight towns (Bloomingdale, Little Falls, North Haledon, Pompton Lakes, Totowa, Wanaque, Wayne, and Woodland Park).

To give our readers an idea of what this did, here are two sample ballots, one from a Ringwood, in District 5, and the other from Wayne, in District 11...

Now imagine how strong the conservative ticket would have been if it had stretched from U.S. Senate down through Freeholder in ten of the county's sixteen towns?  Instead, those conservatives running on the county level found themselves cut-off Jay Webber's ticket, all but assuring their defeat in the June primary.

Was this an act of treachery on the part of Webber?  Does he have a deal with the party bosses in Passaic County?  Why assure the defeat of the conservative insurgents and the ensure the hegemony of the machine?

There are many questions here but sadly only one certainty:  A great opportunity was missed to build a conservative infrastructure in the Passaic GOP.