DiGaetano: Is CD05 a choice between two bigots and the PR Firm from Hell?

The battle to represent the 5th congressional district has turned into a real shit show since candidate John McCann lost the favored ballot position in Bergen County and then followed up that bad news with the announcement that his campaign was in deep in debt.  For his latest attack on opponent Steve Lonegan, McCann dug up a twelve years old allegation by a Democrat candidate for Mayor in Lonegan's hometown of Bogota.  The Democrat is an avowed supporter of President Barack Obama and, like McCann, has campaigned against the Trump tax cuts.

The Democrat claims Lonegan called him a bad word in a heated exchange more than a decade ago.  This has led the McCann campaign to label Lonegan as the "Roy Moore of New Jersey" -- a reference to Alabama Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore.   But apparently someone on the McCann campaign didn't think this through because McCann's big fundraiser was built around a guest speaker who was one of Moore's main allies, a guy named Sebastian Gorka.  Take a look at the video below and note the fellow with the beard standing directly behind Moore:

McCann's attacks are taking place while his former boss and department -- the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County -- are being sued for laying-off and allegedly harassing police officers.  McCann was named by the Bergen Record as the Sheriff's "right hand man" and McCann openly takes credit for getting rid of the police.  We will let NJTV tell the rest of the story:

https://www.njtvonline.org/news/video/lawsuit-bergen-county-officials-ignored-gay-cops-harassment-allegations/

Andrew Kara was one of the dozens of Bergen County cops who lost their jobs followed the merger of the sheriff’s and county police forces that congressional candidate John McCann takes credit for making happen.

“Andrew was called a fag, a queer, a freak and a homo,” said Kara’s attorney, Matthew Peluso.

The abuse went on for years and, according to a suit, the County Executive Jim Tedesco, County Sheriff Michael Saudino and the county prosecutor, now state attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, ignored his complaints.

“Andrew reported this conduct up the chain of command and nothing ever happened,” Peluso said.

During this period, candidate John McCann was the lawyer for the Sheriff's office and the "right hand man" to Sheriff Saudino, according to the Bergen Record.

Peluso says the lawsuit is "about standing up for a gay officer who has been treated cruelly by his supposed colleagues and the county’s leadership structure."

The suit has 21 plaintiffs who allege a variety of harassment.  It calls for reinstatement of the officers, including Kara, back pay, as well as punitive damages for pain and suffering.

Bergen County Republican Organization (BCRO) Chairman Paulie "the hand" DiGaetano has written to all the other GOP county chairs of the 5th congressional district, threatening them and telling them to demand that any GOP candidate connected with bigotry be required to stand down.  Does this mean that DiGaetano intends to deliver the 5th District meekly into the hands of Democrat Josh Gottheimer? 

We certainly hope not.

Is DiGaetano -- the doyen of the brylcreem set -- forgetting the kind of pissbag Josh Gottheimer is?  Doesn't he know the record of Josh "the breath monster" Gottheimer?  Well thank goodness someone does and she has his number.  Her name is Rachel Maddow, perhaps you've heard of her?

Before getting elected to Congress in 2016, Josh Gottheimer followed his buddy Mark Penn, the Clintons' polling guy, to take over an international public relations/lobbying corporation called Burson-Marsteller.  These people are real turds. 

Hey, don't take our word for it.  Here's what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow had to say about the firm where Josh Gottheimer held the number two position as International Vice President (his buddy Mark Penn was International President):

Yep, Josh Gottheimer and his pal Mark Penn ran the "PR Firm from Hell"!  So now we know what kind of shithouse Paulie is shilling for.

A Democrat just made a bad accusation against McCann

Will Paulie DiGaetano respond with a letter calling for McCann to drop out?

A Democrat media group -- True Blue Media, LLC -- put out the following yesterday...

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GOP candidate gets Nazi sympathizer’s endorsement after paying him $5k

By Caroline Orr - April 24, 2018

Arizona Senate candidate Kelli Ward coincidentally paid $5,000 to Seb Gorka on the same day he endorsed her. Also coincidentally, this is the third time Gorka has been involved in such a transaction.

Having failed to secure an endorsement from Trump, Republican Senate candidate Kelli Ward of Arizona decided to go after a more attainable target, setting her sights on fired Trump adviser and Nazi sympathizer Sebastian Gorka.

Ward got the endorsement, which she proceeded to tout on social media, Fox News, and pretty much anywhere else she got the opportunity.

Interestingly, on the very same day that Gorka endorsed her, Ward paid him $5,240 for a “speaking fee.”

So what kind of speeches does Gorka deliver?

A look at his speaker bio shows that he advertises his availability to give paid speeches under the category “Endorsement/Spokesperson Campaign” — in other words, his endorsement is for sale.

While there’s no law prohibiting candidates from buying endorsements, one would think the public shame of doing so would be enough to stop anyone in their tracks.

But apparently, this is not a first for Gorka.

The Washington Examiner reported on April 9 that John McCann, a Republican candidate for New Jersey’s 5th District Congressional District, paid a familiar sum of money — $5,000 — to Gorka right around the same time that Gorka endorsed McCann and threw his weight behind his fundraising efforts. 

Two months before that, the Washington Examiner reported on a similar payment made to Gorka by Nevada Republican Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian, who is running to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Dean Heller. According to FEC filings, Tarkanian paid Gorka $5,000 for a one-time “speaking fee,” in December. Gorka endorsed Tarkanian on December 20, 2017 — one day after the date on the FEC filing.

As the Examiner noted, the payment is highly unusual, both in substance and in cost.

“A search of FEC records for ‘honorarium’ or ‘speaking’ left the Washington Examiner mostly empty-handed. In the last two election cycles, only three House candidates paid speaking fees (averaging less than $2,000) and not a single Senate candidate paid a speaking fee or honorarium according to this search,” the Examiner reported after looking for records of similar speaking fees paid by House and Senate candidates.

Gorka, the former Trump adviser and Breitbart columnist who’s been accused of having ties to a Hungarian Nazi group, is just the latest far-right figure to endorse Ward’s Senate campaign. Other notable far-right endorsements include outspoken racist Steve King of Iowa, as well as Sean Hannity, Steve Bannon, and a host of fringe conspiracy theorists.

But Ward didn’t have to fork over any money to win their endorsements — at least, as far as we know. Stay tuned.

https://shareblue.com/sebastian-gorka-kelli-ward-arizona-senate/

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As we have noted before, Democrats call Republicans bad words every day and they only object to the use of bad words when a Republican is calling out a Democrat.  If Paulie DiGaetano still wants to call himself a Republican "leader", he should refrain from joining in with the Democrats and playing their game.

Did DiGaetano forget his embrace of Roy Moore surrogate Gorka?

Are people simply more forgetful in Bergen County than elsewhere?

Last week, we had to remind Democrat Senator Loretta "Mother Roach" Weinberg that she was condemning a Republican town committeewoman for something Democrat Governor Phil Murphy did last year.  Of course, when Murphy used the "N" word (in this case "Nazi") he was using it to describe Republican President Donald Trump, so Weinberg wet herself with glee. 

Republicans can be trashed using any kind of language you want to use -- and that is acceptable to people like Mother Roach -- but don't you dare use it to describe a Democrat.  If you do, you will be called upon to resign!

Now anyone who has ever known or worked for Paulie "the hand" DiGaetano knows that he is anything but an angel -- and while he is not quite up there with a certain former Senate President, he is not without sin.  Who is? 

That's why it is so laughable when someone as oily as DiGaetano slimes up to the preacher's pulpit to deliver a lecture on morality.  Yes, on Sunday, the doyen of the brylcreem set reached out to the "mastermind" of BridgeGate and asked him to post a letter to his fellow chairmen in the 5th congressional district.

DiGaetano, who would regularly instruct his operatives to crawl into his opponents' underpants, wrote that he was morally outraged because the opponent of his hand-picked candidate for Congress had allegedly used some choice language to describe a former Democrat candidate and avowed Obama supporter.  And all this allegedly happened more than a decade ago!

Oh my, to be forgotten all those intervening years... What must have occurred to raise it to Paulie's consciousness again.  Ah yes, an election.   So this is less about moral outrage, than it is about the scumbaggery of contrived illusion. 

DiGaetano resorts to a strong arm tactic -- threatening the chairs that their careers will be smeared if they don't do as he asks.  This is a real dick of a move and Paulie plays it up with extreme dickery:

"All of us must be on record denouncing this hurtful and offensive statement or all of your years of collective service as leaders will be forever smeared." 

Really?  How many of these guys have denounced Trump or Christie or Bush or Whitman... or any of the other Republicans they were told they "must denounce" over the years.  This is an asshole Democrat tactic and typically the only person with an ethical skidmark in his shorts is the one demanding it.

But this is Paulie DiGaetano... so it gets better.

Paulie then goes on to write:  "The Republican Party cannot afford to nominate another Roy Moore." 

Again... Really?  Wasn't Sebastian Gorka a huge Roy Moore supporter and cheerleader?  If we're not mistaken, wasn't Gorka one of the crew Roy Moore kept up his bunghole for emergencies -- to defend him?  Wasn't Gorka with Roy Moore the night before the big election, rallying up the troops, telling them that Roy Moore couldn't lose?

And isn't this the same Sebastian Gorka that Paulie's man "Stumbling John" McCann brought up to do McCann's big fundraiser in Bergen County?  Didn't Paulie and all his acolytes take turns fanning Gorka's ass.  Didn't they all praise him as the brightest and the best?

Last we checked, didn't they give him a medal or something and make him horse of the year?

Did Paulie forget?  Is his memory convenient... or is it genuinely screwed?  Next time... before you go and play the part of a windy moralistic pissbag... think about what you did the week or two before.

Idiot.

Did McCann pay for an endorsement? Aide says, "yes".

John McCann's campaign did themselves a mischief again. 

This time by shopping around a story to the Washington Examiner about McCann's recent fundraiser with Sebastian Gorka, a former foreign policy advisor at the White House who was fired by the Trump administration after a few months on the job.  The Examiner story leads with the following headline: 

"Sebastian Gorka wades into New Jersey primary for another $5,000."

The article ends with:

"Before supporting McCann in New Jersey, (Gorka) looked west, endorsed Republican Danny Tarkanian in Nevada — then a candidate for Senate — and collected another $5,000 in “speaking fees.” Asked in February whether he sold his endorsement to Tarkanian, Gorka said it was an “honorarium” and added that an endorsement sale “would be illegal.” 

When reached for comment for this story, Gorka answered: “Get a life you hack. You’re not a journalist so I have nothing to say to you and I’m blocking this email.”

Brutal stuff... which led to this morning's Politico story in which McCann claims to deny everything his campaign told the Examiner:

MCCANCEL PAYMENT -  The Washington Examiner, a conservative publication,  reports  via an anonymous campaign aide that 5th District Congressional candidate John McCann paid former Trump adviser Rick Gorka, who endorsed him and raised money for him, $5,000. McCann denies this on Twitter. "This not true. FEC filings will show my campaign did not pay Gorka a penny. The statement by my aide is simply not true." I've been waiting for McCann's FEC report because Gorka has a history of being paid not for his endorsement but, ahem,  a "speaking fee."  Of course, McCann or Gorka could have headed off that Washington Examiner story that McCann says is false if either had answered my question about whether Gorka was being paid when I asked it two weeks ago.

The conduct of the McCann campaign has raised eyebrows before.  Some key consultants on the campaign have bragged to some very reputable people about what they were being paid by McCann -- and yet their names never appeared on the McCann campaign's disclosures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).  Now we have this Gorka affair.

Well, they don't call him "Stumbling John" McCann for nothing.  Shambolic. 

McCann bashes Jewish veteran for standing up for faith

The campaign of "Stumbling John" McCann choose the start of Passover to launch a bitter personal attack on a leader of the Jewish community in Bergen County.  Under attack by McCann is former Bergen County GOP Chairman Bob Yudin.  McCann chose to include a nasty personal attack -- from the candidate -- on Yudin in his campaign's release.

Yudin's crime?  He dared to criticize candidate McCann's acceptance of an endorsement from a controversial figure named Sebastian Gorka.  Gorka was a foreign policy advisor in the White House before being fired by the Trump administration.  Gorka has also been the subject of a lot of media coverage over his connections to some rather icky people.

Yudin, who was born while the Nazis and Hitler were in power, fearlessly questioned the appropriateness of McCann's choice of Gorka -- both as an endorser and the featured speaker at a McCann fundraiser.  Politico (03.23.18) takes over from here:

The former chairman of Bergen County‘s Republican Party is slamming a congressional candidate for raising money with Sebastian Gorka, a one-time adviser to President Donald Trump who wore a medal associated with a Hungarian group that collaborated with Nazi Germany.

“It’s absolutely despicable. It shows that I have to assume that John McCann approves of this man,” said Bob Yudin, who chaired the Bergen County GOP from 2008 to 2016 and backs McCann rival Steve Lonegan for the GOP nomination in the 5th Congressional District. “This man seems to have sympathy toward fascists and Nazis, and this act of accepting support from him disqualifies John McCann in all ways and manners from being my congressman.”

John McCann should know better.  He is a lawyer.  His wife is a doctor in New York City.  They should understand how sensitive a subject this is for those who suffered personal or community loss due to anti-Semitism.  To forget or ignore this and then try to score some cheap political points is revolting. 

Bob Yudin served his country in the U.S. Navy, as a Lt. j.g. Airborne Navigator during Vietnam.  He graduated from the United States Naval School of Justice.  He is a member of the VFW and the Jewish War Veterans.

Yudin is very proud of his work as a liaison to New Jersey’s Jewish Community and his work with Israel.  He served as Executive Director of the New Jersey-Israel Commission and led the group’s first Holocaust Education trip to Poland and Israel.  He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the North Jersey Jewish Federation and a member of the Leadership Council of the Republican Jewish Coalition.  Yudin also arranged for El-Al Airlines to operate direct flights from Newark Liberty International Airport to Israel.  He has assisted numerous Israeli businesses in starting locations in New Jersey.

What a guy for McCann to try to trash at the start of Passover.  But what can you say about "Stumbling John"?  McCann pissed the bed again!