Phoebus: The Legislature's resident nutcase

Every now and then, the behavior of some politician reaches that special level where they go beyond simply being bad and end up somewhere around crazy. 

Who can forget Steve Lipski, standing on a balcony at a night club and literally pissing on the voters below?  Then there's Charles Mainor, a Democrat Assemblyman who told voters that he couldn't figure out how websites like "Big Bootie Freaks" made it on to his Facebook page.  On the national level, we've all heard of Anthony Weiner and Hillary Clinton. 

Well move over, because now there's Assemblywoman Gail Phoebus.

Phoebus forwarded emails that revealed a variety of questionable dealings, including compromising the Open Public Meetings Act.  She forwarded the emails from her personal email address, during a period of time when she was a member of the Sussex County Freeholder Board.  But that didn't stop Phoebus from claiming that the computer at her Assembly office had been "hacked" and that legislative aides were in on the "conspiracy."  Forget the fact that she didn't have a legislative office or a legislative computer or was even a member of the Legislature when she forwarded the emails. 

Phoebus would simply forward the sensitive emails to recipients asking what they thought or as parts of chains in response to routine questions, like a telephone number inquiry.  Suffice to say that Phoebus is something of an Internet moron.

Taking personal responsibility is not something Phoebus is comfortable with, so instead, she lied.  Even worse, she involved OLS -- the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services.  Her campaign claimed that OLS had conducted an FBI-style raid on her district office, seizing computers, naming suspects, and "locking down" her legislative office.  But none of it happened, none of it was true.  And when called on it, the campaign claimed it was "satire."

Let's place this into perspective.  Phoebus is not as crazy as Sussex County can get, like the candidate for Sheriff who ended up arrested for conspiring with other cannibals.  Or the candidate for Freeholder who tried to hire a hit man.  Phoebus isn't that kind of howl-at-the-moon crazy.  She's just the kind of crazy who believes that if you imagine something, and then repeat it often enough, that makes it true.  That's a far cry from writing recipes where the main course is your next-door neighbor.

And to be fair to Phoebus, this isn't the only push back her campaign is making, now that she has been cut from the GOP ticket and replaced by former Labor Commissioner Hal Wirths.  Facing a team with more than $250,000 in its coffers, Phoebus has mustered $15,000.  So she's resorted to a, shall we say, "unique" style of campaigning.  This is what her campaign was pushing last week:

Yes, those are what you think they are.  Like we said, some crazy stuff.  Bat-shit crazy!