Did Sussex Democrat murder-for-hire operative commit vote fraud?
/By Rubashov
According to the United States Department of Justice, Sussex County Democrat operative Sean M. Caddle admitted to hiring two men to kill a longtime associate who had worked for him on various political campaigns. A USDOJ press release stated:
Sean Caddle, 44, of Hamburg, New Jersey, pleaded guilty by videoconference before U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit murder for hire.
“This was a callous and violent crime, and this defendant is as responsible as the two men who wielded the knife,” U.S. Attorney Sellinger said. “There is no more serious crime than the taking of another person’s life. The defendant has admitted arranging and paying for a murder by two other people. His admission of guilt means he will now pay for his crime.”
Caddle faces a maximum potential penalty of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
The murdered victim was Michael Galdieri, the son of the late former State Senator James Galdieri (D). The younger Galdieri was a political operative in Hudson County. The Jersey Journal reported that firefighters responding to a blaze at Galdieri’s home had found him fatally stabbed. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide and investigators believed the fire was meant to cover up the killing.
Sean Caddle is perhaps the most prominent Democrat political consultant living in Sussex County. According to the New York Times, Caddle worked on numerous local and state races, and was a political consultant for Bob Menendez, “collecting nearly $100,000” in one election cycle alone.
Caddle runs numerous political action committees, superPACs, and non-profit organizations. He’s not only worked for some of the top Democrats in New Jersey – but has worked on Democrat efforts all across the country. As one wag put it: “Now we know what top Sussex County Democrats get up to when they are not defaming Republicans.”
Former Senator Ray Lesniak (D) called Caddle “an all-star in terms of being a political operative.” Lesniak admitted to the New York Times that the crime Caddle had admitted to “occurred while they were working together, and that they were still in touch.” According to the Times, Caddle was an expert in “street operations” and in “working to make sure absentee ballots were delivered to election officials.” Lesniak praised Caddle’s skill at “getting out the vote” claiming that Caddle was “the best field director in the country.”
Indeed, Sean Caddle’s skills were employed by Democrats throughout the United States. He was identified in this ABC News report from August 24, 2010:
HOUSTON The Harris County Voter Registrar says he's found thousands of voter applications filed in the last three months which are fraudulent. He calls this an attack on the voter rolls of Harris County.
Harris County Voter Registrar Leo Vasquez's office has pored through thousands of voter registration applications, discovering many questionable filings. Like some which appear to be the same person with the same date of birth filing six times on the same day. And that's not all...
Vasquez said, "We have evidence indicating violations of the Texas election code, falsified documents being submitted to this governmental office and possibly violations of federal election laws."
The investigation found 1,597 instances of multiple applications for the same voter, 1,014 applications for folks already registered to vote, 325 for teenagers who are too young to register and even 25 from folks who admitted on the application they are not even US citizens.
"My office has been forced to expend countless hours and thousands of dollars of taxpayer money trying to sift through the garbage being dumped into our voter registration system," Vasquez explained.
Vasquez says the applications were all gathered by paid deputies with the group Houston Votes. Of the 25,000 applications the group filed in the last three months, only 7,193 were actually for new voters.
Sean Caddle is the director of Houston Votes, which he says is a privately funded organization which signs up voters.
"I didn't do anything wrong. I ran a legitimate program," Caddle said. "What's the motivation behind anyone else? I don't know."
Caddle says he has fired 20 to 30 of his workers as a result of filing these fraudulent applications.
These allegations and the evidence collected by the voter registrar's office will be forwarded to the district attorney's office, the secretary of state and eventually possibly the attorney general's office.
Texas Democrats worked to successfully suppress the voter fraud case, even calling in the Obama administration for support…
According to the Dallas Morning News (September 11, 2014), “Democratic congressmen from Texas have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a raid by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office that targeted a nonprofit voter registration group.”
In a Sept. 10 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the 12 Democratic House members from Texas asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into the matter.
“This raid raises serious concerns about the biased use of state resources to prevent Texans from legally registering to vote,” the letter said.
…Reached for comment, Jerry Strickland, an Abbott spokesman, said in an email: “If the Texas Democratic Congressional delegation is interested in more than political grandstanding and is genuinely concerned with following and enforcing the law, they should demand the Department of Justice investigate Houston Votes’ illegal activity.
“Houston Votes’ own executive director admitted to attorney general investigators that they fraudulently signed voter registrations and illegally collected information to sell to ACORN-linked Project Vote – that’s precisely the kind of illegal activity the Justice Department needs to investigate,” Strickland added.
…An affidavit by Sgt. Jennifer Croswell offers a different account from what the former executive director of Houston Votes, Sean Caddle, says he told investigators.
For example, the affidavit says Caddle told Croswell he was aware that fraudulent voter registration cards were being collected by canvassers.
But Caddle said Thursday said he did not tell the investigator he was involved in or aware of fraud by canvassers.
“Did I ever sit in a room and say, `I know for sure voter fraud was taking place and I just let it happen?’ No,” he said.
In addition, the affidavit says: “Sean Caddle also stated that per instructions from his supervisor, Fred Lewis, and pursuant to a contract or agreement between Houston Votes/Texans Together Education Fund and Project Vote, he was to transmit the Houston Votes voter registration database to personnel connected to Project Vote in exchange for a financial benefit for Texans Together Education Fund.”
Lewis, the president of Texans Together, the parent nonprofit group of Houston Votes, said Thursday that he handled a planned collaboration with Project Vote, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C.
…In their letter to Holder, the Democratic congressmen assert that the Houston Votes investigation is “just the latest in a series of state-led attempts to disenfranchise Texas voters.”
From our current vantage, all we can add is that someone who admits to paying to have a political colleague stabbed to death and then burned is hardly likely to have qualms about paying people to commit vote fraud. But we could be wrong.
That said, perhaps GOP gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli called off his investigation into vote fraud too early. Who knows what it might have uncovered? Maybe more bodies?
Sussex County Democrat operative Sean Caddle laughs it up with reporters at a press conference called to address the "Houston Votes" vote fraud allegations.
“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
