Cullari Ties Little and Corzine

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CD-6 Primary: It will all come down to turnout

On the day Anna Little won the endorsement of the Middlesex County GOP, she became the favorite to win the 6th congressional district nomination.  Despite that all of the candidates, Democrat and Republican are from Monmouth County, the new 6th is a Middlesex County district. 

With no presidential contest on the top of the ballot and the U.S. Senate race uncompetitive, turnout is likely to be very low.  13,000 voters decided the 2010 primary race between Little and Monmouth County GOP Vice Chair Diane Gooch by less than 90 votes.  This time out, I’ll be surprised if there are more than 6000 votes.

Based on name recognition, Little should be considered the favorite.  She scored an upset in the last primary. She was the general election candidate in 2010 and she was a countywide candidate for Freeholder in 2006.

Coming into the race, Ernesto Cullari, the Monmouth County GOP endorsed candidate was a complete unknown, except for readers of the triCityNews where he was the token conservative columnist.   The nomination in both Middlesex and Monmouth Counties was his for the taking because no one else wanted it.  Little was running for the U.S. Senate nomination against Joe Kyrillos.

Little has been once again running against the Republican establishment who turned her away for the congressional nomination twice and never wanted her as freeholder candidate.  She won the office of Freeholder by one vote at a raucous January 2006 convention and was denied the nomination for reelection in 2007.

But it was during a meeting with Kyrillos in early March, before the Monmouth County screening/candidate selection and after Cullari announced his candidacy, that Little give up her Senate bid and decided to make another run for Congress.   Kyrillos did not want a primary challenge from the pesky Little.  Little did not want her career to end with a primary loss to Kyrillos.   The independent minded elected officials and municipal chairs of the Monmouth GOP were not going along with the deal.  They knew Little was no more of a threat to Kyrillos than Badar Qarmout.

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Little continues to be out of compliance with the Federal Election Commission

Three days after a spokesperson for the Anna Little for Congress campaign told PolitickerNJ that Little’s delinquent campaign finance reports would be filed “immediately” the Middlesex County GOP’s endorsed candidate has yet to file with the federal agency as a candidate.

PolitickerNJ called the Little campaign on Wednesday over the story that MMM has been reporting and updating on since early May.  Initially a campaign volunteer claimed that Little’s reports had been filed nine months ago and blamed a backlog of paperwork at the FEC for the reports not being posted online.  An FEC spokeswoman told PoltickerNJ that there was no backlog and that every report the agency received from Little was posted on their site.

Little filed a termination report for her “Anna C. Little for Congress, Inc.” campaign committee on April 2.  The FEC issued an acceptance of the termination on April 12.  The termination report says that Little raised $71,000 more than she spent as a candidate.

In February, Little filed “Friends of Anna Little” as a campaign committee for her aborted run for U.S. Senate.  “Friends of Anna Little” is the committee listed on the congressional campaign website . It yet has not yet been terminated as a senate campaign or registered as a congressional campaign.

Little’s husband, Rob, told PolitickerNJ that the campaign spending reports would be filed by primary day, Tuesday June 5.  The required statement of organization could easily have been filed on Thursday or Friday.  That would have qualified as “immediately.”

PolitickerNJ named Little one of their Losers of the Week :

Anna Little

With just four days left until the Republican primary, 6^th District Congressional candidate Anna Little has yet to file her official Federal Election Commission paperwork or any fundraising reports for her candidacy.  Little’s team called it an oversight and promised to fix it immediately.

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Bayshore Tea Party Group Members Stealing Signs

Cullari for Congress Campaign Manager Charles Measley tells MMM that one of the campaign’s volunteers spotted Bayshore Tea Party Group founder Barbara Gonzalez and active member Joe Abburscato stealing Cullari for Congress signs last evening in Middletown.  Measley said he called Abbruscato who initially denied the thefts before calling back with a defiant rant.

Measley called the police and is filing a complaint in Middletown Municipal Court.

It is a shame to see that BTPG has fallen so low as to resort to tactics normally deployed in Middletown by the Democrats.

Gonzalez publically boasts babbles of throwing a member out of her organization for “stealing and spying” information shared via email with a members of the BTPG ememies list.  Who will throw Barbara out?

UPDATE  8:41 AM

Rob Little, for the former mayor’s husband, just called with an alibi for Barbara.  Little said that Barabara was with him all night and that she could not have possibly been among the sign thieves.

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Cullari Advertising on TV

CD- 6 GOP challenger Ernesto Cullari had an ad on Fox and Friends this morning.

The 30 second spot bashed his opponent, former Highlands Mayor Anna Little for advising her legal clients to pay undocumented workers in cash in order to avoid taxes and for the “exploding” taxes and debt in Highlands during her tenure as mayor.  “And now she’s running for congress?”

The spot concluded with Cullari saying that he wants to cut taxes and spending.  “I don’t want to go to congress to write laws, I want to go to congress to repeal them.”

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Monmouth Tea Party Gathering Signatures For Third Party U.S. Senate Candidate

Marilynn English

Monmouth Tea Party Coalition President Frank Cotton announced via email tonight that he has collected 42 petition signatures for the U. S. Senate candidacy of potential Constitution Party candidate Marilynn English.  Cotton asked that 50 people of his group step up t0 collect 30 signatures each.

English, of Verona in Essex County, is a licensed mortage banker.  She was formerly employed by JP Morgan as an Assistant Vice President in the Mergers and Acquisitions.

English told MMM that she was approached by leaders of the Constitution Party to run for U.S. Senate two weeks ago.  To her knowledge she has 100 signatures. 800 valid signatures are required for an third party candidate to get onto the general election ballot.  Petitions are due with the Secretary of State on Tuesday, June 5 at 4PM.

She ran for Essex County Executive in 2010 as an Independent Democrat and for Essex County Freeholder at Large in 2011, also as an Independent Democrat.

English is a member of the Verona Rent Control Board and a former member of Verona’s Budget Review Committee.

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Anna Little’s Response

As part of a fundraising email sent this evening, former Highlands Mayor Anna Little issued the following statement in response to today’s news about the lawsuit that accuses her of failing to perform the work she was hired to do and advising her client to pay undocumented workers in cash:

“Every citizen has the right to seek legal redress if they believe they have been wronged.  The other party also has the right to defend themselves, and be judged by a judge or a jury of their peers.  The pending legal action is an allegation.  There is no final money judgement (sic) in the matter.  It has just come to my attention that Default has been entered, a technicality which occurs when one party doesn’t answer on time.  I have filed an Answer and have sought legal counsel to defend me.  I intend to seek to vacate default, defend myself, and make motion for the complaint to be dismissed as we deem appropriate after thorough review of the matter.”

The subject/title of the email was,”What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…”

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Curley: “None of the above!”

Freeholder Director John Curley told MMM that he does not support either former Senate President John Bennett or State Committeewoman Christine Hanlon becoming the next chair of the Monmouth County Republican Committee.

“If I had a vote I wouldn’t vote for either one of them,” said Curley, “The chair should not be someone who is hussling for government contracts.”

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Governor Christie Holding 4:30 Press Conference

Governor Chris Christie will hold a press conference at 4:30 this afternoon.  It is expected that he will be addressing the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of Bruce Harris’s nomination to the State Supreme Court.

Watch the press conference live here:

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Senate Judiciary Committee Rejects Bruce Harris’s Nomination To The NJ Supreme Court

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-6 to reject Chatam Mayor Bruce Harris’s nomination as a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

The votes were identical to those of Philip Kwon’s nomination to the Court earilier this year.

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