Bellew, Gonzalez, Boracchia Attack LD 13 Incumbents, Blogs

By Art Gallagher

Bayshore Tea Party Group co-founder Barbara Gonzalez pinning Sen. Joe Kyrillos during happier times.

After over three weeks of media silence, the Bellew for Senate campaign issued a scathing 920 word press release this afternoon accusing State Senator Joe Kyrillos and Assembly members Amy Handlin and Declan O’Scanlon of hypocrisy, liberalism, slander, ducking debates and being mean.

Also blasted by Bellew Jersey, was “an organized army of cronies (that) have waged a campaign of personal attacks and character assassination on members of the Tea Party.”

“They have used surrogates in a legion of non-journalistic blogs and Internet attack machines to call the Tea Party “nut jobs.” To the Tea Party, this closely resembles Obama campaign style tactics of personal destruction. In fact, it mirrors what the IRS is now in trouble for doing – trying to silence their critics. Conservatives know this destroys any credibility Joe Kyrillos, Declan O’Scanlan, and Amy Handlin and their liberal Republican establishment team could possibly claim to have in support of the patriots fighting for limited government.”

The release, which was sent out by and paid for by Bellew for State Senate, quotes Senate Candidate Leigh-Ann Bellew, Bayshore Tea Party Group co-founder Barbara Gonzalez, and Assembly Candidate Steven Boracchia.   Assembly Candidate Edna Walsh was mentioned but not quoted in the statement which can be read in its entirety here.

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Praise for Kyrillos, Prayers for Bellew

By Thomas Stokes, Middletown

With the June 4^th primary rapidly approaching, I wanted to share why I’m supporting Republican Joe Kyrillos for State Senate.

I began working for Conservative candidates in High School when Barry Goldwater ran for President.  In college, I founded the first Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter at NYU.  I served as a Municipal Chairman of the NY State Conservative Party and worked hard to elect Ronald Reagan (Chair, Taxpayers For Reagan) before moving to New Jersey many years ago.

Joe and I have been good friends for a number of years. I have been proud to support him in every election.  Now, he’s facing a new primary opponent – and what I have discovered about his opponent is alarming, and is something that should also concern you. By the way, contrary to claims she’s an attorney, Joe’s opponent never even went to law school, let alone pass a bar exam.

Leigh-Ann Bellew claims she is a champion of fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately, it’s just not true. Three years ago, she racked up almost $140,000 in credit card debt on 20 different credit cards – including payment to a vacation timeshare company in Las Vegas – and didn’t pay the bills. Instead, she filed for bankruptcy.  How can we trust her to be the conservative leader we need when she can’t even be responsible for her own finances?

To make matters worse, the Monmouth County Democrat Chairman has now confirmed reports that Ms. Bellew’s campaign has sought funding and other assistance from the Democrats in this primary!

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Meet the Tea Party Candidates

Evidently, the Bayshore Tea Party Group leadership and their candidates don’t like the coverage MoreMonmouthMusings is giving their primary campaign.  Don’t take my word for it.  Listen to Barbara Gonzalez introducing sheriff candidate Dan Peters in the first video below.

Leigh-Ann Bellew stopped taking my phone calls a couple of weeks ago.  She told someone to pass along the message that I should deal with Dwayne Horner.  Now Horner is not returning my calls.  Freeholder candidate Ed Pekarsky asked that I post Tom Fitzsimmons’ email and if he could respond here.  I told him he could.  He hasn’t sent me his response.  It’s OK with me that he isn’t responding, but hey, Gonzalez wrote that I censored Tea Party posts, which I didn’t, and then her candidate doesn’t send it a post he that requested.

When I met Dan Peters in early April, he said he would sit for an interview.  I’m writing a story about him for publication later today or tomorrow.  Peters hasn’t returned three calls since yesterday.

It’s a lot easier to write “Bellew (or Horner, Peters, Pekarsky, etc) didn’t return a phone call,” than it is to write up their comments, but I’d really rather give them an opportunity to tell their side of the story.

In that spirit, here they are, telling their own stories on video:

Dan Peters, Sheriff Candidate

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Marist/NBC Poll Is Bad News For New Jersey Tea Parties

We The People of New Jersey do not support the Tea Party or Second Amendment movements, according to an Marist/NBC poll released this morning.

72% of the 1080 self identified New Jersey registered voters who responded to the poll said “No” when asked if they considered themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement.  19% said “Yes” and 9% were unsure.

The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 % and only questioned 22% of the amount of people that Leigh-Ann Bellew’s campaign surveyed, just in the 13th legislative district, two weeks ago.

Bellew’s campaign said that 83% or their respondents favor Tea Party candidates in the 13th.  Campaign manager Dwayne Harris would not get into the specifics of the poll, like the margin of error or how many phone calls they had to make to reach 5000 people.

67% of registered voters think New Jersey needs stricter gun laws, per the Marist/NBC poll.  25% think New Jersey’s current gun laws should not be changed.  6% said New Jersey’s gun laws should be less strict.   Harris wouldn’t say if the Bellew campaign polled the gun question.

27% of New Jersey voters consider themselves liberal. 32% consider themselves conservative and 40% consider themselves moderate, according to the Marist/NBC poll.

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Bellew Campaign Seeks Help From Monmouth County Democrats

Monmouth Democratic Chairman Vin Gopal

We couldn’t make this up

Monmouth County Democrat Chairman Vin Gopal told MMM that a representative of the Bellew for Senate campaign reached out to him for financial support and help in generating publicity for the Bayshore Tea Party backed slate of candidates in the 13th Legislative District Republican Primary.  “We need help getting the truth out,” Gopal said the operative pleaded.

The campaign operative, who Gopal said is close to Bellew but not so involved with BTPG, said the campaign was having difficulty raising money, recruiting volunteers and getting positive press.

“I turned him down,” said Gopal, “this is a primary between two Conservative Republican tickets.  It’s not our fight.

“Kyrillos may have run as a moderate in the U.S. Senate campaign last year,” Gopal added,” but based upon his voting record in the legislature, he is a Conservative as far as I am concerned. He’s voted against abortion rights, marriage equality rights and the millionaires tax.

“I’m glad to see the Republicans spending money fighting with each other instead of coming after us.”

MMM called Bellew, her campaign manager Dwayne Horner, and BTPG co-founder Barbara Gonzalez for comment.  None have returned the call.

UPDATE

Gonzalez did not return our call, but she banned MMM publisher Art Gallagher from the BTPG’s facebook page.  Eariler today, Gonzalez accused Gallagher of censoring BTPG members’ comments on this site.  That hasn’t happened.

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Debate Challenge: Kyrillos vs Bellew

Bayshore Tea Party Group co-founder Barbara Gonzalez pinning Sen. Joe Kyrillos

MMM has challenged State Senator Joe Kyrillos to accept Leigh-Ann Bellew’s debate challenge if Bellew produces documentation of the law degree and undergraduate degree she told us she earned.  MMM publisher Art Gallagher offered to moderate the debate.

Kyrillos laughed at the idea, but has not agreed.  He didn’t decline either.

Gallagher called Bellew for Senate campaign manager Dwayne Horner to issue the challenge. Horner has yet to call back.  A Bayshore Tea Party member who asked not to be named agreed to extend to the challenge to Bellew.

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Bellew Needs To Come Clean On Her Credentials

State Senate primary candidate Leigh-Ann Bellew owes her supporters, and the voters of the 13th Legislative District, the truth about her resume.  Any candidate’s educational and employment history is an important consideration for voters to take into account when choosing their nominees and elected officials.  Bellew is asking Republican voters to fire an long term and distinguished incumbent in Senator Joe Kyrillos, and to hire her instead.   In order for her candidacy to be taken seriously, she needs to be transparent about her education, career and character.

Bellew has gone into hiding since the questions about her resume and education have become public.  When the questions about her legal education arose in early April, Bellew told MMM that she graduated from law school in Texas but never took the bar exam.  She said she went to work in customer service for American Express rather than pursue a career as a lawyer, and then exited the work force to raise her children.

However, since PolitickerNJ questioned the veracity of her resume, Bellew has stopped returning MMM’s repeated phone calls.  Her campaign manager, Dwayne Horner, has not been able to provide answers.

Bellew, her running mates and campaign volunteers have been distorting Kyrillos’s record. Kyrillos is a moderate, but he is not a tax and borrow liberal as the Bayshore Tea Party Group backed ticket is claiming.  Kryillos does not support partial birth abortion and death panels, as the duplicitous literature the BTPG backed campaign has been distributing claims.

If a candidate or campaign is going to take liberties with the truth about their opponent’s record, they at the very least should have the decency to be transparent about something as basic about their own education and career.

Leigh-Ann Bellew can put an end to all of this nonsense over her past by simply proving she has the degrees she has claimed she has.  She should do that immediately.  If Bellew has embellished her past, she should come clean about that and explain herself.

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Bellew’s Credentials, Conservatism Questioned

By Kelly Ann Hart

In 2010 I was a manager in Anna Little’s campaign for Congress.  I worked with Leigh Ann Bellew, who was the campaign’s initial manager and then became the campaign’s Chairman.  I am a conservative Republican who has been active with the Tea Party.

During that campaign Leigh Ann Bellew led me, as well as and all the rest of us who were working on Anna Little’s campaign, to believe that she was “a lawyer who didn’t practice”.  We also got the impression from what she told us that she had studied law and had a degree of some kind in Constitutional studies.  None of this has turned out to be true.

Leigh Ann Bellew also misled us about her involvement with national conservatives like Dick Morris, telling us that she had been his “communications director”. This isn’t true either.

I wasn’t aware of her answers to a Project Vote Smart (http://votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/59968/leigh-ann-bellew/#.UYeWJXzD-M8) questionnaire in 2006, none of us were, but have had the opportunity to read it since.  I am concerned by a number of her answers and most concerned by her answers to the questions on the 2^nd Amendment and Abortion.

On the 2^nd Amendment, if Leigh Ann is a “constitutionalist” as she claims, how is her support for the federal licensing of all firearms in line with the 2^ndamendment?

On Abortion she claims to be Pro-Life, but told Vote Smart that an abortion should be legal when the mother’s life is involved.  How this fits with her “Pro-Life, Christian” values?  You are either for the death of a baby or you are not.

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I Know Leigh-Ann Bellew

By James C. Granelli

But first, please understand that I thought long and hard about writing this commentary. After all, Bellew is running in a primary in another district than my own and I have my hands full rebuilding our home after Sandy. I would have loved some peace and quiet right now; instead of what I expect will be coming; harsh criticism from some Tea Party people who will attack me as a faux Conservative. I could have simply sat this out. But then, people that know me; know most of all that I am indeed a Conservative and I would feel ill at ease for not doing the right thing. I will let my resume and references speak for themselves should those attacks come.

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Bayshore Tea Party Backed Slate Claims Momentum With Polling Data In LD13

Won’t Say Who Is Doing The Polling Or Reveal Data

UPDATED: 1pm

townhall photo

Bellew for State Senate campaign manager Dwayne Horner called from Texas to say that the campaign polled 5,000 Republican voters in LD 13 on Sunday evening and that 83% said they favored replacing the incumbents.  Horner refused to name the polling firm, saying only that its a well respected Republican firm that worked for the Romney campaign in Florida and several Texas congressional campaigns.

Horner declined to say what questions were asked of those polled, saying he would not get into the specifics of the poll.  Twice MMM asked if the incumbents were named in the polling questions.  Twice Horner declined to answer.

“83% said the incumbents should not be re-elected,” Horner said. “Did you tell them who the incumbents are?” we asked. “I’m not getting into the specifics of the poll, but Leigh-Ann Bellew’s name was mentioned,” Horner responded.

Horner challenged Senator Joe Kyrillos and the anonymous Republican political operative quoted below to go door to door and find 8 of 10 voters who plan to reelect Kryillos.

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The slate of candidates challenging LD 13 legislative incumbents, Senator Joe Kyrillos, Assemblywoman Amy Handlin and Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon claim they have polling data that indicates “voters overwhelming want to fire the incumbents.”

An email sent to Bayshore Tea Party Group members by co-founder Barbara Gonzalez reads, in part, as follows:

Momentum  is on the side of the candidates of R4CL.  Voters overwhelmingly say they are ready to fire the  current incumbents. Internal polls show that voters are ready to support  a new slate of candidates.

Gonzalez told MoreMonmouthMusings that she does not know who is conducting polls for the primary challengers led by state senate candidate Leigh-Ann Bellew or what the numbers say. “That message was sent over by the campaign, I just cut and paste and sent it out,” said Gonzalez, “but my internal poll agrees with it.  Everyone I talk to wants a change.”

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