Maggie Moran and Matt Doherty at Governor Corzine’s 2006 inauguration.
Maggie Moran, Democrat freeholder candidate Matt Doherty’s wife and former Governor Corzine’s Deputy Chief of Staff and campaign manager, wants the Monmouth GOP to stop telling Monmouth County voters that she and Matthew profited from the suffering of Jersey Shore residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Moran’s lawyer, Angelo Genova of the Newark law firm Genova Burns, LLC, sent a Cease and Desist Letter to the Monmouth County Republican Committee yesterday claiming that a mailer and TV commercial the GOP shared with Monmouth County voters this week is factually inaccurate and defames Moran. Genova also sent the letter to the Common Sense for Belmar blog, who published the mailer.
Genova must think that Shaun Golden, Chairman and Tom Szymanski, Executive Director of the Monmouth GOP, as well as Dave Schneck, publisher of Common Sense for Belmar, don’t read MoreMonmouthMusings.
Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty, a candidate for Monmouth County Freeholder, is a long term supporter of the gas tax increase that is up for a vote in the State Legislature on Friday.
In 2014, Doherty wrote a letter endorsing the work of Foward New Jersey, a coalition of unions and other special interest groups who will collect the $2 million per mile construction costs that the $.23 per gallon gas tax will fund. Forward New Jersey has been lobbying for the gas tax increase for almost two years and is waging a social media campaign to counter the grass-roots opposition to the tax increase as you are reading this article. Doherty’s letter can be found here.
Maggie Moran, the only Democrat political consultant/campaign manager to lose a statewide race in New Jersey in the last twenty years and the wife of Monmouth County freeholder candidate, Belmar Mayor “Lawless Matt” Doherty, denies that she did work for AshBritt Inc. during the aftermath in Superstorm Sandy, as has been reported by MoreMonmouthMusings and many other publications.
Belmar Mayor “Lawless Matt” Doherty commemorates the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. photo by Tim Larsen/Governor’s Office
Former Belmar Councilman Jim Bean filed an Ethics Complaint with the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs’ Local Finance Board against Mayor “Lawless Matt” Doherty on Friday, August 19, alleging that Doherty did not have the authorization of the Borough Council to grant a campaign donor permission to land a helicopter in the Borough or on Borough property. Additionally, Bean alleges that Doherty did not provide public notice nor notify Monmouth County officials of the temporary landing permit, as is required by the Department of Transportation when applying for said permit.
Bean said that Dirty Doherty used “public resources to allow a campaign donor special privilege to land a helicopter in Belmar’s small but very populated Green Acres Silver Lake Park.”
Bean cites Local Finance Board’s Decision Against Marlboro Councilwoman Randi Marder To Support His Complaint
Doherty Dismisses Complaint As Politics
Belmar Councilman Jim Bean. Photo credit: Belmar.com
Belmar Councilman Jim Bean, a Republican, has written to the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs’ Local Finance Board requesting an investigation into a “potential violation” of New Jersey’s Local Government Ethics Law by Mayor Matt Doherty, a Democrat.
Doherty’s wife, Maggie Moran, a former Deputy Chief of Staff for Governor Jon Corzine, worked as a consultant for AshBritt, the Florida company that performed debris removal throughout much of New Jersey after the Superstorm Sandy. Belmar paid $2.67 million to AshBrit and its affiliates, according to Bean’s complaint which can be found here.
Doherty said that Bean is “Belmar’s Bayshore Tea Party….a cancer on the Republican Party.”
“This is the second, politically motivated, baseless complaint Bean has filed against me in the past 8 months, ” Doherty said, “If he didn’t waste his time on this nonsense maybe he could actually do something useful for the people of Belmar.”
Senate President Steve Sweeney has been waging a little noticed campaign over the last few weeks to get Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr to commit not to accept campaign contributions from Ashbritt and other contractors who cleaned up New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy.
This morning, Sweeney ramped up the campaign with a video parody of the viral Harlem Shake.
Harlem Shake is owned by songwriter Harry Bauer Rodrigues, who records under the name “Baauer”and the record label Mad Decent.
The song’s viral popularity in recents weeks has spurred claims of copyright infringement on the part of artists whose voices are in the song who have not been credited or compensated by Baauer or Mad Decent, according to the New York Times On the flip side, Mad Decent and Baauer stand to collect millions of dollars from people, like Sweeney, who “steal” their song, according to Hollywood Reporter. YouTube and a company called INDMusic have created a program, ContentID, to track copyright piracy and collect from the offenders.
MMM wondered if Sweeney’s video was funded by New Jersey taxpayers and if the Senate President had obtained a license from Mad Decent for the use of the song. The YouTube channel that hosts the song is called NJSenDemsMajority, a similar name to the state funded website, njsendems.com.
MMM called Sweeney’s West Deptford and Trenton offices to find out. Within a half hour, a well known political hired gun who asked not to be named in this story called back.
Trenton Democrats’ continuing quest to turn Governor Christie’s strongest issue against him suffered a set back yesterday when AshBritt CEO Randall Perkins won over Democratic members of a Joint Legislative Oversight Committee and flummoxed presumed gubernatorial nominee Barbara Buono by calling her on the political motivation of her questioning.
Facing four hours of questioning by the bi-partisan committee chaired by Senator Bob Gordon (D-Bergen), Perkins frequently praised the legislators for exercising their oversight duties, while combatively swatting back Democratic allegations of impropriety disguised as questions.