Larsen Sent A Letter To The DMUA Complaining About A Minor Accounting Technicality, But He And Rodgers Ignore Huge Issues Involving Basic Public Policies As Greedy Republican Patronage Gang Runs Wild In Local Government

Bickering Democrats Have The Big Issues Again This Year, But Will They Follow Through And Use Them Effectively? Probably Not, Most Observers Think

Dover Democrats, Aching To Snatch Another Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory, Snarl At Each Other But Not At The GOP, And Try Real Hard To Blow The 2002 Local Election - Part II

Dover Township: Republican candidate (and now “Mayor”) Carmine Inteso postured and dissimulated through the 2001 campaign, and the Democrats let him get away with it.

Democrat Rich Larsen had all of the momentum and all of the issues coming off a big Democratic victory in 2000, but he lost the 2001 election - and it wasn’t even that close.

The Democrats spent $200,000, but the big money had no real impact; there was no central message even though the local Republican seemed to have a death wish that wouldn’t quit.

Many Democrats complained post mortem that party boss-publicist Jack Moriarty glommed off much of the bread, leaving only the crumbs for Larsen’s campaign.

Democrat Inertia Verses Presumptuous Republican Arrogance

Republicans want to hand them the election again, but Democrats don’t seem any more interested in winning than they did last year. This year, the issues are even more vital:

• A $6.4 Million current year operating deficit at the DMUA, caused by one of their Republican opponents, resigned DMUA Chairman Virginia Haines.

• The pension scam hiring of resigned “Mayor” Clarence Aldrich to an unnecessary job at the DMUA so resigned DMUA Chairman Virginia Haines could get Aldrich’s seat on the township committee.

• Coverup and concealment of important public information, falsification and doctoring of public records to conceal the Aldrich scam and other Republican patronage schemes and giveaways.

• Pension scams, grossly inflated salaries, $100,000 in out-of-state travel junkets for lottery department patronage flunkies, Whitman administration extravagance and waste as it relates to Dover Township, hiring of political hacks and nepotism in the local government and the DMUA, $$Millions wasted on patronage appointments, excessive spending on “benefits” that benefit nobody, etc., etc., etc.

• The inevitability of a series of big school tax and municipal tax increases because of galloping overdevelopment approved by the Republican planning board and township committee, and made worse by Republican Committee candidates.

• JAMM Realty fiasco, caused by duplicity of Republican officials (the project was approved by the county Republican Planning Board because the Dover Township member, hired to a no-talent patronage job and paid big money by the Whitman administration, failed to show up to vote NO) and made worse by Republican “Mayor” Inteso, who lied about getting state money to kill the project by acquiring the property.

• Open Space acquisition plan, killed twice by Republican development interests on and off the Township Committee, could have prevented much of the remaining overdevelopment disaster, including much of the coming development tax increase.

With ammunition like this, why don’t the Democrats do their job as the loyal opposition and take issue with the Republican majority, none of whom were even on the governing body nine months ago?

One reason is that John Russo Jr., on the outs with many rank and file Democrats, has been sucking up to Republican leaders, trying to get them to give him a $100,000 job with the Ocean County Prosecutor’s office so he can resign from the Township Committee and take a vacation from politics.

The deal fell through, but Russo still has expectations, and he won’t bite the hand he hopes will feed him.

Moriarty, Larsen and Committeeman John Furey are afraid Russo, who actually had kind words for the Aldrich scam, will be a GOP shill and try to discredit them if they use the obvious issues, especially the patronage issues.

Part III from OceanCountyPolitics•Com
Coming Soon • • • Very Soon.

Click Here For PART I

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