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Petition fraud could derail Ciattarelli’s gubernatorial campaign
Ciattarelli staffers Rick Rosenberg and Brittany Wheeler
Lt. Gov Kim Guadagno’s gubernatorial campaign will try to land a technical knockout of Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli’s campaign this morning when its lawyers ask an Administrative Law Judge to throw out over 700 of the 1674 signatures that the assemblyman submitted to secure his place on the June 6 GOP primary ballot.
If Ciattarelli has less than 1000 valid signatures endorsing his candidacy, his name will not appear on the primary ballot.
In addition to the typical types of challenges that candidates file against each other—asserting that the signatories are not qualified registered voters–Guadagno’s campaign will challenge the sworn certifications of the signatures based in part on a MoreMonmouthMusings investigation into the petitions of the Monmouth County freeholder candidates who are aligned with Ciattarelli.
MMM reported on Friday that Brittany Wheeler, the political director of the Ciattarelli campaign, certified that she collected the petitions for freeholder candidate Susan Ellen Metz. One of the voters who signed the petitions, Lois Pongo of Highlands, told MMM that a male asked her to sign the petition for Ciattarelli, Freeholder Gary Rich (who is not running) and another freeholder candidate whose name she did not recall.
MMM learned that Rick Rosenberg, Ciattarelli’s campaign manager, signed a sworn affidavit that he collected Pongo’s signature. MMM showed Pongo pictures of Rosenberg and Alex Solomon, the certifier of Metz’s joint petition for freeholder with Bernard Dowd. Pongo said that neither Rosenberg nor Solomon was the man who asked her to sign on April 1st.
The Guadagno campaign has obtained a sworn affidavit from Pongo which states that she signed the petitions and that Rosenberg and Wheeler were not present nor were they nearby at the time.
The Guadagno campaign will likely ask the Administrative Law Judge to throw out all the signatures certified by Rosenberg and Wheeler, as well as signatures of people who are not registered Republican voters.
Source: http://www.moremonmouthmusings.net/2017/04/10/petition-fraud-could-derail-ciattarellis-gubernatorial-campaign/
