By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
We’ve got a better chance of seeing peace in the Middle East before an end to the Bergen GOP’s seemingly endless and destructive civil war, Save Jerseyans.
The latest skirmish: he stopped short of endorsing an alternative candidate in next year’s County Executive race, but in an email to Bergen County Republican leaders this week obtained by Save Jersey, BCRO Chairman Bob Yudin placed the blame for 2013 freeholder board setbacks squarely at the feet of incumbent Kathe Donovan.
Yudin zeroed in on an 11th hour email blast from Donovan urging supporters to back Freeholder Maura DeNicola for reelection but making no mention of GOP running mates, Freeholders John Mitchell and John Felice, only the latter of whom got through with a narrow margin; Mitchell lost of 0.0014%. For those of you who haven’t been following along, DeNicola and Donovan both opposed a controversial county police merger initiative endorsed by the rest of the current board including Mitchell and Felice.
“It is my opinion, if Kathe had advocated everyone, all three Republican Freeholders would have won,” Yudin concluded. He also attached both Donovan’s endorsement email and a robocall script to his own email to support the Yudin faction’s thesis.
The full text of Chairman Yudin’s email is below the fold…
Dear Republican Leader:
Now that the November 5th General Election is over, I want to take this opportunity to review what occurred. We Bergen County Republicans had an outstanding day.
Governor Christie won by nearly 50,000 votes, a margin of victory that we have not seen since 1985. We won in three of the four county races (Sheriff and two of the three Freeholders) as well as municipal elections across the width and breadth of Bergen County. We won 85 municipal elections to 37 for the Democrats. Most importantly, we took away 16 seats from incumbent Democrats to their 5 seats. That is better than a 3 to 1 ratio. It was almost perfect.
Remember how – not so long ago – we could not win anything, and we were losing by tens of thousands of votes? We are now competitive and winning our share of elections, fulfilling a promise I made to you when you first elected me as your Chairman 5½ years ago.
In addition, I have made BCRO support of local races across Bergen County a priority again, including through financial contributions. My goal is to eventually give to all contested races. Since being elected Chairman, I have distributed nearly $60,000 to local campaigns, including more than $10,000 to 24 towns in this year’s election.
Like you, I am disappointed that the people of Bergen County did not re-elect our entire County team. But, it wasn’t for lack of effort from the BCRO.
This year, the BCRO spent over $100,000 on the county campaign for Sheriff and Freeholder. We printed up tens of thousands of palm cards; we sent out, in 5 waves of mailings, more than a quarter of a million campaign pieces (mostly to unaffiliated voters who make up a majority of the voters.) We executed thousands of robo calls and advertised over the internet.
Most importantly, BCRO did exactly what it should have in the County race: we supported the ticket, 100%. Even though substantial policy disagreements existed between the candidates, everything BCRO and I did included all four candidates. As Chairman, I was and will always be, committed to electing our Republican candidates; I know we are a big enough Party to overcome policy differences because we agree on much more than we disagree. Sheriff Saudino and Freeholders Mitchell and Felice immediately agreed with this approach to the campaign.
Unfortunately, John Mitchell lost to Mr. Tedesco by 291 votes out of approximately 200,000 votes cast. That is a percentage of .0014. Many of you are asking, why?
While there is never a simple answer to this question, I can tell you that the weekend before the election, I was hearing rumors of a campaign for Maura DeNicola taking place that urged voters to vote only for Maura DeNicola.
I do not form opinions on rumors. Nor should you. I do, however, look at factual information when it is presented to me. To that end, I attach two items to this letter.
The first is an e-mail communication from County Executive Kathleen Donovan in which she urges voters to vote for Maura DeNicola. There is no mention of anyone else on our Party’s ticket. It is my opinion, if Kathe had advocated everyone, all three Republican Freeholders would have won.
The other attachment is a script from a robo-call that was delivered by the Mayor of Hackensack urging voters to vote DeNicola for Freeholder. Again, just like with the e-mail noted above, no other county candidates were supported. The robo-call ended with the following disclaimer: “This message was paid for by Maura DeNicola for Freeholder 2013.”
As always, thank you for your efforts on behalf of our Republican Party and our candidates. I look forward to hearing from you as we can continue to move forward.
were any of you at Donovans swearing in ceremony where Alan Marcus announced that he was Menendez best friend. Where Rothman, Lautenberg, Weinberg and Menendez too center stage. Does anyone remember Donovan blaming the tea party for Gabby Giffords shooting ? guess you were all asleep
@Kitty Who is we? What are you implying? There aren't any good guys in this story at the moment.
Yudin warts and all is at least honest. As to who are we don't see any we's in the question.
@Kitty "You were all asleep" refers to us in the plural form. We think both sides are making big mistakes; they should sit down and work this out like adults before it's too late for the BCRO to recover.
Haven't you done enough damage and you don't even live in Bergen. Donovan has lied to Bergen Republicans since 2006 when she promised not to primary. Yudin to his credit got the BCRO out of debt and pays the bills to keep the lights on since then. Wasn't it your Bergen YR friends who tried to unseat Henry Wallace in Lodi ? There has not been an adult in the Bergen YRs since Henry Wallace and Jim Derrick
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