Republican candidate for Congress in New Jersey’s 2^nd Congressional District, former Assemblyman Sam Fiocchi (R-2), assumed the role of elder chastising statesman as he oratorically grabbed whippersnapper Hirsh Singh by the scruff of his neck and laid into him.

Beaten by Singh in the convention season, Fiocchi sided with fellow one-county winner Brian Fitzherbert in the flap over Singh’s challenge to Fitz’s pettion sigs, identifying those 26 rejected signatures from Fitzherbert’s nominating petitions.

The judge’s ruling yesterday knocked Fitzherbert off the ballot.

Fiocchi blamed a too-aggressive – and, in the former assemblyman’s opinion, terribly inconsistent – Singh.

“Less than a year ago, after borrowing roughly $1 million from his dad, Hirsh Singh sued in an attempt to get into the gubernatorial debates and complained on Twitter that he was being treated ‘unfairly’ and the ‘political class uses technicalities to exclude outsiders like me,’” said the former lawmaker. “It appears Hirsh Singh has joined the very political class he cried about 11 months ago.

“I want to win this primary election as much as everyone else in the race,” he added. “The difference is, unlike Hirsh Singh, I want to do it fair because I am not afraid of competition. One has to wonder why Singh would make a move to knock candidates off the ballot. Is it because he learned he can’t legally borrow his father’s money in a federal race? Removing candidates from the ballot could make this race a little less expensive. Or is this a case of Hirsh Singh continuing his tradition of using the courts to attempt to get his way?

“If Hirsh Singh had asked I would have advised against getting candidates thrown off the ballot but I doubt he would have listened because he once admitted on Twitter that he is ‘the most stubborn person alive.’”