November 14, 2019
Honorable Thomas J. Mastrangelo
59 Village Drive
Montville, NJ 07045
Re: Morris County Republican Committee
Dear Freeholder Mastrangelo:
I am writing you in my capacity as General Counsel to the Morris County Republican Committee (“MCRC”). The MCRC is made up of more than 660 volunteers from each of the municipalities in Morris County. I should note that we the MCRC’s mission is “direct the affairs and further the interest of the Republican party in Morris County” who are not paid.
We are compelled to respond to your attack on our group and the 660 plus volunteers, which you believe you have to remove since “it is time to rebuild our caucus from the ground up”.
Although your press release was baseless, malicious and deceitful, you made bold assertions and attacked the MCRC as a whole, and you failed to provide any salient facts to support your mean-spirited allegations.
Your letter can be boiled down into two parts: (1) you are complaining that Morris County has an open primary and that you were challenged in the primary in 2019; and (2) you believe MCRC does little for County and local Republican candidates.
With regard to your allegation that Morris County has an open primary and that somehow this is a bad thing is pretty rich coming from you. As you well know, you began your political career challenging incumbents in a primary Freeholders race. [See article ‘
Republicans campaign for 3 Morris County freeholder seats]. It seems that although in 2010 it was alright for you to challenge incumbents, you believe, as an incumbent, you should not be challenged. In fact, John Cesaro, Dave Scapicchio, and John Krickus, as well as Hank Lyons, all challenged incumbent Freeholders in 2011 and 2012, however you were silent at that time.
With regard to fundraising issues in the County, you need only look in the mirror to see who created the upheaval in fundraising for the MCRC. In 2013, the prior Chair, John Sette, advised you that you were holding “unauthorized fundraising events” and that continued practice would “hurt our [MCRC] ability to raise necessary funds” for other county and municipal office seekers. You have continually and unabashedly run multiple fundraisers solely for your own benefit which, since 2013, has been hurting the Republican party. As a result, you have continued to degrade the ability of the MCRC to raise money for county and local races. In fact, since June of 2018, you have waged a war on MCRC’s ability to raise money by telling vendors not to contribute to MCRC. Your small group of disgruntled cohorts have called people and even chastised them for coming to MCRC events. When MCRC sponsored an event for the 2019 county ticket, you attempted to cancel it, and furthermore, did nothing to help support the event. In fact, you failed to show up yourself.
Last, and more troubling, you and a close associate of yours have contacted our vendors and attempted to interfere with our ability to get a County mailer completed. In addition, you abused your official position as a Freeholder to try to stop the MCRC from using a Morris County facility for the upcoming convention on November 21, 2019 where the LD 25 County Committee will convene to nominate a replacement for the vacant seat. These actions to do not help further injures the interest of the Republican party.
As stated above, your letter has no merit, contains no facts, and isfabrication. You claim that the current leadership, which was only elected in June of 2018, has somehow destroyed the party where you, for the last nine years, have been a senior elected official for the County and have done very little to support this party. For the last year and a half, you have donated no money to MCRC and, in fact, owe MCRC several hundred dollars for events that you didn’t pay for and sponsorships you committed to but failed to pay the associated fee.
What is most perplexing based on your conduct is your statement that “In today’s negatively charged political environment, voters are tired of nastiness and petty character assassinations to prevail in our seemingly endless campaign season”. Your nine years as an elected official is replete with evidence of fostering a negatively charged political environment, nastiness, and harassment.
You have a history replete with complaints, police reports, and charges evidencing anger issues, as well as a pattern of bullying and intimidating women and anyone who disagrees with you. This is evidence of a person who does not have the capacity to refrain from “negatively charged political environment, nastiness, and harassment” that voters are tired of and “control the petty character assassinations”.
As for MCRC and its membership, since June of 2018 we are building up the party and supporting the elected Republican officials. The Republican party in Morris County is thriving. The MCRC, through the hard work of the its members, has achieved the following:
- · Moved into State of the Art New office, open to all Republicans
- · Hosted meetings, trainings, think tanks and social events in new office, engaging new faces and republicans all the time
- · Re-launched Morris County Teenage Republicans
- · Offered head shots and videos to all candidates
- · Employed Field Directors to help with Campaigns
- · Organized door knockers paid and volunteers
- · Digital Ads on media news sites
- · Sponsored robo calls for certain towns
- · Formed new marketing partnerships with new vendors offering discounts to all candidates for all campaign needs
- · Prevailed in all Assembly races, that were aggressively contested
- · Secured all County Seats that were contested
- · Obtained victory in major towns including Parsippany and Denville
- · Conducted County Wide Mailers sand Signs
- · Conducted County Wide Campaign School
- · Registered more than 6000 new voters as Republicans this year
- · Quadrupled our Social Media following and Digital Footprint
- · Implemented a new state-of-the-art website that attracts thousands of volunteers and readers per month
- · Attracted big name speakers for events such asGreg Gutfeld and Tanto Paranto
- · Increased readership of email newsletters by over 400%
- · And much much more
Based upon the above, we most respectfully deny your request for resignations of the MCRC and would ask that you clean up your act and truly follow Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment of “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”.
Sincerely,
Peter J. King
PETER J. KING
GENERAL COUNSEL
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