April 3, 2020
TO: Republican County Chairs; NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt; Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean, Jr.; Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick; the Republican members of the New Jersey Legislature.
FR: Pastor Phil Rizzo and Rev. Greg Quinlan
RE: GOP “Double-Fail” on David Richter and John McCann
Last month, a convicted Republican Party boss in Ocean County delivered the party “line” to a 3rd district congressional candidate who did billions in business with terrorist dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Before being brought down by his own people, Gaddafi was an international terrorist and the dictator of the Socialist People’s Republic of Libya. He was responsible for many terrorist atrocities in which Americans were killed, including the Lockerbie bombing over Scotland, in which Pan Am Flight 103 between London (Heathrow) and New York (JFK) was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew on board, and killing 11 people on the ground. 190 Americans were killed. It remains the deadliest terror attack in British history.
In 2003, Gaddafi publicly acknowledged that he was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing and paid compensation to the families of the victims. In 2011, former Libyan Minister of Justice Mustafa Abdul Jalil claimed that Gaddafi had personally ordered the bombing.
A few years after Gaddafi took responsibility for killing all those innocent people, endorsed 3rd congressional candidate David Richter’s company announced one of several deals with the terrorist dictator. In a press release, dated August 24, 2007, Richter’s company celebrated its $2 billion contract with a man whose hands were drenched in the blood of dead Americans.
Yesterday, the Chairman of the failed Bergen County Republican Organization (BCRO) took a backwards step, an apparent attempt to ensure that Democrat Nancy Pelosi will remain Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, by giving his county’s “line” to John McCann, a failed GOP candidate from 2018. Make no mistake about it, McCann had the poorest showing of any Republican candidate in the history of the 5th district. He is also a half million dollars in debt from his 2018 campaign. And his campaign team from 2018 has been convicted in federal court and packed off to prison.
While people can behave irrationally, the action of the Chairman of the Bergen County Republican Organization (BCRO) appears to be a clear attempt to deliver the 5th congressional district to the Democrats once again. This is a district that was won by Donald Trump in 2016 and Bob Hugin in 2018.
A candidate as weak as McCann is, with no money, and debt on top of that, will be an assist to every Democrat congressional candidate in the state, as the money necessary for a Democrat to hold this Republican seat can now flow freely to Districts 02, 03, 04, 07, and 11. It simply isn’t rational.
It is time for the Republican Party in New Jersey to seriously consider the ramifications of allowing party bosses to put their thumbs on the scales of democracy through the use of the county “line”. We urge you to establish a commission to study and review this plainly corrupt and outdated practice worthy of an episode from Boardwalk Empire.
