CORRADO TEAM SAYS BCRO CHAIRMAN IS USING PARTY RESOURCES TO FURTHER HIS SENATE CANDIDACY

Call on Him To Cease Immediately

                                                                                  March 20 2017

(Wyckoff, NJ) The District 40 legislative team of Kristin Corrado for Senate and Kevin Rooney and Christopher DePhillips for General Assembly are demanding that BCRO Chairman Paul  DiGaetano immediately cease using the organization’s resources to further his campaign for state Senate.

The Corrado team says DiGaetano is using the Bergen County Republican Organization personnel and email system to communicate with county committee members who will vote in Thursday’s Republican county convention.

DiGaetano has contorted the BCRO’s historic nomination process this year to have all 1,100 county committee members from 70 municipalities vote on who gets the party line in District 40, which comprises only seven Bergen municipalities. He has used the BCRO email system to justify his demand for a full convention vote to determine the  District 40 nominees rather than having a District 40 only convention, which the Corrado Team has offered as a fairer and more appropriate selection process.

The Corrado Team says that by using party resources to further his campaign, DiGaetano is likely in violation of state election laws governing how political campaign work is financed.

“By using personnel paid by the BCRO to send out blast emails from the BCRO, Chairman DiGaetano is funding his campaign with money donated to the BCRO, not to his Senate campaign,” says DePhillips, the Bergen GOP’s District 40 chairman.

“Mr. DiGaetano has been in politics for decades and he must know that he is required to  communicate with voters using vehicles that his campaign paid for, which clearly identify the name of his campaign committee and his campaign treasurer,” added DePhillips. “He cannot use the BCRO as his primary communication tool for his personal campaign.”

DePhillips, an attorney, says DiGaetano’s actions are, “giving him an unfair advantage in the campaign and are probably a violation of state ELEC (Election Law Enforcement Commission) law.”

The Corrado  Team said DiGaetano is violating his own ethical standard by using his position as chairman in an attempt to influence the District 40 campaign outcome.

In a team statement, the Corrado slate said: “The BCRO chairman has repeatedly promised that he would not use his position to influence the outcome of the District 40 nomination process; yet he has done precisely that and will likely continue to do it until he is told to stop.”

Rooney said DiGaetano is making a mockery of his chairmanship, which he won in an election last June during which he promised that he would rebuild the fractured and ineffective party and not use the chairmanship for personal political gain.

“I have seen no effort on the part of the chairman to help the BCRO unite or become a more successful Republican organization,” said Rooney. “To the contrary, he has used the BCRO  to advance his own candidacy for state Senate while disrupting the party and taking the party’s focus off the fall elections.”