Camden County GOP Disavows Vincent Squire

Camden County Republicans rightly issued a statement disavowing freeholder candidate Vincent Squire.

Prior to issuing their release, CCGOP Chairman Ambrosino sent a message to “all CCGOP members,” informing party membership of the decision and why the decision was made.

Ambrosino wrote to his membership, in part:

Vince paid for his earlier conviction, pleading guilty and serving time in prison.  After completing his probation, he used his past mistakes to help others, volunteering at anti-recidivism programs and prison ministry work.  When we selected Vince as one of our candidates, knowing only that, it seemed like a compelling story of a young man who worked hard, found success, then threw it all away by making a few greedy, bad decisions, but who was using those mistakes to try and help others from choosing a similar path.

But over the past several weeks, it was brought to my attention, and the attention of others within our organization, that there were other more recent brushes with the law that Vince did not fully disclose or sought to conceal outright.  After confirming that these more recent pending charges do indeed exist, I confronted Vince along with our Political Director Tom Crone and our campaign consultant Steve Kush.  We asked Vince to resign from the ballot, as these new revelations would not only cause great harm to his own candidacy, but to that of his running mates and potentially others in the Republican column in Camden County.

Ambrosino concluded his message to county Republicans:

As Vince cannot be forcibly removed from the ballot, we will move forward in full support of Keith Cybulski and Claire Gustafson for Freeholder.  I thank you for your dedication to our Party and look forward to a spirited and successful General Election effort.

In the organization’s press release Ambrosino, wisely explains, “As a Party we cannot have any affiliation with Mr. Squire. Nor will we have any affiliation with any candidate that may choose to continue to support Mr. Squire.”

The CCGOP press release follows:

CCGOP Candidate Refuses To Resign; He’s On His Own Now

Republicans disavow their candidate after he refuses to resign

CHERRY HILL – Camden County Republican Party officials, two weeks ago, asked one of their freeholder candidates, Vincent Squire, to sign a letter resigning from the ticket. He has refused.

At issue, it was learned that Vincent Squire was not completely honest about his checkered past. The organization had taken Squire at his word when he acknowledged his past, paid for a crime he had committed nearly eight years ago, and turned it into a positive by doing volunteer work to prevent recidivism and volunteering with a prison ministry.

Unfortunately, Squire only told part of the story to Party officials and conveniently left out a burglary conviction, that he has used an alias, and has a current second-degree assault charge filed against him by his own son, which is pending in Superior Court.

Party officials confronted Squire two weeks ago with this information and asked him to resign from the ticket. Squire declined to resign and continues to decline after several more requests from Party Chairman, Richard Ambrosino and Squire’s own running mates.

“I feel terrible airing dirty laundry in public but we were conned Ambrosino said. “As a Party we cannot have any affiliation with Mr. Squire. Nor will we have any affiliation with any candidate that may choose to continue to support Mr. Squire. As of now we are running only two Republican candidates because Squire refuses to do the right thing.”

“To make matters worse we know Mr. Squire has accepted at least one cash contribution at an event a month ago and has yet to turn it in or report it to ELEC,” Camden GOP Political Director Tom Crone explained, “It may have been a small contribution, but one has to wonder if he’s taken other cash contributions. Mr. Squire has spun one too many tales and it is time for him to go. As an organization we cannot continue to point out the wrongs done by Democrats and not clean our own house.”

“We knew from the beginning Squire had some white-collar type stuff that he paid for and turned into a positive,” Camden County GOP’s political consultant Steve Kush said. “Then as we learned more, asked questions and were given conflicting or unsatisfactory answers. Then we learned of some other issues and the second-degree assault and it became too much. Now Squire is on his own.”

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