Woloshen-Glass Kicks Penna’s Ass Again!

Amanda Woloshen Glass (source: Linkedin)

Here’s a little inside baseball just for fun…

If you missed yesterday’s action in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate Hirsh Singh, by way of flamboyant, fancy-suit wearing GOP operative King Penna, challenged the nominating petitions of Rik Mehta and according to a Mehta campaign press release the challenge was dismissed.

By my count this marks the fourth time Amanda Woloshen-Glass, Mehta’s campaign manager, has kicked Penna’s ass. Penna ran perennial congressional candidate David Larsen’s three failed primary challenges to former Republican Congressman Leonard Lance. Woloshen-Glass ran Lance’s campaigns. Yesterday’s dismissal now makes Woloshen-Glass 4-0 against Penna.

To be clear I do not like campaigns/candidates using petition challenges as a way to get rid of competition. A year ago I wrote that I thought petition challenges were a gutless move:

I get it, challenging the signatures on nominating petitions is a part of political campaigns in New Jersey (and elsewhere). It’s a part of campaigns I dislike. No campaign I managed has ever challenged nominating petitions – that’s how much I despise the practice. I believe working to remove a candidate who meets the requirements to run for an office from the ballot is a gutless move that proves the person challenging signatures on a nominating petition has very little faith in their chosen candidate to win on ideas.

My displeasure with petition challenges, especially Republican against Republican is well documented. After Singh issued a challenge that had Brian Fitzherbert removed from the ballot in the 2018 congressional primary in CD2 I issued a release on behalf of the candidate I was working for, former Assemblyman Sam Fiocchi, it led to a piece on InsiderNJ in which Max Pizzaro wrote:

Republican candidate for Congress in New Jersey’s 2nd 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.

Last week, on my personal Facebook page, I shared a link to a New Jersey Globe piece on the deadline to petition challenges and said, “Anybody who challenges signatures this year is a giant douche!”

I guess that means, at least in my book, that Singh by having someone challenge petitions for the second time in as many years is the winner of my giant douche award. He can share it with Penna or the two can go compete in a beauty contest together.