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.

Yesterday, Lieutenant Governor Sheila Oliver, state Senator Loretta Weinberg and New Jersey’s First Lady Tammy Murphy issued a press release denouncing Congressman Leonard Lance over comments he made about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

Apparently, Oliver, Weinberg and Murphy have a problem with the fact that Lance said he “tends not to believe” Blasey Ford. Of course, they have a problem with what Lance said, he’s a Republican. Make no mistake, their real problem is that Lance is a Republican.

I might believe Oliver, Weinberg and Murphy had a real problem with what Lance said if any of the three had ever uttered a public word when men who happen to be Democrats mistreated women.

Have Oliver, Weinberg or Murphy ever said a word about U.S. Senator Bob Menendez helping to bring young women into the country for his pal Salomen Melgen? Don’t forget, Menendez’s lawyers “conceded that the senator intervened on his pal’s behalf” when it came to the young women getting into the country. One could argue that helping a dirty old man play sugar daddy to young women is a form of sexual abuse. It is apparent Oliver, Weinberg nor Murphy would agree with that argument based on their silence over Menendez helping Melgen play sugar daddy.

How about when we learned Governor Phil Murphy’s soccer team forced women to live with an elderly man who repeatedly made inappropriate comments to the players and made them feel uncomfortable. Did Oliver, Weinberg or Murphy speak out about the governor’s soccer team forcing women to tolerate sexual harassment? Nope!

Their silence on the documented mistreatment of women by people associated with Menendez and Gov. Murphy makes Oliver, Weinberg and Mrs. Murphy hypocrites. They definitely lack any credibility to speak out on this issue.