Republican congressional candidate Tiffany Burress launched a sharp counterattack against rival Rosie Pino, accusing her of engaging in “lawfare” after a failed attempt to knock her off the Republican primary ballot in New Jersey’s 9th district.
Earlier today, Secretary of State Dale Caldwell upheld a decision by an administrative law judge to reject Pino’s challenge.
The judge, Ernest Bongiovanni, dismissed the objections filed by Pino’s campaign manager, Kennith Gonzalez, finding they relied on what he characterized as “flimsy allegations of fraud” and lacked credible supporting evidence.
“Even if all the challenger’s individual objections to all those 235 signatures were sustained, Burress would still have more than enough qualified signatures to qualify as a candidate,” said Bongiovanni. “Gonzalez also posed a ‘global’ objection, seeking to nullify all of candidate Burress’s signatures based on what I ultimately determined are flimsy allegations of fraud.”
Bongiovanni said the claims “hardly sound like a highly intelligent, well-oiled political machine conducting malicious ‘ghost operations’ designed to entrap unwilling supporters.”
Harrison Neely, a Burress campaign strategist, for bringing the challenge at all.
“When Rosie Pino is backed into a corner, she falls back on Biden-style lawfare to subvert democracy, exactly what you’d expect,” said Neely. “It’s the same instinct that led her to endorse Nellie Pou last cycle. Birds of a feather.”
Gonzalez pushed back on the criticism of the petition challenge.
“We will not apologize for demanding accountability and a clean and fair process, regardless of anyone’s personal opinion,” Gonzalez said.
This story was updated at 11:01 PM with comment from Gonzalez.
