A tenebrous dark money group based out of a post office box in Jamaica, Queens is now up on FOX News with a new TV ad backing Giuseppe Costanzo, the shadowy phantom candidate running as the conservative Senate candidate in the 4th district.
The independent expenditure ad, which seeks to siphon Republican votes from the GOP candidate, Christopher Del Borrello, is paid for by Jersey Freedom, a group formed last month and whose donors are not yet publicly available.
But the ad was placed by the same media firm that is also handling anti-Del Borrello attack ads for another independent expenditure group, Brighter Future Forward, that is directly tied to the South Jersey Democratic machine.
But Lisa Cabanel, the owner of LC Media, declined to discuss Jersey Freedom during a brief telephone call on Saturday.
“I don’t talk to reporters,” said Cabanel.
Prior to launching her own media placement firm three years ago, Cabanel had spent 37 years as the managing partner and media director of The Campaign Group, the Philadelphia-based firm led by legendary political consultant Neil Oxman. Oxman is a longtime member of George E. Norcross III’s inner circle.
This is the second link between Jersey Freedom and Brighter Future Forward. The two groups used the same union printer from Baltimore for attack mailers in the 4th district, and both used seemingly identical research on Del Borrello.
Costanzo, a 62-year-old restaurant account manager from Clementon, has been a mythical figure on the campaign trail. He has raised no money, opened no social media accounts, and has practically no digital footprint. He has made no case for his own candidacy, and no longer answers his cell phone. Until earlier this year, he wasn’t even a registered voter.
His conservative running mate, Maureen Dukes-Penrose, a Democrat, told the New Jersey Globe that retiring State Sen. Fred Madden (D-Washington), a former Gloucester County Democratic Chairman, encouraged her to run. As an independent. Madden said that wasn’t true.
One of the circulators of his nominating petitions as an independent conservative has close ties to South Jersey Democrats.
Angela McGeehan, a 36-year-old administrative employee at Washington Township High School, collected more than one-third of the petition signatures for Costanzo and Dukes-Penrose.
She is the daughter of Frank J. Cianci, the longtime Washington Township Democratic municipal chairman before stepping down earlier this year, and ardent supporter of the Democratic nominee for State Senate in the 4th district, Paul Moriarty (D-Washington Township).
McGeehan also spent six years working in the Gloucester County Clerk’s office.
Her husband, Robert McGeehan, holds a state job and was named to the Monroe Township Municipal Alliance Commission earlier this year by the new Democratic mayor. One of his social media accounts connects him to several prominent Democrats, including Monroe Township school board member Cody Miller, the Democratic candidate for State Assembly in the 4th, and the Monroe Township Democratic Club.
Most of the signatures collected by McGeehan came from registered Democrats, including her husband, even though the candidates are running as conservatives.
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