Divided GOP Sees Rancorous Campaign Close Today

The bell is about to ring on the 12th round of the Republican primary locally.

And with pressure mounting, the jabs and counterpunches have stepped up in intensity, especially over the past week.

Ray Chintall and Sam Cianfarini, representing the Regular Organization Republicans in their run for West Deptford committee, railed against a mailer put out by their opponents, Loran Oglesby and Matt Mahon, who represent the splinter Gloucester County Republicans, which alluded to Chintall and Cianfarini making plans to sell RiverWinds or declare bankruptcy for West Deptford–or maybe both.

Mahon said those accusations stemmed from his brief time with the Regular Organization Republicans–the main Republican party in the county–at the beginning of the year, and that Cianfarini and Chintall discussed those as possibilities.

Cianfarini and Chintall initially denied ever considering the idea, but after an email, purportedly from Cianfarini, was leaked last week, the two said the idea had been tossed around, but never seriously considered as part of the pair’s platform.

“In our internal meetings, have we talked about every aspect of how to fix this? Yes, we have,” Cianfarini said. “It does not involve (bankruptcy) at this point, because it’s not responsible to involve that at this point.”

Cianfarini said those discussions were private to his ground, and that Mahon was disingenuous when he came to them, seeking to be part of their ticket.

“He, in fact, was a mole for Loran and the Gloucester County Republicans,” Cianfarini said.

And while that’s been the most contentious issue of late, there have been other significant developments in the wider Republican race.

Domenick DiCicco, current assemblyman one of the two Republican Third District Assembly candidates, who faces no opposition for the nomination and is running as part of the Regular Organization Republicans, turned around and endorsed the other half of the ballot on Sunday, putting his weight behind freeholder candidates Chris Cugini, Theresa Garvin-Keyser and Andrew Walter, who are running on the same Gloucester County Republicans ticket as Oglesby and Mahon.

“I can honestly say that the Column F Republican Team will give our party the best opportunity to win in November and to end the Democrats decade’s long stranglehold on county government,” DiCicco said in a statement.

Redistricting shifted DiCicco into the Third District, which now covers the bulk of Gloucester County, this year, after he served as a Fourth District assemblyman, where he represented interests both in Gloucester and Camden counties.

And beyond the fight over policy and DiCicco's turn of heart, the attacks spread wide.

Some have been the usual fare–letters to the editor, direct mail, robocalls and the like–but a good portion of the battles have been waged on the Internet, in forums on NJ.com and comments on news articles on various websites, including Patch. The usually anonymous foot soldiers have fired wild accusations from both camps, ranging from the irrelevant to the ridiculous, with virtually none of them holding any water–but all of them igniting a firestorm of comments.

And Bob Matlosz, who is running wdtruth.org while Cianfarini and Chintall make their run, took the extra step of grabbing the .org and .net variations of Oglesby and Mahon’s official website to use as attack sites, pointing to various old articles on Oglesby, mostly–but both sites had abruptly reverted to a default page Monday.

Though it’s taken a different tack, both sides said the online battles amount to the same mudslinging, just with pixels in place of dirt.

Mahon said that it’s just moved mudslinging into a wider space.

“It’s provided another venue for those antics,” he said.

Chintall agreed with Mahon’s sentiments, and said that informed voters can easily get past the misinformation.

“If the voter really does his homework, and looks at the issues, studies the facts, he’ll see beyond the rhetoric,” he said.

For their part, the candidates are generally staying out of the digital mudslinging, though Mahon stepped up in a few spots to directly address some of the comments being made.

Cianfarini and Chintall said they’re staying completely out of it, preferring to speak directly to voters and the press.

Either way, both groups said they were getting tired of the anonymous back-and-forth.

Mahon said he’d take it more seriously, if forums or user names on other sites were tied to Facebook or something else that would force commenters to put their reputation on the line.

As it is, he said, normal checks and balances don’t exist, so people can say anything–including blatant lies–without any consequences.

“It’s a little disheartening,” he said.