State Sen. Diane Allen fired off an angry letter to the Burlington County Republican municipal chairs on Sunday, criticizing former GOP Chairman Glen Paulsen for meddling with her campaign in what appears to be a rift in the county organization.

In the letter, which Allen did not publicize, she wrote that Paulsen had, unbeknownst to her and her running mates, gone behind her back to her treasurer and essentially taken control of her campaign funds.

“This was done without the consent or knowledge of myself, Nancy (Griffin), Brian (Propp), or the former County Chairman,” wrote Allen.

Bergen County Republican Organization Chairman Rob Ortiz responded today to the Democratic coup in Lyndhurst, where the town’s entire governing board decided to abandon the GOP for the Democrats.

While losing a whole town doesn’t bode well for the county’s beleaguered Republican Party, Ortiz’s response was summed up by the heading of his press release: “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Ortiz said that Lyndhurst Mayor Richard Dilascio was already known to be an ally of Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joe Ferriero and of State Sen. Paul Sarlo, and re-hashed the charge that DiLascio was offered county job in exchange for making nice with officials at EnCap, a controversial Bergen County mixed-use development.

It looked as though half the town crowded into Steinert High School for the 14th district state Senate debate Monday between Assemblyman Bill Baroni and Seema Singh, but then again this is Hamilton, where even in the pizza parlors there are signs exhorting people to vote, and where legislative candidates get asked for their autographs.

On key issues Baroni sought to distinguish himself from the Democrats and exploit their weaknesses, while ladling in enough evidence of being pro-environment and pro-good government to put distance on what most New Jerseyans see as the failed leadership of his party at the national level.

The labor-endorsed senate candidate even properly referred to the opposition as the "Democratic Party," eschewing the Bush Republican practice of refusing to associate Democrats with the small-d adjective "democratic."