RUMANA, RUSSO CAMPAIGN GOON SQUAD INTIMIDATING VOTERS & CAMPAIGN WORKERS

  WAYNE NJ – May 28, 2009 – Heading in to the last weekend before the District 40 Assembly Election, out-of-state campaign workers hired by Assemblymen Scott Rumana and David Russo continue their thug-like tactics that began over the Memorial Day weekend.  

Rumana’s thugs have been tearing down campaign signs for GOP challengers Anthony Rottino and Joseph Caruso, knocking on the doors of homes displaying Rottino and Caruso signs and telling residents the signs were being removed and making threatening calls to Rottino supporters, said Rottino and Caruso spokesman Thom Ammirato.  

“This campaign, thanks to Scott Rumana’s desperation tactics, has unfortunately devolved into one of brutal intimidation by a career politician trying to hang on to his power at all costs,” said Ammirato.  “The real Scott Rumana is being exposed.”

In one case Rumana campaign workers knocked on the door of Caruso’s Packanack Lake area home in the late afternoon, waking up his two small children. 

“You would think that Mr. Rumana would have the common decency to  instruct his goon squad not to disturb my family,” said Caruso.

“He knows where I live;  he knows I have small children who sleep in the afternoon. My house has a Rottino and Caruso lawn sign in front of it.  This was no accident, it was an act of intimidation okayed by Mr. Rumana. His actions are contemptible.”   

The band of out-of state-campaign workers – some in cars displaying Pennsylvania and Florida license plates --  hired by Rumana and Russo began wreaking havoc over the Memorial Day Weekend, said Rottino, who said he received calls from supporters who had been contacted by Rumana workers who called them from blocked telephone numbers threatening to tear down Rottino and Caruso signs in Wayne.  

In another case, a Rumana Team member has gone to the doors of homes displaying Rottino-Caruso signs and said he was taking them down because they were not properly displayed. 

“I was sickened when I got the calls of the Rumana intimidation tactics,” said Rottino. “Mr. Rumana is desperately trying to hold on to power – first by assaulting me with lies in his campaign literature now by intimidating  people who are exercising their right to put up political lawn signs. Rumana’s tactics are something that one would expect in the Soviet Union; not in America.”  

Caruso said Rumana’s team tactics are disgusting any time but especially when they started during the Memorial Day weekend.

“With the nation  commemorating a holiday in which we honor all the men and women who fought to keep American free, Mr. Rumana thought it was okay to soil the spirit of the holiday by using his thugs to trample on people’s First Amendment Rights,”  said Caruso.