STAR-LEDGER COLUMNIST CALLS LINDA STENDER CAMPAIGN ADS "SLEAZIEST" AND "LYING"

For Immediate Release: October 16, 2008

GREEN BROOK, NJ - Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine today took Linda Stender to task in a scathing column that criticized Stender's campaign advertisements against Seventh Congressional candidate Leonard Lance. 

Mulshine wrote, "Democrat Linda Stender is running the single sleaziest campaign ad I have ever seen," adding, "In politics, there's a technical term for what Stender is doing here.  It's called ‘lying.'"  Mulshine has been covering New Jersey politics for more than 30 years.

"I have long contended that Assemblywoman Stender and her allies have been lying about my record," Leonard Lance said.  "I opposed illegal borrowing and pension bonding and other schemes proposed by both Republican and Democratic Governors because they were wrong and bad deals for New Jersey taxpayers.  It is nice to see that the press is pointing out the difference between fact and fiction.  Linda Stender's campaign is based on fiction."

The entire Star-Ledger column can be found by clicking here.  Excerpts include:

"Democrat Linda Stender is running the single sleaziest campaign ad I have ever seen.

"The ad in question is a flier attacking her Republican opponent for Congress, Leonard Lance, for supporting Christie Whitman's pension bond scheme in 1997 when he served in the state Assembly.

"One problem: Lance opposed the scheme. Not only did he oppose it, but he opposed it so publicly and prominently that his fellow Republicans took revenge on him by removing him from a key committee chairmanship.

"Yet that doesn't stop Stender, a state assemblywoman from Union County, from circulating a flier that says the following in large type: "[Whitman-Lance] groundbreaking scheme to borrow....in 1997 began a new era of deficit financing."

"The quote is attributed to a 2005 article in the Record, which publishes in Bergen County. Why would a Bergen newspaper be singling out a legislator from Hunterdon County for such attention?

"It didn't. The article in question alluded to ‘Whitman's groundbreaking scheme.' Some anonymous political hack inserted Lance's name in a sentence that referred not to him but to his leading rival on this issue. In politics, there's a technical term for what Stender is doing here. It's called ‘lying.'

"As his anti-bonding stance shows, Lance is the type of solid, responsible candidate likely to appeal to voters in what is a largely prosperous, middle-class district."

"The Ledger calls Linda Stender campaign ads sleazy and lies," said Lance for Congress campaign manager Amanda Woloshen.  "That pretty much sums it up."

Paid for by Lance for Congress