Carolyn Wade

Denied a shot to face CWA Local 1040 President Carolyn Wade when the elections committee determined that several of his ballot petitions were faulty, challenger Tom Bruno says he means to exhaust every internal remedy before issuing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor.

"I’m going to keep plugging away because people should have a right to nominate a person of their choosing," said Bruno, whose campaigned vigorously throughout the summer for a chance to go up against Wade in September before the elections committee tossed him.

As Wade prepares for her swearing-in ceremony for another term at the Trump Taj Mahal next week, Bruno continues to protest how the president of nearly 20 years and her allies derailed his candidacy on a technicality.

MINNEAPOLIS - Tom Bruno, candidate for CWA Local 1040, plans to appeal a decision today by the local’s election committee, which rejected his candidacy based on the fact that three of his petitions did not display the date.

"I’m three names shy of the necessary number of names," Bruno told PolitickerNJ.com. "They just called me to notify me. Every three years for the last 27 years, they’ve not required names. That’s a bylaws issue. They can’t arbitrarily change the bylaws."

Bruno plans to appeal to the election committee, then to the executive board and to the national organization, if necessary.

MINNEAPOLIS - Challenging the sitting president of CWA Local 1040, Tom Bruno says he is confident that the local’s election committee will rule in his favor either today or tomorrow in a case concerning the validity of his petition signatures.

The local requires 200 signatures to get on the ballot. On Tuesday, self-styled reform candidate Bruno turned in his petitions to challenge long-serving President Carolyn Wade.

Three of his petitions don’t have dates on them, and the committee is presently reviewing the situation.

"I’ve been with the union 27 years and I’ve never known about the date requirement," said Bruno. "I’d be glad to add the requirement to the bylaws, but at present our bylaws don’t require a date. The bottom line is that any change to the bylaws requires a vote by the delegates."

President of CWA Local 1040, Carolyn Wade has not received a serious challenge in close to 18 years. But in the wake of what he describes as meager contract negotiation results in March of 2007, Tom Bruno says he’s a legitimate contender to head a local filled with disaffected members who are genuinely steamed.

"When people have challenged her in the past, their nomination forms have been thrown out," says Bruno. "That won’t happen with me. Other people running against her did the bare minimum. I never do anything at a minimum. I go all the way."

A former CWA Local 1040 staffer and Wade’s political point person, Bruno left the local’s inner sanctum two and a half years ago on Wade’s orders. Now he serves as lead supervisor in the Hunterdon Development Center, where he leads a 450-man strong branch of the local, whose numbers of state workers equal 7,200.

According to Bruno, the Trenton local has gotten kicked around in Trenton, and not because a relationship between Gov. Jon Corzine and former CWA Local 1034 president Carla Katz stoked a carnival-like aftermath of press coverage, or even because Sen. Stephen Sweeney’s (D-Gloucester) has repeatedly undertaken efforts to weaken state workers’ benefits packages. He’s a buildings and trades union man. Disappointing, in Bruno’s eyes. But not shocking.

In what has been called an upset, Thomas Bruno, a 28-year employee of the state Human Services Department and a strong critic of pension privatization, defeated the AFL-CIO and CWA-endorsed candidate for a seat on the Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS) Board.  Bruno defeated Joseph Golowski for the seat of Roderick Lewis, whose term expires at the end of this month.