Daniel Van Pelt

Former Long Beach Mayor DiAnne Gove is expected to be sworn in as a member of the State Assembly on November 23.  Gove won an August special election convention to replace Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean Twp.), who resigned following his arrest last July.  Gove retired in 2006 after 32 years as a high school history and government teacher - making her the only NJEA member in the Republican caucus.  She won a full two-year term in November.

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D-Camden) has no plans to change the seating chart for the Legislature's lame duck session, which will leave three indicted Assemblymen sitting in their old seats.  That will leave Democrats Linda Greenstein (D-Plainsboro) and Wayne DeAngelo (D-Hamilton) sitting in between the indicted three - Joseph Vas (D-Perth Amboy) to their right, and Harvey Smith (D-Jersey City) and Anthony Chiappone (D-Bayonne) to their left. 

Assemblywoman-elect DiAnne Gove (R-Long Beach), who will be sworn in this month to replace another indicted legislator, Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean Twp.), will set next to Chiappone.

The Courier News is recommending the election of two Republicans seeking to unseat incumbents Linda Stender and Gerald Green in the 22nd district Assembly race.  The endorsement went to former Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks and first-time candidate Bo Vastine.

The Press of Atlantic City and the Asbury Park Press have endorsed Republicans Brian Rumpf and DiAnne Gove for State Assembly in District 9.  Rumpf is seeking his third term and Gove won a special election following the arrest and resignation of Daniel Van Pelt and his waiting to be sworn in. 

The Asbury Park Press is backing the re-election of freshman GOP incumbents Mary Pat Angelini and David Rible for State Assembly.

Although 9th District Democratic candidates Richard Visotcky and Robert Rue are not office holders, nor do they hold politically appointed positions like their opponents, they are not novices to the workings of State and local government. 

DiAnne Gove, who is expected to replace Daniel Van Pelt in the ninth district State Assembly seat, would become the sixth woman to represent Ocean County in the Legislature, and the first since Virginia Haines left in 1994.  Under the current State Constitution, Ocean County has elected 22 men and 4 women. 

The first Assemblywoman from Ocean County was Lila Thompson, who was elected in 1923 and re-elected in 1924.  Thompson gave up her Assembly seat in 1925 to run for the State Senate, challenging incumbent Thomas Mathis in the Republican primary.  Mathis was one of the most venerable politicians in Ocean County history.  Known as Cap'n Tom because he commanded J. Pierpont Morgan's America's Cup yacht for eleven years,

Starting his career as a Tuckerton Councilman, Mathis won a special election for an unexpired term in the State Senate in 1910.  He lost re-election in the 1911 primary, won his seat back in 1913, and lost it again in the 1915 primary.  Mathis returned to the Senate in 1923 and became Chairman of the Joint Appropriations Committee.

Thompson's campaign against Mathis was dominated by a process story: the Assemblywoman's husband, a state employee, was sent to Massachusetts for several weeks during the primary to conduct a survey of correctional institutions there.  The problem for Thompson was that at night, her husband was her driver; in those days, women did not drive alone at night, especially in a county that was then sparsely populated and without major roads.

Thompson decided to drive alone anyway, and accused the Ocean County Republican organization of engineering her husband's exile out of state.  Her husband, according to local lore, was offered a deal to return to New Jersey if he would sign a document exonerating two Department of Institutions and Agencies employees for their role in the exile.  He refused, and after several newspaper editorials slammed the GOP organization, he came home.

Staffers working for a legislator who resigns or dies in office keep their jobs until a successor is elected and seated.  While there are no formal rules dictating how legislative offices should operate in the event of a vacancy, in recent years the Senate President and Assembly Speaker have authorized district offices to remain open and staff to continue to be paid.  Those staffs are supervised by the Senate Secretary or the Assembly Clerk, although there is relatively little oversight in those situations.

The staff of former Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean) remains intact, even though Van Pelt resigned last week after being arrested on federal corruption charges.  And while Speaker Joseph Roberts has effectively suspended two legislators facing criminal charges without pay, Joseph Vas (D-Perth Amboy) and L. Harvey Smith (D-Jersey City) continue to have district offices and staffs who report to them.

The Republican State Committee (RSC) will return a donation it received from the election fund of arrested former Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean Twp), spokesman Kevin Roberts said.

Van Pelt and his running mate, Brian Rumpf (R-Little Egg Harbor), gave $5,000 to the party in February through their joint campaign account.  Rumpf  was not implicated in the FBI sting that ensnared Van Pelt for allegedly taking a bribe from an FBI informant.  

The RSC, which changed leadership in June, did not know about the donation before it was informed by PolitickerNJ.com today.

The cash strapped organization, which only had about $58,000 on hand as of the last reporting period, had already agreed to donate to charity the $51,000 it received from the informant, Solomon Dwek, between 2004 and 2005.  That payment, however, will likely be made in installments.  

There is some speculation that the leading candidate to replace Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean) in the ninth district State Assembly seat is DiAnne Gove, a Long Beach Commissioner and former Mayor.  Van Pelt resigned on Friday, a little more than a week after he was arrested on federal corruption charges.  There is really only one voter in this race: Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore. Gilmore will need to call a special election convention sometime between August 7 and September 4.  The timing is not critical; the new legislator is not likely to get sworn in before the Assembly goes back into session after the November election.

Visotcky and Rue React to GOP Opponent Van Pelt's Resignation from 9th District Assembly.

            Assembly Republican Leader Alex DeCroce issued the following statement in reaction to the announcement Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt has resigned:

            “It was the correct move. There was no way he could properly represent the people of the 9th District with these criminal allegations hovering over him. The actions he has been accused of taking by the FBI broke the bond of trust between him and his constituents. Public confidence deteriorates more and more with every corruption scandal. People must feel secure that those elected to serve their interests are beyond reproach and are not placing their own personal interests above their own.”