Remember all those ethics complaints during the campaigns?  Wonder what happens to them?

We’ll see tomorrow, when the Joint Legislative Committee on Ethical Standards meets to rule on the five complaints that have been filed since the committee last met.  But if history is any guide, they’ll mostly be dismissed. 

While legislators who sit on the committee say that complaints occasionally have at least some level of validity, some say they’re filed more to get a headline in the heat of a campaign rather than pointing out a real, troubling ethical infraction.  They also say they’ve noticed it happening more often in recently, with candidates taking advantage of a committee – one with a reputation for being toothless and ineffective -- for their political ends.   

Indeed, 2007 was the year of the ethics complaint, with 10 filed so far- the most of any year on record, going back to 1972.  Five have been settled, all of which were dismissed.

Read an e-mail sent to The Record's Charles Stile and Alfred Doblin by State Senate Gerald Cardinale, in response to Stile's column on Cardinale's re-election campaign against Joseph Ariyan:

There’s no love lost between Republican State Sen. Gerald Cardinale and his Democratic opponent, Joseph Ariyan.

The campaign has been nasty from the start, with Cardinale painting Ariyan as a puppet of Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero, and Ariyan criticizing Cardinale for taking trips paid for by the banking industry and then supporting their preferred legislation.

State Senator Gerald Cardinale’s latest attack on Democratic state Senate candidate Joe Ariyan has drawn sharp rebukes by some Jewish Democrats as well as at least one Republican.

Last week, Cardinale accused Ariyan of having ties to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), an advocacy group whose former communications director, Hussein Ibish, has made some controversial remarks in the past. Ariyan's law partner and campaign donor, Hani Khoury, served as president of the group’s New Jersey chapter in 2005 and 2006, and is still a member.

Recently, Cardinale sent out a campaign mailer saying that Ariyan has allowed “his firm to defend numerous illegal aliens detained by the federal government after 9-11 for suspected terrorism,” and noted Ariyan’s relationship with Khoury. Of the ADC, it said “This group has instructed its members to right (sic) letters in support of radical and extremist Palestinian attacks against the Jewish people and Israel.”

CARDINALE, ROONEY & VANDERVALK WARN VOTERS WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW WILL HURT THEM AFTER THE ELECTION

State Sen. Gerald Cardinale, Assemblyman John Rooney and Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk, the Republican legislative team representing District 39,  cautioned voters today that what they don’t know will hurt them financially after the election – and that’s the way the Democrats have planned it from the very beginning of the campaign.

“It’s no secret that Governor Corzine and the Democrats have kept two different plans to hike tolls under wraps until after the election,” said Cardinale. “It has been reported that top Democrats in the Legislature asked the governor to keep the details of his plan to raise tolls annually on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway hidden so they couldn’t be used against their candidates during the campaign. Now this week we learned a separate plan to raise tolls at the Port Authority’s bridge and tunnel crossings was also held back until after the election at the request of Democrats.

“There’s an old saying that goes ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you.’ Just the opposite is true in this case. What the voters haven’t been told during this campaign will definitely hurt them financially once the votes are counted.”

Frustrated that the New Jersey office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was not speaking out against The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Demarest Councilwoman Carole Cardinale, the wife of State Senator Gerald Cardinale, wrote an email to what she apparently thought was the group’s central office.

“I am told that your NJ office is telling people that the ADC is a benign operation. How is it possible when they employ Hussein Ibish as their communications director?,” wrote Cardinale. “...Do you not know or is there some other agenda operating to cause the JDL to defend these extremists?” (Ibish has not been the ADC’s communications director since 2004).

Arab-American activist Hussein Ibish, who was attacked by State Sen. Gerald Cardinale yesterday for his connection to Democratic Senate candidate Joseph Ariyan’s law partner, says that “this turn of events in New Jersey shows that some unprincipled politicians still feel that ethnic baiting of this kind might still be an effective campaign tactic.”

The Asbury Park Press has endorsed Jennifer Beck over Ellen Karcher, the Press of Atlantic City is backing Jefferson Van Drew and James Whelan over Nicholas Asselta and Sonny McCullough, respectively, The Record wants Joseph Ariyan instead of Gerald Cardinale, and the Courier Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer have endorsed Phil Haines over Francis Bodine.

The Record has endorsed Democrat Joseph Ariyan for State Senator over GOP incumbent Gerald Cardinale and backed Democrat Esther Fletcher for Assembly over incumbent Republican John Rooney. They endorsed GOP Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk. READ