Paul Duggan

Bergen County Republican Chairman Bob Yudin said today that the federal investigation of his Democratic counterpart, Joe Ferriero, “will have little impact” on the local freeholder and county clerk race this year.

“Joe Ferriero is not on the ballot, but freeholders David Ganz, Bernadette McPherson and Vernon Walton are and they have an abysmal record of governing that they must defend separate from Mr. Ferriero’s possible ethical problems,” he said in a statement.

Over the last decade, Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joe Ferrerio has consolidated power with help from a group of unlikely allies: The Bergen County Republican Organization.

Ferriero developed a fundraising machine and got most of his party in lock step behind him.  But bickering and internal disputes in the GOP hurt that party’s ability to provide a counterweight, as did anemic fundraising. 

Bob Yudin, who was elected as county chairman last month, hopes to change that. 

“Since the day I was elected, I have been reaching out,” said Yudin.  “In my acceptance speech and every day I reach out and try to counsel people.  We have to stop the fighting, we have to work together, and it has been effective to some degree already.” 

The Bergen County Republicans are seizing on the joint federal and state investigation of a huge development project gone awry in the Meadowlands.

The troubled EnCap project would have included 2,500 residences and two golf courses before it was shut down by the Meadowlands Commission last month. The Bergen Record reported that, post bankruptcy, the project is facing a corruption investigation by U.S. Attorney Chris Christie and State Attorney General Anne Milgram.

Three Republican freeholder candidates in Bergen County are crossing their fingers in the hopes that a federal investigation of payments to Dennis Oury, the former counsel for the Bergen County Democratic Organization, foreshadows the downfall of some top local Democrats.

In a statement today, Paul Duggan, Chris Calbrese and Jeffrey Heller assailed the county's Democratic leadership, with Duggan claiming that the "Democratic organization is at its core morally corrupt and possibly a criminal enterprise" and has been for years.

Bergen County Republican Freeholder candidate Paul Duggan’s image has apparently been co-opted by an alternate Republican Freeholder slate.

Last month, Republican Senate candidate Murray Sabrin, disenchanted with the mainstream State Republican Party, pledged to run alternate slates of candidates for all levels of government – from Senate on down.

After being approached by the Sabrin camp, Duggan had pledged to stick with the Bergen County Republican Organization’s ticket. Duggan told the Bergen Record’s Charles Stile "I don't get off trains to get on an unknown train coming in the opposite direction.”

But Duggan’s picture appears on the Sabrin slate’s Web site, www.best4bergen.org, along with the photographs of three Sabrin-sponsored county-wide candidates: Chris Harvey, Tom Flannery and Edward Durfee.

The Bergen County Committee bucked its screening committee’s recommendations tonight, voting to give Jeffrey Heller and Chris Calabrese the county line, along with Paul Duggan.

Bergen County Republicans feel that the scene is set for a competitive freeholder race.

Three incumbent Democrats are up for reelection to the all-Democrat board. There’s Bernadette McPherson, who just lost her mayoral seat in Rutherford by a landslide; David Ganz, who lost his mayoral seat in Fair Lawn to Republican Ed Trawinski in 2005 (although he was reelected to the freeholder board that same year); and the brand new Vernon Walton, a former Englewood councilman who lost that seat to Democratic Assemblyman Gordon Johnson in 2006.

“McPherson and Ganz, I think, are the soft underbelly of the Democratic freeholder board,” said Republican state Sen. Gerald Cardinale.

Add to the chastened incumbents a few local circumstances, like the growing EnCap controversy, the indictment of former Democratic state Sen. Joe Coniglio and having the popular Republican Kathleen Donovan on the ballot for reelection as county clerk, and some Republicans feel that they have the makings for a good race and a chance to win a Freeholder seat for the first time since Lisa Randall won one in 2003.

“The (Democrats) each have baggage,” said Republican strategist Thom Ammirato. “You’ve got great issues floating around them.”

When Rob Ortiz assumed the chairmanship of the Bergen County Republican Organization five months ago, he made it clear in his inaugural speech not to expect any miracles. And it would indeed take a miracle to bring unity to the organization so quickly, which today seems to remain almost as fractious as when he took over.

Already, two potential challengers to Ortiz come June appear on the horizon: former Bergen County Utilities Authority Chairman Ben Focarino, an old hand in the BCRO who ran against Ortiz in July, and former freeholder candidate Bob Yudin.

So far, Ortiz has touted some municipal victories, particularly in Rutherford, as evidence that the party is clawing its way back to relevance against the dominant Bergen County Democrats. But many Bergen County Republicans who agreed to put aside loyalties and give Ortiz a chance to revive the party have already started making noise about the glacial pace of progress, and are disappointed that Ortiz – who largely ran on his fundraising abilities – has yet to bring the party out of debt, which stands at a better-than-expected $38,000 (a number discovered after an audit commissioned by Ortiz).

News that the entire membership of the all-Republican governing body in Lyndhurst and more than half of Lyndhurst’s Republican County Committee will switch to Democrat was greeted with regret in the Freeholder and Sheriff’s campaign.

Bergen County Should Open Portal for Residents To View Budget and Spending Plans. We see a lot of pictures with big checks of taxpayer dollars they hand out but no hard numbers. It is absurd that the county leadership is using the taxpayer’s website to spread propaganda instead of providing us information we all need to review, that of the county’s bloated spending,”