Richard Dennison

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.

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Democratic State Senate candidate Richard Dennison says that the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office overreacted when they sent detectives to question an 18-year-old campaign volunteer, Andrew Keegan, as part of an investigation of GOP State Sen. Diane Allen's stolen lawn signs. Dennison, an attorney and undertaker, also criticized the prosecutor, Robert Bernardi, for a press release he issued on the investigation yesterday.

"Is it typical practice for your office, which surely must be terribly busy with very serious crimes such as rape and murder, to send two detectives to the school of a high school student and have them barge into the main office of that school and ask administrators to speak with that student—in the middle of the school day—when that student is accused of approximately five dollars of property damage?" Dennison wrote. "If that is normal practice for your office, I would consider that to be doing a greater disservice to the Office of the Prosecutor and to the public than any hastily written email from a candidate for public office ever could."

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Lawyer/Undertaker Richard Dennison, the Democratic candidate for State Senator in the seventh district, could face disciplinary action by the state Office of Attorney Ethics after the Burlington County Prosecutor slammed him for essentially lying about a pending criminal investigation – if someone files a complaint.

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Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi said today that Richard Dennison was misleading the public about his office’s actions. 

“While my office does not generally comment on ongoing investigations, in this case I feel compelled to publicly respond to certain statements that Mr. Dennison falsely attributes to my office,” Bernardi

wrote in a statement. .

In an email posted on PoliticsNJ.com, Dennison complained that, as retribution for his own complaint about State Sen. Diane Allen’s staff allegedly stealing his campaign signs, her campaign filed a complaint against one of his teenaged volunteers.  Dennison said that, after questioning the volunteer, who he said was 17, the prosecutor’s office “

admitted that the charge was absolutely baseless and surmised, as I have, that it more than likely came as retribution for my threat to file suit against those responsible for stealing my signs.” Read More >

Richard Dennison, the undertaker/lawyer challenging Diane Allen for State Senate in the 7th district, says that representatives of the Burlington County Prosecutors office visited a 17-year-old campaign volunteer at his high school to question him about a stolen campaign sign complaint from Allen's campaign.

A copy of Dennison's email explaining the situation:

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Lawyer/Undertaker Richard Dennison is threatening to file criminal theft charges against Diane Allen because more than $5,000 worth of his signs had been stolen, according to a letter he wrote to Allen yesterday. But his campaign finance reports show that he has spent just $18,039 on his seventh district Senate race. Did this former Clinton White House intern who convinced Democrats that he was politically savvy enough to handle Allen really spend 30% of his budget on signs?

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It happens every year during the week before the election: some desperate, pathetic candidate with relatively little chance to win issues a press release accusing his or her opponent of stealing campaign signs.  But Democrat Richard Dennison, the lawyer/undertaker who is running for State Senator against Diane Allen, bumped the usual whining up a notch – he’s threatening to file felony theft charges against Allen, unless his demands are met. 

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State Sen. Diane Allen fired off an angry letter to the Burlington County Republican municipal chairs on Sunday, criticizing former GOP Chairman Glen Paulsen for meddling with her campaign in what appears to be a rift in the county organization.

In the letter, which Allen did not publicize, she wrote that Paulsen had, unbeknownst to her and her running mates, gone behind her back to her treasurer and essentially taken control of her campaign funds.

“This was done without the consent or knowledge of myself, Nancy (Griffin), Brian (Propp), or the former County Chairman,” wrote Allen.

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If it wasn’t for the gift of anonymity, it wouldn’t be wise for someone with an easily bruised ego to venture down to the comments section at the bottom of each of this Web site’s stories, where partisan punches tend to fly.

But in between blowing off steam, some frequent commenters have found that, on occasion, they actually have had some informative discussions, and that what they write here can sometimes impact campaigns and news cycle – whether it’s insider gossip or criticism of a reporter’s story.

Some have even developed personas and have gathered their own followings. Take DinoPCrocetti, the anonymous conservative commenter, whose alias is an homage to his idol, Dean Martin. He started his own blog, Dino’s Forum, after this site’s own pseudononymous administrator blocked his posts last summer. Under PoliticsNJ.com's new ownership he’s back.

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Last year, PoliticsNJ.com gave congressional candidate Paul Stuart Aronsohn a little bit of a hard time over a Memorial Day press release that addressed his beliefs as both an American and as a Rotarian. The fear of a similar hazing doesn't seem to scare Richard Dennison, the Democratic candidate for State Senator in the 7th district against George W. Bush and Diane Allen.

In accepting the endorsement of the Sierra Club today, a Dennison campaign press release said: "As a licensed funeral director, Dennison has taken the lead through educating members of his profession as to how the funeral and cremation industry might be able to better play its part in helping to protect the environment"

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