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Is the Hudson County Republican Party Chairman Trying to Undermine the Ciattarelli Campaign

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Photo “Screenshot of Facebook picture of Arango’s event Tuesday night, August 3rd”

by Joshua Sotomayor Einstein

Jose Arango is once more actively working against the Republican Party and its interests. The Democrat-helping Chairman of the Hudson County Republican Party held an impromptu dinner on Tuesday night August 3rd with roughly a dozen and a half people on the same day and in the same county as the packed meet and greet for GOP Gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli. This isn’t the first time Arango has tried to harm other Republicans by throwing a last-minute competing event.

On February 25, 2020, the Hoboken Municipal Republican Committee, then chaired by Chris Carbine, held a Lincoln Dinner with Ciattarelli as the guest speaker. The dinner had been publicized for at least two months, yet in the week leading up to it Arango organized his own dinner in Jersey City and even offered people to attend for free. The 2020 Hoboken Lincoln Dinner was attended by over 65 people at least half of whom were new to Republican events. Arango’s desperate-to-show-relevancy-dinner had the same two dozen people he has brought to events for the last 2 decades, mostly county and municipal GOP committee board officers – because that’s almost all the actual Republicans in Hudson County he knows.

Whether in 2020 or August 3, 2021, one would expect the number of attendees to be higher for an event organized by a GOP County Chair. The low numbers Arango always achieves is not because Hudson is massively Democrat nor because many people remain afraid of Covid (though both are true). Indeed, grassroots Republican leaders have thrown much larger dinners and events in Hudson County both before and after the emergence of Covid (see here, here, and here, among many others events).

Normally, there would be no issue with a GOP functionary hosting a Republican dinner. But in the weeks prior, Arango was allegedly discouraging those few county Republicans he does know from attending the meet and greet for GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli. The meet and greet, as Arango knew, had been scheduled weeks in advance.

The campaign event was organized by Ciattarelli Campaign County Coordinator for Hudson Jennifer Zinone of Bayonne. The event was covered by 4 different media outlets and had Republicans and commonsense Democrats open to Jack’s message as well as ethnic Egyptian, Polish, Italian, and Hispanic Americans in attendance. Arango, who once attacked Ciattarelli for standing up to Governor Murphy during Covid times, but has since voiced support for Ciattarelli, himself attended the meet and greet for what observers say was less than 5 minutes spent mostly standing awkwardly in the doorway before scurrying off to parts unknown.  

After the Tuesday meet and greet, Zinone and Bayonne Municipal GOP Chairman Vincent Cuseglio took Ciattarelli to tour and talk with people in local Bayonne businesses. Arango did not return to join them but was purportedly on his phone anxiously calling people to get them to attend his off-brand dinner later that day. If reports are true, instead of working for the Republican Party and the opportunity to rid NJ of Governor Murphy by calling people to inform them of the meet and greet with the GOP candidate, the Hudson County GOP Chair was frantically attempting to get enough people together for his counter-event.

This buffoonery cannot be tolerated. It’s bad enough that Arango has a long history of hurting Republicans (see here and here), as well as a track record of actively supporting Hudson County machine Democrats (see here and here). Now he is actively undermining events by the GOP gubernatorial nominee while taking pictures in front of said nominee’s campaign poster. At a time when Steinhardt, a former gubernatorial primary opponent, and the significant portion of the grassroots GOP base which supported Pastor Phil Rizzo and Hirsh Singh, have united with Ciattarelli to make Phil Murphy “one and done in 2021,” the questions are – why isn’t Jose Arango on board? Moreover, why should anyone in the GOP tolerate Arango stabbing the Republican Gubernatorial candidate in the back?

3 thoughts on “Is the Hudson County Republican Party Chairman Trying to Undermine the Ciattarelli Campaign

  1. This is going to get good.

  2. So much dirty politics

  3. And people wonder why NJ is becoming a 1 party state? Maybe it’s because of the circular firing squad the GOP seems to deploy in every election. Haven’t heard from Lonegan yet either.

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