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THE HOWES RECORD
Winning Local Races
Raritan Mayor Nick Carra. Raritan has gone from a swing town to a GOP supermajority town through good governance and tenacious campaigning.
Since 2020, the SCRO has focused like never before on winning local races. As a result, 71% of Somerset County enjoys Republican local governance.
In 2023, we continued the trend of winning locally by electing 23 local Republican governing officials (“23 in ‘23”).
From 2021 through 2023, Republicans flipped seats from blue to red in Bernards, Hillsborough, Raritan, Bound Brook, Bernardsville, Green Brook, Manville, Watchung, Somerville, and Peapack & Gladstone for a net gain of twelve local seats. In 2021 alone, Republicans flipped ten local seats from blue to red.
We achieved these important goals by working closely with the local candidates and committees.
Bound Brook Council members Linda Brnicevic and Glen Rossi. Bound Brook previously struggled to elect Republicans in even-year elections, but a concentrated anti-overdevelopment message and ad campaign has allowed them to overcome Democrat wave years.
Fundraising Success
When I took office in 2020, the SCRO office was closed because of the COVID-19 shutdown. Indeed, the organization took a PPP loan in the months before we took office, just so it could continue to operate. That fall, we held two successful fundraisers, and many more in 2021. In 2022, we hired a professional fundraiser, SCRO's own Megan Moench of Dreaming Tree Consulting.
The SCRO consistently ranks among the top county GOPs in the state for fundraising. In 2022, we ranked fourth highest in the state when we raised over $261,000.
Supporters of my opponent actively worked to depress our fundraising last year, even going so far as to call our donors on the eve of the Golf Outing to pressure them to withdraw their financial support. Despite the old guard actively working against the goals of the organization, we raised and spent nearly a quarter million dollars for the 2023 campaign. This year, they have called donors and potential donors as far away as Ocean and Cumberland Counties to discourage them from supporting the SCRO in 2024.
Winning: Toppling Tom Malinowski
It took two electoral cycles, but the SCRO played a key role in toppling liberal Democrat Tom Malinowski. We worked closely with the Kean for Congress team, who headquartered in Somerset County both in 2020 and 2022. We worked closely with the RNC Victory team in 2022. The RNC Victory Team worked out of the SCRO office in Somerville.
In 2022, Malinowski was the only Democrat incumbent Member of the House of Representatives to lose re-election.
Bringing the SCRO into the Digital Age
The SCRO now boasts a digital arsenal.
In 2020, I and the new reform-minded Executive Committee took office. We inherited an office that didn’t even have Wi-Fi. We moved into the new office in August 2020. In 2020, the SCRO purchased quality consumer data and built our own SalesForce database, which we called “Treadstone” to supplement our usage of GOP Data Center and its related applications. This enabled the SCRO to have more accurate data and and next level analytics. Treadstone was pioneered by Jeff Foose, Ravi Kolla, and Rani Angel.
We modernized our digital program and expanded our social media presence. We are able to run ads matched to the voter list on social media and across the Internet and streaming platforms, without the use of expensive consultants. We have expanded our digital advertising footprint to reach tens of thousands of voters where they spend their time - on their phones and on their computers.
We have now added a digital communications platform known as VoterMaker to our arsenal. VoterMaker enables us to communicate with even more voters via text and phone at a reasonable rate. VoterMaker was pioneered by SCRO’s own Filipe Pedroso.
2023 digital advertisement served to high-propensity unaffiliateds and low-propensity Republicans in Somerset County across the Internet, targeted through voter matching
Formula for Success: Turning Out Republican Voters and Winning Independents
It’s no secret that the formula for success for SCRO is to turn out the Republican voters in a big way, and to win the Independent vote.
In my first full year as Chairman (2021), Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Somerset County by a wide margin. In November 2021, there were 26,538 more Democrats than Republicans in Somerset County, a margin that is roughly ten percent of the electorate in Somerset County.
Republicans nearly overcame that ten percent disadvantage. When all the votes were counted, Michael Kirsh was only 842 votes behind Democrat Sara Sooy, a margin of about 2/3 of one percent. We achieved that result by outperforming the Democrats in voter turnout.
Republican turnout in Somerset County (2021): 64%
Democrat turnout in Somerset County (2021): 52%
The second factor was winning the unaffiliated voters by a wide margin. Our best estimate, based on our own analytic, is that Michael Kirsh and Amber Murad won the unaffiliated vote by more than 10 points in 2021.
The strong performance by the Kirsh/Murad ticket was a factor in success at the local level in 2021. Locally, Republicans flipped ten seats from blue to red in 2021.
ELEC Financial Reports
All of our ELEC reports are up to date and public information. They can be viewed on the NJ ELEC website. Every cent is accounted for and spent properly. Any allegation to the contrary is completely and unequivocally false. See for yourself here (search "Somerset County Republican Executive Cmte"). If you have a question about ANY charge, ask me.
Our ELEC reports were filed late because our former Treasurer, Bob Damiano of Hillsborough, lied repeatedly about having filed them and how he’s not sure why the reports aren’t showing up on the website. As soon as this came to light, I accepted Mr. Damiano’s resignation as Treasurer.
Mr. Damiano had complete access to the bank account and the online fundraising account and was the person who deposited the vast majority of the checks. Mr. Damiano didn’t even file the D3 report due every year containing the very basic information of the chairman, treasurer, and address. He required no information from us to file the D3, but chose not to do the bare minimum required of his office.
The SCRO team worked around the clock to complete 2 years worth of work neglected by Mr. Damiano in a matter of weeks. The reports are complete and every dollar is accounted for and spent properly. Since catching up, every report has been filed on time and they are publicly available for viewing on the ELEC website at the link above.
Since that time, it has come to my attention that Mr. Damiano has failed to file reports for the late Assemblyman Pete Biondi for the last 13 years. The nearly quarter million dollars in Assemblyman Biondi’s account have been completely unaccounted for since 2011. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the Hillsborough Chairman’s recommendation that I hire him as Treasurer. The question of what happened to Assemblyman Biondi’s funds after he passed away has never been answered. Where did the money go?
