Republicans in the second and fourth legislative districts allege that “phantom” candidates — allegedly conservative — are attempting to siphon votes away from their candidates. On Friday, a judge ordered the group Jersey Freedom, which is alleged to be behind the “phantom” candidates, to stop all political activity and froze its accounts.
“I think there’s some illegal things going on. You cannot have a fake candidate taking money from the outside. That’s coordination when you don’t run a campaign, so there’s some very illegal things that are going on now that need to be examined,” said Bob Hugin, chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee.
“What’s extra dark about this group is that you don’t know who’s giving the money. You don’t know a lot about the candidates themselves that they’re supporting,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “These are candidates who are not really out there; they may have been put out there to draw votes away from Republicans so it’s a dark-money group with dark candidates that they’re supporting.”
But according to LeRoy Jones, chairman of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, “These little sidebar issues aren’t issues that resonate with voters anyway.”
