Below is the press release and attached are the corresponding documents detailing the GOP establishment efforts to work against my campaign for County Commissioner.
I am grateful to each and everyone one of you for working with me.
-Joe
Joe Gale for Montgomery County Commissioner - Press Release 10/26/15
The Montgomery County Republican Committee (MCRC) has been working against Joe Gale, their own party’s nominee for Montgomery County Commissioner, since he won the May Republican Primary without the GOP establishment’s endorsement.
The Republican Committee has not contributed financial support to Gale’s campaign. However, the other Republican Commissioner candidate, Steve Tolbert, received an in-kind contribution of over $2 thousand from the Montgomery County Republican Committee.[1]
In June, MCRC’s political director, Catie Scott, contacted one of Joe Gale’s campaign vendors under false identity to covertly and secretly extract information about Gale’s campaign.[2]
In a meeting with Republican candidates and area leaders on September 30th at the County Republican’s Headquarters, Joe Gale’s campaign chairman, Sean Gale, raised the issue of campaign supporters and potential donors being contacted with instructions not to support Gale’s candidacy. MCRC Chairman, Mike Vereb, admitted to contacting supporters yet still wanted Gale’s campaign to contribute $7,500 in exchange for Gale’s name to appear on the Republican Party’s green colored sample ballots (“Green Ballots”).
At the Montgomery County Republican Committee’s Fall Dinner held on October 1st, in the presence of party leaders at the VIP reception, Gale was verbally assaulted by the Whitemarsh Republican Committee Secretary, who shouted: “I’d like to slice your throat open and rip your esophagus out.” A subsequent email sent by the same insider to committeepeople and a party municipal leader references and confirms the confrontation: “THEN it got personal and I ripped into him. I must admit, it REALLY felt good.”(sic)[3] The same email, ends with instructions to solicit “every voter you know to ‘cut’ Joe Gale on Election Day and ‘bullet vote’…Steve Tolbert.[4]
Traditionally, the “green ballot” issued by the Montgomery County Republican Committee lists all the party’s candidates, is mailed to voters prior to the November election, and is handed out by committeepeople at the polls. However, green colored Republican sample ballots were recently mailed out to Republican voters listing every GOP candidate except for Gale in an obvious effort to stop Joe Gale from winning a position on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners.[5]
Although Tolbert has his own campaign account, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania pays for and distributes his campaign mailers. Gale has received no support, financial or otherwise from the State GOP.[6]
For follow up questions, contact Joe Gale: josephgale@comcast.net ______________________________________