Hoboken 4th Ward Councilman Ruben Ramos has weighed in on Frank Raia being convicted of vote-by-mail fraud yesterday, stating he is “extremely disappointed in his actions.”
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“What Frank Raia did was wrong and I’m extremely disappointed in his actions, and it’s especially disturbing that he exploited some of our city’s most vulnerable residents to execute his scheme. Frank Raia has contributed to many, many candidates for office here and throughout the state,” Ramos said in a statement.
“In order to remove any doubt that I do not condone Raia’s actions, I am donating $1,000 that he contributed to my campaign to Community Lifestyle and Amazing Truth, two great local organizations that will ensure that this money will be used to help some of the same residents in the Hoboken Housing Authority who Raia used.”
Raia contributed to Ramos’ council re-election campaign back on July 7th, 2017.
According to the councilman, Community Lifestyle is a program that provides free summer camp for Hoboken Housing Authority families, while Amazing Truth Society is a free Karate/Self-Defense program for Hoboken Housing Authority kids.
On the first day of the trial, former Raia political operative Matt Calicchio testified that Raia made it a point to run a third ticket in the 2013 mayoral contest to ensure that Ramos, then a state Assemblyman, would lose to incumbent Dawn Zimmer.
“Tim [Occhipinti] entered to make sure Ramos didn’t win … Whoever received the most votes wins since there were not runoffs: the Old Hoboken vote would be split [with a third ticket],†Calicchio said on the witness stand on June 17th.
He did not elaborate as to why Raia would want Ramos to lose the election.
All these hombres are now becoming honest. They suddenly have big hearts and are donating the money to charities. If anything the money should go back to Raia.
Do we get an honest assessment of Raia’s role among others with VBMs?
Looking at Dawn Zimmer’s 2009 ELEC campaign report she has hundreds of paid workers out of the Hoboken Housing Authority. One suspects this isn’t an organic uprising of “campaign workers.” It never is.
So Tiffany is going to run on dirtying up Zimmer and saying, “hey everyone cheats, so what’s the big deal if half my ticket buys votes in the HHA?” Let us know how that works out.
It will be real interesting to see how many absentee votes Ramos and Defusco get this fall compared to their last campaigns. They have more to give back than money.
This isn’t a thread about the Bhalla slate…
All that skate can do is attack
What’s your platform?
Covering up for Ravi’s second job?
The 3% tax increase he tried?
The money he promised the YMCA and Hoboken parents that a judge deemed wrong , or the dumping in Monarch apartments in the 3rd Ward?
I disagree with you. Higher taxes and more corrupt “second job” activities is too a slate. Ravi did find a few people to overlook it and join his slate. So we should decide.
Correct, it’s not a thread about the Bhalla slate. Why are you trying to make it into one?
That Ruben is certainly a funny guy
Like his buddy DeFusco, Fourth Ward Councilman Ruben Ramos donates a grand he took from Raia ONLY AFTER the conviction and the money trail made public. Ramos always has very high Vote By Mail numbers for every campaign The Hoboken Housing Authority in the 4th Ward is ground zero for vote harvesting
Did Dawn Zimmer donate to charity any Raia monies or for his VBM “help?”
Did Ravi Bhalla apologize for calling Raia an “asset to Hoboken?”
https://www.nj.com/hudson/2019/06/developers-conviction-for-voter-fraud-raises-questions-of-vote-by-mail-ballots-in-hoboken.html
In case you haven’t noticed it is 2019 and both DeFusco and Ramos were in bed with Raia just last year. I get you are stretching things to make some sort of false equivalency to somehow make your boys seem less dirty but it does just the opposite.
Ramos acting like he is in any way surprised about vote harvesting in Hoboken is hilarious
did ramos-defusco apologist roman brice even mention the vbm totals of ramos and defusco in his latest hit piece exonerating them? did he even mention raia and yacco working for defusco? did he even mention the long and well-known track record of those two long before defusco ever chose to use their “special talents”? of course not. that’s not what shills do.
Nancy, in your zeal to cover up for the Ravi-Russo ticket and Ravi’s lovefest statement for Raia, try reading comprehension.
Hoboken Horse joked about politicos running away from Raia with a Monty Python sketch not an exoneration. The featured article is a complete examination going back a decade of all of Raia’s influence in Hoboken complimenting one by NJ.com.
Hey, try another lie. It won’t take you all of five seconds. It’s what you do.
From your article which does not have a single Ramos or Defusco vbm total in it. The reason for that is showing those totals would make it very hard to say this:
“For months, there’s been an effort pointing at Councilman Ruben Ramos alleging he was the candidate who Matt Calicchio worked for in 2015. Ludicrous on its face, it didn’t stop their foaming. Those efforts from the Ravi Bhalla campaign and paid political operatives have not diminished with their being wrong since.”
Now if you’d shown the PATTERN of vbm’s to workers like a journalist would do, that statement would read exactly as hollow as it is.
“Too little.” heh heh
Imagine if you were referring to Ravi with such slurs
If you think this helps Ravi trust us, it doesn’t
Hoboken residents don’t like mocking disabilities any more than they like mocking a man who wears a turban
So if you want to help Ravi, stop attacking others physical defects they are born with
No one was mocking anyone’s disabilities. It was a reference to DeFusco and Ramos late attempt to distance themselves from the long time voter fraud in Hoboken after Raia’s conviction. The well known and overused cynical hypersensitive knee jerk strategy of declaring victimhood to deflect any criticism is offensive.
“RAMOS for Assembly ELEC: 2 paid voters, Raia’s payroll guy, 1 guilty voter bribery co-conspirator, 1 convicted felon- OH MY!”
https://grafixavenger.blogspot.com/2019/06/ramos-for-assembly-2011-3-raia-trial.html
😂😂😂😂😜
Now there’s a novel idea. It will be responded to with personal insults because there’s no good way for a grown-up to deny the picture it paints. Grown-up being operative.
Roman is trying to make one comment by Bhalla appear worse than all the evidence of the vote harvesting Defusco and Ramos have done down through the years. That’s without even getting into the crap that goes in on their ELEC reports. I can’t tell if he believes it himself. Doesn’t really matter what he believes at this point. The facts you are reporting are devastating.
Nancy learns to use emojis
Proving even a first smart phone can do dumb things😜
👊ðŸ»ðŸ’ªðŸ»ðŸ§Ÿâ€â™€ï¸ðŸ§Ÿâ€â™‚ï¸ðŸ•¶ðŸŒšðŸŽ±ðŸŽ±ðŸŽ±ðŸ›¸ðŸ›¸ðŸ›¸
Actually it’s a very nice connect-the-dots from the Raia perps to the unindicted supporters of Ramos’s vbm operation. It’s what people who are interested in the truth do. Lazy-ass propagandists just repeat themselves and call it clever. We are all grateful though that Tiffany-Ruben-Defusco is saddled with such an uncreative lazy slob to be their public face. You’re like a secret weapon for their opponents.
The three doofuses of Hoboken are working overtime to try to spin away reality, but the real world implications of Raia’s conviction cannot be spun away.
1. The feds clearly have trails to follow and are likely following them. Those trails do not lead to Zimmer riding an HHA elevator with Raia in 2007 or publicly endorsing his Freeholder run in 2008, or to Ravi saying something nice about Raia in 2016 to soften his vote against him for NHSA. They do lead to potential crimes committed by unscrupulous and desperate campaigns in 2015 and 2017. And as we know from court filings by the prosecutor, they also lead back to crimes committed on behalf of Zimmer and Bhalla’s opposition in 2011 and 2012.
2. Zimmer and Bhalla’s campaigns (not to mention Hoboken) were the victims of the voter fraud perpetrated by Raia and others. In 2009, Zimmer would have beaten Cammarano by 400 – 500 votes instead of losing by 161 in the absence of what now clearly appears to have been VBM fraud. Several School Board candidates supported by Zimmer and Bhalla over the years would also have won but for VBM fraud.
About 700 paid for votes (citywide) that historically have been cast against Zimmer and Bhalla (and the council and school board candidates they supported), will not be cast in future elections. That means Hoboken will finally have free and fair elections. It also means the anti-Bhalla vote going forward could be reduced by as much as 10%.
Obviously, that is good news for Bhalla and bad news for folks like Ramos and DeFusco if they run for Mayor in 2021.
Ramos and his supporters claim that he would have won in 2013 against Zimmer had Raia/Occhipinti not run. Perhaps a better mental exercise would be to consider how badly Ramos would have lost in a one on one election where nobody paid poor people for their votes.
Perhaps you haven’t read the coverage of the testimony about 2013. Matt C. said, under oath, that Tim/Raia was in the race to help Zimmer and keep Ramos from winning.
Actually Matt C. didnt say anything about helping Zimmer – you and the other doofuses made that up. He did say that Pupie didn’t like Ramos and didn’t want Ramos to win. That is not the same thing, which is why you feel the need to lie rather than truthfully describe what Matt C said.
But just as importantly, your lack of basic reading comprehension skills is becoming ever more glaring. I said nothing about why Pupie ran – everyone runs for office for their own reasons. Ramos and his supporters believe that had Raia bought votes for Ramos instead of for Tim, Ramos would have beaten Zimmer.
While even that is likely not true, it began the question of what would have occurred had nobody bought votes at all. Even a doofus ought to understand that in a one on one election against Zimmer without paid for votes Ramos would have been crushed.
Roman has never once quoted Ramos’s VBM totals while defending him. But they are extremely high in every case and include the same people who get paid to vote in every 4th ward election. Roman’s plan is to try to say that if Raia didn’t manage the VBM operation for Ramos, then Ramos didn’t buy votes. It’s really dumb. But that’s all Roman has left.
Trying too hard Sham