We Need to Talk About Bill Spadea: Part I
The radio host's endorsement flops present a litany of questions and red flags
From the CJN Editorial Board
We’re now over a week since the 2023 election (or the 2022 Red Puddle, Part II). We can talk about this objectively now that collective morning or armchair quarterbacking has now died.
Republicans had the opportunity to flip at least one of the chambers in the legislature, much like they did nationally in 2022. What exactly caused Republicans to meet a lightning-in-a-bottle moment with, well, no bottle at all, will take people above our pay grade to examine. We have no problem admitting that either, as we strive for humility here at CJN.
This lily of virtues doesn’t seem to be in Bill Spadea’s garden. The morning drive host that paints himself as the anti-establishment voice crying aloud in the desert has long been seizing his moment after Jack Ciattarelli’s defeat.
Will his moment come? Evidence shows that much of his influence is inflated, if not outright nonexistent (perhaps, even, gloriously unpopular) despite having the “largest microphone in the state.”
The Biggest Loser of 2023
We’ll leave it to politicos, strategists, and the people themselves to decide who’s at fault for 2023 (which will probably end up looking like the popular spiderman pointing at the other spiderman meme). We don’t have the time (or frankly the interest) in examining all twenty-one counties, but we certainly have the time and interest in deciding who wants to lead them.
Spadea, per NJ101.5, (his employer and seemingly principal backer) , endorsed 104 candidates. At first glance, with 42 wins and 62 losses, an approximate 40% win rate may not be too shabby for a republican in a blue state, but nuance matters here— and some of these losses were devastating.
Ocean County, the reddest district in the state, is managed by Ocean County GOP chairman and convicted tax felon George Gilmore. Races in the 9th and 10th district were guaranteed victories, as well as races in Plumsted and Berkeley. Gilmore and Spadea lost Brick’s mayoral and council contests, the former being sought by popular Assemblyman John Catalano.
Outside of Ocean County, Spadea put his name on other shoo-in victories such as Colts Neck “Colts Kids First” ticket along with candidates in safe republican areas such as Hoptacong, Roxbury, and Hanover. Bill’s endorsement of Sen. Ed Durr, a popular candidate among medical freedom and parental rights advocates, did not translate to a victory, despite his primary victory being the only one that gave Spadea an early win.
Lisa Richford, the chairwoman of the Mercer County Republican Committee, received the Spadea endorsement in her bid for Mercer County Executive. Richford lost to Democrat Dan Benson who earned 44,677 votes with 69% over Richford’s 20,036 votes. 50 Shades of Grey has nothing on that spanking.
As we said, nuance matters here- and if you were to eliminate the listed towns and races, Bill’s budding political kingmaker-ship seems to stuck at the starting line.
Wanna know where he got these scars?
The fandom over Spadea is perplexing, but not surprising: perplexing in the sense that people take him seriously, and not surprising in the sense that, like most charlatans, his ego gets in the way of executing a plan. Bill sought a congressional seat in 2004 and an Assembly seat in 2012, losing below 40% of the vote in both bids. Maybe that’s where his villain-esque origin began to take shape.
When you have a Republican party struggling for an identity amidst warring factions, the savior complex takes hold. For Bill, this is not so much a vocation to serve as it is for folks like Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04). Rather, this is mor akin to the Joker: someone whose messiah complex and cult of personality inflates his ego to the point of losing himself—but as divine wisdom teaches, pride goeth before the fall.
To cover up the scars of less-than-impressive failures, Bill took to X (formerly Twitter) to take credit for the Board of Education victories earned by Frank Capone, Jacqueline Tobacco, and Caterina Skalaski. Spadea did not issue an endorsement of the group nor did they receive any funds from him or Elect Common Sense.
He did take shots at the Monmouth County Republican Committee while professing his own victories a hubris-laden promise for future efforts.
This isn’t the only unattributed victory lap he took. He took the airwaves the day after Election Day to say that attacking far-left Senator, and Spadea-Gilmore ally, Vin Gopal was a bad move. Gopal, the legislative architect of the radical sex-ed curriculum, received ample air time on Spadea’s show, with Bill going so far as to call him his friend on multiple occasions. The latter part of his armchair postmortem was at the expense of the LD-11 candidates Steve Dnistrian and Assemblywomen Marilyn Piperno and Kim Eulner, and Monmouth County Sheriff and GOP Chairman Shaun Golden. Spadea, an alleged parental rights advocate, offered no time to the LD-11 Republicans.
A B-rated Heist
Endorsements usually imply money. A review of Elect Common Sense’s ELEC reports shows no such money was given to these candidates, sans $750 to the Bergen County Republican Organization and $250 to Bergen County Commissioner candidates Mary Guinchard and Aginshallah Collins, both of whom lost. For the rest of his endorsements, Bill suggests that he gave them airtime that was otherwise unattainable to them. That in and of itself falls flat when he, more than once a week, opened the phone lines to anyone running for elected office.
Folks associated with The New Jersey Project have also disclosed that in the previous cycle, Bill promised multiple candidates money, but when the time came to pay up, he wrote a check to no one. Nevertheless, Bill claimed ownership for over 400 local victories.
This is where the Joker complex comes into play: use your identity and your brand (at the expense of your employer) to build a cult of personality devoted to you. Then, use these people as an example of your influence, despite the fact that most of them were killed off in the plan’s execution (IE: Election Day losses), only for it to fail miserably altogether while you escape with your hands clean, duping the rest of the cult into thinking you were the only one brave enough to do anything.
Who has benefitted from Elect Common Sense’s fundraising? Bill Spadea’s own club and George Gilmore.
With respect to Bill, Christopher Nolan did it better. Even more of a shame that he, a supposed film producer, could not conceive of a better plot for a heist of New Jerseyans’ money and trust.
Why so serious?
Bill is serious in terms of convincing himself and others that he is the lone voice of reason and sanity needed in New Jersey. Whether that has paid off outside of his own circle of influence remains to be seen, but you’ll be seeing more of him as the race to 2025 heats up.
In all fairness, bill has not announced his intention, but has alluded to it every so ominously:
Questions abound as to his ethical tightrope walk with NJ101.5 and Townsquare Media, his dubious relationships, his principles-for-hire approach to business, and his advisor George Gilmore— who very well could be a Joker in his own right and have Bill turn into a sacrifice lamb for his own ambitions.
Anyone seeking the Governor’s seat deserves scrutiny, but those whose ego force them to willfully lie and abuse the public trust in an Ike Turner-like fashion deserve to be exposed.
As Bill says, ever so ominously, “see you on the trail.”