TOMS RIVER, NJ – Ocean County Commissioner Virginia Haines is a Republican. She’s also an RNC state committeewoman. On top of all that, she is still the official candidate for the Ocean County GOP in November’s election for county commissioner.
On Thursday, Haines, and an unknown elderly male went to the Ocean County GOP headquarters building in Downtown Toms River two hours after George Gilmore was named the new party chairman. Gilmore says he caught Haines outside the building loading unknown items into a vehicle.
Over the next 24 hours, Gilmore and his new administration would learn that not only was the headquarters emptied out, but so was the organization’s bank account. Their website was deleted and thousands of GOP email accounts had been wiped.
It turns out an early report of an elderly male accomplice might have been inaccurate. Haines said this week she was accompanied during the midnight raid by the organization’s former executive director.
Now, Haines has admitted that she and Pat Lane, the former executive director for the Ocean County GOP made a midnight run at the county headquarters and removed what they are now describing as ‘personal belongings’ from the office.
“Why do it at 11:00 at night? Why not give notice?” Gilmore said in an interview with Politio. “They shut down the website. They deleted all the emails that belonged to the organization. All gone. Why do that?”
By the time Gilmore received the keys to the building and the access to the bank accounts, they had both been raided by the Holman administration.
Haines also said the website went down because it was being paid for with a credit card owned by Lane. The Wix account was wiped clean. Typically with Wix, if you cancel an account or change payment method, the accounts will remain online until the end of the current billing cycle. Haine’s excuse doesn’t add up.
Later, Haines admitted that Lane did delete the content on the account. Later, Gilmore’s team restored the website and said they are now working on restoring all of the previously deleted emails belonging to the organization.
Still unanswered by Frank Holman, Sheriff Michael Mastronardy and former Chairman Frank Holman, an accountant, is why they depleted the organization’s bank account as the election results came back in favor for Gilmore.
The most powerful Republican organization was left with just $1,900 in the account, not even enough money to continue to operate the organization.
Holman diverted $12,000 in Republican treasury funds to the accounts of Haines and Mastronardy for their 2022 political campaigns.
Mastronardy and Holman have so far refused to answer calls by Shore News Network to discuss the suspicious behavior in the hours after their election defeat on Thursday.
Gilmore said police were not called, and no charges were filed, when asked.