TOMS RIVER, NJ – Toms River Mayor Maurice “Mo” Hill and Gerri Ambrosio, a public tax assessor, are both battling each other for highly coveted votes in the growing Orthodox Jewish community in Toms River.
This week, both candidates slammed their opponent, frontrunner Dan Rodrick over his use of the words “Lakewood style development” in campaign mailers. Both candidates said Rodrick was being ‘antisemitic’ by comparing overdevelopment in Toms River to overdevelopment in Lakewood.
Rodrick, who has fought against overdevelopment in Toms River since taking office five years ago has been a constant target of Hill’s for his meddling in the mayor’s sometimes questionable land deals and plan to build multiple hi-rise apartment buildings in Downtown Toms River.
Rodrick has sent out campaign mailers opposing ‘Lakewood Style Development’ in Toms River and blamed both Hill and Ambrosio for supporting the same.
This week, Ambrosio shared a link to Hamodia.com, a prominent national Orthodox Jewish news website that criticized Rodrick for “Rodrick’s advertisement said that he has a record of fighting “Lakewood style development and that he voted No to cutting acreage requirement for houses of worship from 10 acres to just 2 acres.”
Ambrosio’s chief supporter, Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore, a lobbyist for Democrats and commercial developers building a 10-story hi-rise in Seaside Heights, called upon county leaders to condemn Rodrick.
Hill has also condemned Rodrick, saying his comments about Lakewood-style development are anti-semitic.
Both Hill and Ambrosio are engaged in a battle with each other to win over the support of the large Orthodox Jewish bloc vote in Toms River, which appears to be split between the two candidates at this point, two weeks before the election.
Rodrick objected to both Hill and Ambrosio’s claims, “The people of Toms River don’t want our town to turn into what has happened in Lakewood where nearly every open space has been built into high-density multi-family housing, causing traffic nightmares and overburdening the infrastructure.”
“I’ve never said anything antisemitic,” Rodrick said. “What you have going on here is two candidates, Hill, and Ambrosio fighting over votes because their plans for Toms River are not the plans the residents of Toms River want to see. They are both politically funded by developers, engineers, architects, and builders who expect them to build more high-density multifamily units and to build them bigger and taller all over town. If they win this election, they will be expected to deliver whatever promises they made behind the scenes to these developers.”
Rodrick pointed to Hill’s 10-story twin tower hi-rise in downtown Toms River and Ambrosio’s campaign manager’s 10-story hi-rise in Seaside Heights.
“Neither Hill nor Ambrosio is even making an attempt to hide the fact that they support hi-rise development and developers in Ocean County,” Rodrick said. “They have both been very clear what their intention for our town is, more housing, taller structures, more traffic, because that all means more profit for the developers funding their political campaigns.”