PLUMSTED, NJ – Politics in New Jersey is usually an ugly sport, but in Plumsted, it has become dirty. One slate of candidates is being backed by a convicted federal felon who also happens to be the Ocean County GOP party boss.
Ousted former Plumsted Councilman Michael Hammerstone is running to get himself back on the township council next Tuesday, along with his running mate Sebastian D’Amico. The pair is the endorsed and handpicked candidates of Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore.
The two are also aligned politically with ousted former mayor Dominic Cuozzo, who garnered national attention when he let members of the Satanic Temple host a prayer at a township council meeting a few years back.
Gilmore, who has fallen out of favor among most Republicans in New Jersey after his federal tax conviction, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, but received a last-minute pardon by President Trump. Gilmore cited a mental illness and a hoarding condition, which led him to withhold federal payroll taxes during the trial.
You can read the conviction notice by the Department of Justice here.
George Gilmore, a partner at an Ocean County, New Jersey, law firm, was sentenced today to one year and one day in prison for his conviction on two counts of failing to pay over payroll taxes withheld from employees to the IRS and one count of making false statements on a bank loan application submitted to Ocean First Bank N.A.
On April 17, 2019, Gilmore, 70, of Toms River, New Jersey, was acquitted of two counts of filing false tax returns for calendar years 2013 and 2014; the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on one count of income tax evasion for calendar years 2013, 2014, and 2015. The verdicts were returned following a trial that began April 1, 2019, before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson, who imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and the evidence at trial:
Gilmore worked as an equity partner and shareholder at Gilmore & Monahan P.A., a law firm in Toms River, where he exercised primary control over the firm’s financial affairs. Because he exercised significant control over the law firm’s financial affairs, Gilmore was responsible for withholding payroll taxes from the gross salary and wages of the law firm’s employees to cover individual income, Social Security and Medicare tax obligations. For the tax quarters ending March 31, 2016, and June 30, 2016, the law firm withheld tax payments from its employees’ checks, but Gilmore failed to pay over in full the payroll taxes due to the IRS.
-Department of Justice
Now, back in politics, Gilmore is trying to reestablish the empire he once held before being forced to resign as the County GOP Chairman, where he had millions of dollars in legal contracts annually across Ocean County. Gilmore, a consultant for a powerful Democrat back lobbying firm in South Jersey is running Hammerstone and D’Amico against the local opposition Republican candidates Robert Bowen and Ted Garrigana, Jr.
D’Amico and Hammerstone are running under the Gilmore county banner along with Toms River Jewish Community Council leader Schmuel Ellenbogen, picked by Gilmore to become the county’s first Orthodox Jewish county commissioner. Their ticket also includes Ocean County Commissioner Jack Kelly, whose ailing health has been a concern for many in the community. Kelly, a 40-year politician, has been looking for a better job in county government for decades, and with the retirement of longtime clerk Scott Colabella earlier this year, Gilmore slipped Kelly into the Clerk’s seat on the ballot for a significant salary boost, should he win in November.
