Six days before the Hoboken mayoral election, a story was published on a local website alleging that candidate Peter Cammarano, a young attorney who lives in Hoboken with his wife and infant daughter, had failed to pay child support for a previous daughter he had with his high school girlfriend years ago. A similar attack was unleashed in anonymous flyers distributed around town this week. Unsigned political flyers are a violation of election laws.
The information also had also been posted anonymously in the comments section of a newspaper website for several months.
At a press conference today to unveil his plan to improve Hoboken, Cammarano took time to speak to the issues raised on the website.
Cammarano said that the article about his first child, which contained no quotes from him, was partly false, and that he never failed to pay his child support.
Cammarano also accused the campaign of rival Beth Mason of planting the story, as numerous people have charged that the website is affiliated with Mason. The website’s owner has denied the claim, and Mason denied planting the story.
Mason has, however, published and mailed out several ads in the last two weeks trying to link Cammarano with outgoing Mayor David Roberts. Today, Hoboken voters received campaign mailers saying that the Ro berts administration allowed city workers to make $230,000 worth of cell phone calls to Florida, Nevada, and Hawaii, adding that the “Roberts/Cammarano” team was at fault for the phone bills. Cammarano has said that he publicly broke with Roberts two years ago.
For more on Cammarano’s rebuttal to the child support story, check out this story on politickernj.com.
Meanwhile, people have also posted on the internet about Cam marano allegedly having a car accident involving a dog. Cammarano has denied that allegation as well, explaining that years ago, someone tried to scam him and his wife. The explanation appeared in a story we ran last week.