Alleged happy hours for the Camden County GOP resulted in a controversial endorsement of Bill Spadea for NJ governor

The phrase happy hour is controversial in some GOP political circles in Camden County, and it’s related to an endorsement of Bill Spadea for governor in the June primary.

Kimberley Stuart, the chair of the Camden County Republicans, unseated Thomas Crone for the position last July. In the months since then, she has ruffled feathers among detractors and excited her loyalists. Both groups agree on one thing: She is shaking things up in the Camden County GOP.

One of her loudest critics? The chair of the Cherry Hill GOP. One of the big issues? Alleged happy hours.

Stuart, 54, is both a municipal prosecutor and a private criminal defense attorney. She has worked as assistant counsel to former New Jersey Govs. Christine Todd Whitman and Donald DiFrancesco, and served on the Haddon Heights Board of Education for 12 years.

Stuart said that in the months since being elected she has helped reestablish municipal committees, fill empty committee seats, and put forward more GOP county- and state-level candidates. She touts her nontraditional meetings and increased attendance at the county’s annual fundraiser gala.

The Camden County GOP is one of a few county committees that endorsed the antiestablishment Spadea in the competitive Republican primary for governor, though only about one-third of the committee’s members took part in the vote in part due to a controversial rule.

The endorsement means less this year than in years past with the removal of the county line ballot design and multiple candidates, including Spadea, saying they are not participating in the committee endorsement process. Still, the endorsement shows the merging of a grassroots and new kind of establishment support for the antiestablishment candidate in a system that has mostly preferred Spadea’s competitor Jack Ciattarelli in other counties across the state.

County committees across the state have different methods of determining their endorsements, but they have been widely viewed as a decision made by party leaders, including in Camden County.

Stuart wanted to do things differently, in part knowing she could upset a large portion of her committee if she chose one of the candidates in a messy primary.

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So how did she end up being accused of, in the words of New Jersey Globe’s David Wildstein, “retroactively and arbitrarily” disenfranchising “a majority of county committee members” from voting in the convention?

Stuart didn’t want just any county committee member to vote. She wanted those who have proved that they are involved with the organization by attending at least three out of eight monthly county committee meetings. Her critics call these meetings “happy hours,” fueling outrage over the requirement to attend what they view as a social event in order to have a voice in the party’s endorsement.

Only 75 committee members took part in the March 10 vote, which ended 51-24 in favor of Spadea in a second round of votes.

According to Stuart, 115 of the committee’s volunteer members were eligible to vote, which is about half of the committee’s 226 total volunteer members — though that total includes new members who would not have been around long enough to attend three meetings.

According to Stuart, these alleged happy hours are monthly committee meetings in which members conduct business while welcoming in other Republicans in the area. They are held one Monday night each month at the Laughing Fox Tavern in Magnolia, with food and drinks. The meeting notices encourage members to “bring a Republican friend,” which Stuart said creates a safe space for Republicans in Camden County.

“There are a lot of people in Camden County who do not want to admit to being a Camden County Republican for fear of some sort of retaliation,” she said. “This is the climate in which we exist here in Camden County. So there is a certain part of socializing, exchanging ideas, networking, and that’s terrific.”

The meetings also feature guest speakers, including gubernatorial candidates, as well as workshops and efforts to grow the organization, Stuart said. She said the “happy hour” categorization is an attempt to disparage her and make the meetings “look like something they’re not.”

In contrast, the former chair actually held what were advertised as happy hours, which did not have attendance requirements, and committee members did not have an obligation to regularly attend county events.

In the eyes of Cherry Hill GOP chair Jeffrey Land, Stuart’s monthly meetings are just an extra commitment for the volunteer municipal committee members, who by extension automatically become Camden County committee members. Land argues that the county committee meetings held by Stuart are more like a “pep rally” with announcements rather than a collaborative business meeting.

Stuart argues that those who do not want her to succeed decided not to attend the meetings months ago, while her critics, like Land, argue that she stacked the convention in favor of her supporters since those were the people showing up to the meetings.

“It was the faction that elected her that actually got the say in that rigged convention vote,” said Land, who supports Ciattarelli.

It was too late to attend three meetings by the time Stuart officially announced her attendance requirement to members a week prior to the vote, leaving people who had not been attending feeling unfairly edged out, particularly supporters of Ciattarelli’s campaign.

From Stuart’s perspective, the writing was on the wall — or, in the minutes — for those who were paying attention.

Stuart months ago tried to change the committee bylaws to require attendance at three consecutive monthly meetings in order to vote on new business because, according to November meeting minutes, there are members who may show up to vote at the convention or reorganization meeting without showing up to any other meetings or “being part of the process the whole way.”

“I wasn’t going to allow people who have really no involvement in the day-to-day functioning of our organization come in and distort the process for selection of the gubernatorial candidate,” she said.

But Land argued there are ways to be involved as a committee member other than going to Stuart’s meetings, such as running for office, participating at the municipal committee level, volunteering for campaigns, and donating money. He argued that if there is a vote at all, it should include all committee members.

“There’s more to it than sitting on a restaurant chair and listening to a bunch of speakers,” he said. “… It’s reprehensible that she would treat county committee members differently. Under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, we’re supposed to treat people equally.”

Josh Twyford, the cofounder and treasurer of the Gloucester City Republican Committee and treasurer of the Brooklawn Republican Committee, argued that active committee members were kept out of the vote because Stuart’s county meetings took place on the same day as Gloucester City Council meetings. Active county committee members running for city council opted to attend those meetings instead of Stuart’s, Twyford said.

“Just because they’re not participating in her process doesn’t mean they’re not participating in the process,” he argued.

Blake Przybyszewski, a Stuart supporter who chairs the Camden County Young Republicans and Bellmawr Republican Party, said he believes Stuart’s rule was “100% fair.”

“She said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna let the people vote. We’re gonna let the people decide, but we’re gonna let the people that are actually involved in this thing, that actually show up, to be the decision makers,‘” said Przybyszewski, who is running for Bellmawr City Council.

Stuart argues that she was within her rights to make the rules for the convention since the group’s bylaws do not require a convention at all. But she admits she could have “crossed my T’s and dotted my I’s” better.

“Could we have done it differently? Absolutely,” she said. “… Are we going to make mistakes? Absolutely. You know, somebody was supposed to bring a sealed ballot box. They didn’t. So we used a box-box. Can we tweak those things? 1,000% we can, but the fact that we had a convention for the first time in 20 years, to me, that’s a huge win.”