Allegedly racist ex-Councilman is Ron Paul backer

Remember Marc Moran, who resigned his seat on the Hopewell Borough Council in July 2003 after newspapers broke the story that he was the member of the National Alliance, a self-proclaimed anti-Black, anti-Jewish organization, with a long paper trail of essays that demonstrate some significant hatred toward minorities?  Moran hasn’t left politics completely: he gave $2,300 to Ron Paul’s campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Moran, a Republican, had been appointed one week earlier to fill a vacancy after both parties failed to conduct any type of vetting process. Moran’s history was easily available through a simple Google search.

Hopewell has settled down a bit, but five years ago it was a hotbed of local controversy.  Deputy Mayor Marylou Ferrara, a Democrat, had accused Republican Councilwoman Arlene Kemp of stealing her day planner. Surveillance tapes of the municipal building show Kemp taking Ferrara's planner; Ferrara says the tape shows Kemp to be deliberate in her theft, but Kemp's attorney says the tape shows it was clearly an accident. The tape is a series of frozen frames, not continuous video. Kemp was the subject of another controversy in 2003, dubbed gavelgate by some locals, when she took the gavel away from the Mayor during a meeting and refused to give it back. And Hopewell Township is the home of Councilman Jon Edwards, who got into trouble this year when he accused a lawyer of offering him a campaign contribution in exchange for local legal work and then, as part of a legal settlement, had to say that it never happened.