Dan Gallic

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

Even after today’s filing deadline, it seems like everybody still wants to change the candidates in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. At least a few high ranking Republican activists are hoping that they can convince Goya Foods heir Andy Unanue to drop out, but his friend and advisor, Bergen County Republican Chairman Rob Ortiz, said that’s not going to happen.

“Andy has no intention of stepping down,” he said.

Unanue, entered the race just two weeks ago as the party’s darling but quickly fell from grace amidst questions about his residency and allegations stemming from an intra-family business dispute.

Some Republicans say that Unanue is upset at the national Republicans’ all out effort to push biotech millionaire John Crowley into the race, which went so far as to have John McCain and Rudy Giuliani call him and urge him to run.  What’s unclear is whether that anger will make Unanue more or less likely to forego his run.

According to Ortiz, however, Unanue isn’t mad.

Two of Joseph Pennacchio’s top staffers have left the campaign.  Yesterday was the last day for communications director Chris Pordon and Sean DiSomma, the political and field director.  Pennacchio’s campaign manager, Dan Gallic, says that the two operatives were only signed on through the convention. 

Republican strategist Dan Gallic, who is running Joe Pennacchio’s campaign for U.S. Senate, was the subject of a Trentonian story that he posted a “racially charged version of the ant-and-the-grasshopper parable” political cartoon on a conservative website.  Gallic is also the Robbinsville Economic Development Coordinator.

Republican insiders seem a bit underwhelmed by their choice of candidates to challenge Democratic U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg next year – neither Anne Evans Estabrook, a millionaire developer making her first bid for public office, or Joseph Pennacchio, a dentist and four-term Assemblyman who won a State Senate seat last month, seem to have been successful in convincing Republicans that they can beat Lautenberg next year. 

“It's the choice between Forrester-Lite and Diet Schundler,” one Republican County Chairman told PolitickerNJ.com.