By ALAN KARMIN
Correspondent
In a Facebook Live video posted on his personal Facebook page, former Woodbridge Township Council President and current volunteer firefighter Ken Gardner explains why he filed formal misconduct charges against his former friend and current Woodbridge Mayor John McCormac.
“It appears that Mayor John McCormac may have committed official misconduct in office,” Gardner said in the video. “I was in line for a position at New Jersey Transit with a salary of approximately $140,000. According to former Governor’s Chief of Staff Peter Cammarano, McCormac blocked me from that position. I was later offered a position [in the purchasing department] at the Turnpike Authority for $58,000. McCormac acted in a manner to hurt me in the amount of $82,000 per year.”
During the course of the video, Gardner plays an audio recording of a conversation he had with a person believed to be McCormac at the firehouse. The person is heard to say, “You want to someday let me help you and you came out against my project so forget it. Forget it. How can I help you when you came out against my project?”
When Gardner appears to ask, “What do you mean ‘helped me’?” the person believed to be McCormac responded, “Help you? I got you a Turnpike job; you’re trying to get me to get you a promotion, and you come out against my project. Don’t even talk to me anymore. I’m done with you.”
Gardner asserts that McCormac has been vindictive and has used his political influence and power to block his ascension to higher paying positions as a result of Gardner’s public opposition to expanding development projects in the community.
As the conversation in the firehouse got heated, Gardner can be heard saying, “Listen, you’re in my firehouse. If you want to leave, leave.”
The person fired back, “I’m not leaving. I’m the mayor … everything’s mine.”
The latest clash is over a proposed residential complex to be built in an area which had been occupied by commercial business for years and where traffic has been of growing concern. Gardner alleges that this is the latest opposition of his to an “unchecked McCormac” which has resulted in direct retaliation to him.
McCormac allies dismiss it all as rhetoric and a “desperate attention-getting exercise.”
Gardner’s Facebook post asks for people to provide donations for his campaign to again run for First Ward Council.
McCormac replied, “It’s a shame that Mr. Gardner secretly recorded me and now everyone he encounters will have to worry if he’s taping them. I would never stand in anybody’s way who’s looking for a job and would help somebody if I could. I wish he would just leave me alone and get a job on his own.”
- Jennifer Amato contributed to this story.