Tom Gordon Must Resign at Once
Matthew Meyer has provided evidence of his residency in New Castle County, Delaware for the sufficient time period, according to the Department of Elections.
The Delaware Department of Elections has cleared Matthew Meyer from a residency challenge brought by to the Democratic primary loser County Executive Thomas Gordon. The issue was first questioned by WDEL several weeks ago, but not made official until Gordon filed the challenge.
“We have provided overwhelming evidence to elections officials proving that I meet the residency requirements to be our next County Executive. Today’s decision by the Department of Elections has put this matter to rest,” said Meyer in a written statement.
In a letter dated October 20, 2016, Meyer’s attorney, Charles J. Durante of Connolly Gallagher LLP, said Meyer has deep roots in Delaware, where he was raised, educated, and has lived continuously since September of 2011. The letter was in response to a residency challenge filed by Gordon’s attorney Sidney Liebesman, who claimed Meyer filed an individual non-resident income tax return, where he swore under the penalty of perjury that he was a non-resident of Delaware for the “full-year” of 2011.
The letter from Durante accuses Gordon of using a present or former state employee to disclose confidential tax return information in violation of state law.
“That Mr. Gordon was able to cite information on Mr. Meyer’s 2011 return is ominous, in ways that go beyond this matter,” said Durante. “Delaware law strictly requires the continuing confidentiality of all tax return information.”
“(This) speaks darkly about Mr. Gordon’s tactics and suggests the use of criminal acts in support of his desperate effort to capsize the determination of the voters in last month’s primary,” said Durante.
Indeed. Thomas P. Gordon must resign his office this evening. I don’t care if he has already lost and that he will only be in the job for a few more weeks. This little stunt points to his irredeemable corruption and narcissism. He has now shown he will do anything to hold onto power, so God knows what files he is destroying as we speak.
Adding to this tale:
It is pretty tawdry that the NJ did not include any information on Meyer’s Driver’s license in their stories, the way that WDEL did. It is a Federally qualified license, which means you have to prove both citizenship and residency. I also want to know if they asked Gordon how he would know anything at all about Meyer’s taxes, because accessing those except for tax purposes is a No No.
Frankly, I don’t get why Meyer had to provide to Manlove anything other than his license — surely she could get verified that he had it since September 2011. So right now, Matt Meyer has provided to the DOE more information than you have to give to E-Verify for employment.
This evening? That hardly leaves him time to stop up the toilents and krazy-glue all the locks.
.
I think many of us were ready to let the dirty dogs lay and give Mr. Gordon a chance to enjoy a legacy for the few good things he had done, suppressing the bad memories. This nasty and dishonest action changes everything.
Now, it is time to start the federal investigation of his involvement in the illegal activities. Go after the person who illegally accessed the tax information, file charges, and let them sing like a canary about links to Gordon or his cronies.
Then go after Tim Mullaney for having a county attorney and former DAG work on this on County time. Oh, and check to make sure that her husband that serves as the State Solicitor for Matt Denn was not complicit in the acts.
And there is lots more. County staff will likely talk soon as they see the end of the iron fist of Gordon.
Do what should have been a long time ago, and put these abusive people in jail.
I agree completely. I was willing to let this all go knowing he got his ass handed to him at the polls. Now I want him destroyed.
I’ve heard that when you compare the weekly, monthly and yearly budgets for certain departments, that they are not adding up. When you figure in the FOIA request denials, positions given to unqualified individuals and all around corrupt behaviors over the last four years, I pray whoever wins does a full audit.
“County staff will likely talk soon as they see the end of the iron fist of Gordon.”
They thought they saw the end of him years ago, but he came back.
I don’t know what system was accessed for the data, but newer systems are supposed to have an audit trail to log access to each account, and access is supposed to be restricted to those who need access for their jobs, so it should be a small group. At a minmum there should be an order to preserve evidence and then a forensic investigation of the system.
The News Journal sucks. They should just rename themselves The National Enquirer.
WOW! It is no surprise why people get disillusioned to want to participate in American government. We are losing our kids in the streets, we have people in need of educational support to be globally competitive. This kind of stuff makes people raise their hands up and say, “What’s the point?”
Unfortunately, the county employees are partly responsible for putting him back in office. Also, as much as he wants to stay in office, I can guarantee you that much of this push to hold on is coming from the fools who surround him because they don’t want to lose their meal ticket. He is definitely a bad actor, but he has always been steered by those who want to use him for their own gain. He loves to hear how great he is and how he is the only one who can do the job, so he turns a blind eye to the how and why. That is also how he puts some separation between their illegal actions and his “mere” complicity. Essentially, if you work for him and make a great salary, you are also required to be a scapegoat and take the fall, no matter what. Meanwhile, he’ll cut a deal and get away with a slap on the wrist.
That cannot happen again.
Enough with making excuses for Tommy G. It’s always somebody else’s fault he behaved badly — Sherry made him do it, his well-paid staff talked him into it. The bottom line is he’s a weak-willed, corrupt little cop who’ll do whatever he has to do to get his way and cheat the system. He’s unfit for public service. He’s a wimp.
No excuses, and I agree. It is all his fault. What makes it worse, is that he allows others to do the heavy lifting and take the ultimate fall, while he just slips away to Hockessin.
I can only hope that there’s a watchdog keeping an eye on everything from the County’s reserves to the number of paper clips in the supply closet.
Nobody knows how to loot and keep it hidden better than a phalanx of ex-cops.
BTW, I’d love for Meyer, on his first day in office, to bar county cops from living rent-free due to the largesse of their ‘benefactors’, aka people who are above the law b/c they have a cop watching out for them.
Oh, and a note about Manlove. No surprise here that she subjected Meyer to closer scrutiny than she did Park Slope Cathy. Fortunately, Matt had the proof. Park Slope Cathy didn’t need any. And didn’t have any. Political hack who Carney won’t touch.
Speaking of which, there’s no way that Carney will hire Gordon, but what about all those ex-cops who got the big bucks jobs in Gordon’s administration? Keep an eye on where they land. Betcha it won’t be the unemployment rolls. Hmm, I wonder if Mike P has already been contacted. And then there’s BHL’s husband…
El Som,
There’s a residency requirement for most city jobs and I suspect that few of Gordon’s lackeys would meet that criterion. (Yes, I know there’s a grace period and there have been instances of others trying to wriggle around it, but you can be certain that Amy Cherry — and maybe even the News Journal — will be watching.)
Gordon shit the bed on this one, no doubt. But. Please know, We Did Not Dodge The Bullet in the Form Of KHN.
For all of the focus on Tom Gordon, this blog has given their once-favorite target Karen Hartley-Nagle a pass this election cycle. Or did I miss a post or two?
KHN new fans over here may want to listen to former CAO Grimaldi’s audio recordings now available on Soundcloud between Vince D’Anna, Grimaldi and Hartley-Nagle exhibiting her multi-year attempts to worm her way into Team Gordon Executive Assistant appointment.
https://www.facebook.com/sharon.hughes.520562/posts/10210851171416661?pnref=story
Thank you Sharon Hughes for speaking truth to power, such as it is.
https://soundcloud.com/user-994332106
Wasn’t Delaware Way blogger Nancy Willing also trying to work her way into a paid lobbying job with Gordon for NCC? Hopefully all will come clean.
I don’t know who KHN’s new fans are over here, but I’m going to comment on this anyway. What is interesting here is listening to D’Anna’s basic transactional approach here, D’Anna schooling Grimaldi on the challenges of the Port deal, and his agency on behalf of KHN which had me wondering why he was doing this middleman thing.
Still, I can’t imagine who is surprised that KHN wanted a job with Gordon after he won. Besides, my experience with people who insist on a job after a campaign were likely promised one. Or were led to believe that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I had heard the story about Nancy Willing angling for a paid lobbyist job for NCCo too. From two different people at the county.
C’mon, Nancy. There’s a big difference between a know-nothing at-large council “president” and a crooked county executive. The latter can cause all sorts of problems. The former is just a wasted salary.
As conclusive evidence of that, Chris Bullock filled the post — I refuse to say “did the job” — for the past four years, and nobody noticed.
Is there a Republican running against KHN, or is this another one of those in which Copeland’s DEGOP couldn’t be bothered?
Tom Kovach was mulling a write-in campaign, and we’ve had tips to DL claiming that Nancy Willing (President of the Progressive Democrats of Delaware) was cheering Kovach on.
That’s right. This one caught them sleeping.
“I had heard the story about Nancy Willing angling for a paid lobbyist job for NCCo too. From two different people at the county.”
Really? Do spill. I would love to see any evidence of that since it is utter fabrication.
I advise you take anything you hear from your two sources with a grain of salt, Miss Cassandra.
And D’Oh, I was definitely edging Kovach on to a run against KHN. It is in the News Journal letters to the editor published last Saturday.
To the anony above and the line about that know-nothing council president – is No One considering the scenario where if Meyer somehow is in fact found to not comply with residency requirements that Delaware law as exists now would automatically elevate KHN to the Executive post a la Paul Clark and Chris Coons?
To affirm: I have nothing personally to gain from exposing this crap pile of a council president. But thanks for the warning Cassandra. I will keep a close eye on your reported Tips from NCC for the rest of the nasty sure to come.
Nancy,
Why do you refuse to accept the primary election results and the Department of Elections ruling? Meyer satisfies the residency requirements. There is no chance of this happening.
Choice that Nancy “I repeat Everything I hear” Willing is warning me about sources. These sources told me this years ago — sometime after Gordon got back into office. I didn’t repeat it here, because — Why Bother? Plus I’ve been writing about other info coming from sources in NCCo for awhile. You can save your “close eye” for your own posts, I’m thinking.
Meyer has passed the residency test. Which isn’t to say that Gordon won’t keep his jihad going here. KHN as NCCo Exec is really far-fetched at this point. If Nancy is still here trying to stir up the potential of KHN as a real possibility to run the county, then you can pretty safely assume she is still shilling for Gordon.
Like everything in the Gordon era, every chickenshit rule will be enforced while the executive’s frequent bouts of unethical behavior are to be overlooked.
If it seems Trumpian, that’s because it’s straight authoritarianism, no chaser.
All authoritarians are ultimately alike, which is why Trump’s babbling seems fascist. That’s Trump’s whole secret. By never actually speaking coherently, people fill in the blanks with what they want to hear.
And apparently the icing on the cake is that the executive will be conducting a scorched earth campaign as he winds his way out of office.
I didn’t know who Sharon Hughes is, but Google sent me to Celia Cohen’s place:
A correspondent tells me that KHN ran this campaign for Ms. Hughes. So I don’t quite get the thru-line here.
You will all miss Tom when your TAXES go up
I would gladly have voted for my taxes to go up if all it did was get rid of Gordon.
If I were to run some kind of program to word search agitprop here, the comments by Cassandra it would come up sizzling, no?
“You will all miss Tom when your TAXES go up”
Damn straight. What’s a little dodgy spending when taxes stay the same?
Sure, he played funny with county money. But look what a good deal you got on that graft:
He funneled $6 million to a couple of well-connected farmers (you don’t get on all those state boards if you’re not well-connected), and paid for a dubious stock exchange deal for another $3 million. There are lots of other things you could find with a finer-toothed comb, but let’s round it off at $10 million. The county’s budget is $267 million a year. Those are one-time expenses, mostly, so that’s about 1% of the $1 billion that ran through county operating accounts in his four-year term.
Where else are you going to get a deal like that? No tax increases for you, and all it costs is $10 million in indefensible spending. Any big city in the country would throw a parade if they could get the money wasted on graft below 10% of the budget.
Looked at the right way, Tom Gordon was a bargain.
“A correspondent tells me that KHN ran this campaign for Ms. Hughes.”
That must have been a fustercluck.
A word search of agitprop? I guess that could be a thing. But that would also require an evaluation of context and we are right back to me advising you to pay attention to your own posts, Nancy.
That must have been a fustercluck.
That’s the thing here. It is all starting to look a little too much like All My Children for my taste.
Cassandra M – I’m the one who brought the complaint against my previous employer, former NCC council member, Chris Roberts. My experience as his Legislative Aide was one in which many women still struggle with in their jobs, communities and personal lives. As a woman, I felt objectified and his behavior was outrageous at times. If there was another way to resolve the situation, believe me, I tried more than anyone will ever know.
The lawsuit was about Chris Roberts. Nobody else. The facts were long since buried under the layers of innuendo, facts were omitted, changed and reframed by those who had a vested interest in my case fitting an entirely different narrative.
I shared those audio tapes because I’m no longer willing to remain silent when people continue to use my name attached to a case that is now 15 years old. I’ve been collateral damage to those who lack integrity or decency. My privacy was trashed, I was painted as a willing participant in the most repulsive scenarios created by people that victimized me over and over and over again.
I ran for Newark City Council in 2005 and Vince D’Anna was a friend at that time. Jerry Clifton had resigned and it was expected that I would be the next council member. However, Stephanie Hanson and Chris Roberts contacted several members of council and administration to let them know I was indicted along with the Gordon/Freebery administration and would be in jail within 6 months. The person who advised me of what happened was a council member at that time. Jerry Clifton suddenly had a write in campaign and he won. Vince D’Anna was a staunch defender of my reputation and he was outraged over the way this happened and also included his disgust with the News Journal. They referenced the case with my name over and over again through the years. Yet, not once, EVER, did the NJ or anyone else contact me or give me the respect/opportunity to respond to the lies.
I ran again in 2014 and Jerry Clifton campaigned for the guy he wanted to win. I was still being punished by the politics of how women are treated for standing up against harassment. The NJ and even the Post once again referenced the case and my name. Why?
Karen and Vince ran my campaign in 2014. Not once, not ever, did they EVER suggest that I had a sexual relationship with Gordon as they claimed later. Karen then later put the story out there that I had confided this salacious story of a backseat rendezvous with Gordon and she even added a detail that I shared this in front of her young daughter over dinner! Slanderous and despicable lie.
I considered Karen and Vince my friends so the betrayal was especially cruel and shocking. I did confront each of them by phone within the past few months and Karen reacted like a lunatic, immediately began screaming at me with claims of it being a matter of public record. WTH?
The reason I posted those audio tapes made by Grimaldi was because I’m no longer willing to allow myself to be used in the disgraceful tactics of people who care nothing about me, my family or the truth. I’m not having a relationship with Gordon. I’ve never told Karen and her young daughter about any sexual tryst with Gordon. I’m bitter and hurt over the way Delaware politics, the NJ and politicians have continually trashed me, lied about me and attack me.
I have been through hell and 15 years of shaming, gossip and lies is a legacy and testament of Delaware politics as well as those of you who’re willing to be a part of this disgraceful treatment. I was a victim. That doesn’t change no matter how many times others claim otherwise and distort the facts.
Sharon, I am very sorry you were abused by your employer and further victimized by people you thought were friends. No one should have to live through that, certainly.
From where I sit — and I’ve written about this more than once — that there is a pretty remarkable amount of drama that surrounds Gordon and his political dealings. All of the court intrigue, whisperings, two-facedness and general backstabbing appears to be a hallmark of Gordon administrations (and campaigns) and this stuff spins out away from him like a hurricane — leaving a fair amount of damage in its wake. Your experience with sexual harrassment was separate from this, until the hurricane came through.
And the hurricane continues — because on FB today, another recording surfaced, this one with Gordon specifically denying the allegations of an affair, but also with you offering yourself as an agent against the people who are making these allegations.
So while you are more than entitled to defend yourself from the whispers and the general crazy, we can hear you offering to Gordon to be a part of the crazy. Now we have to sync up your offer to Gordon with this release of these KHN recordings. Well after an election when people may have been able to use this to consider her candidacy, I’ll note. But this stuff didn’t look especially good for him, either, so there’s that. This seems to be the major takeaway from the stuff Grimaldi has released so far — Gordon seems to surround himself with people who are pretty comfortable with the muck of court intrigue.
That said, I hope you find your way out of the Gordon hurricane and find some peace and maybe even motivation to run for office again.
The Godfather – is that you Vince? You’re pretty reckless with your disgusting comments.
Sharon Hughes statement conjures up that great quote from Hamlet “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” Next she’ll have us believe that Gordon didn’t screw Sherri, Cheryl and the cleaning lady
All this is more evidence, for those who collect it, that after 225 years of practice, Americans remain for the most part incapable of self-governance.
Hey, why drag the cleaning lady into this? She was just doing her job.
Cassandra – thank you for the response – I respect your opinions and will say you’re probably the first person ever to acknowledge the circumstances with honesty and genuine compassion. It’s appreciated more than you know – and a good start for me to shed the victim role and stand up against the hypocrisy.
I have no vested interest in whether Gordon remains in office or not. My goal is to shine the light on how destructive and powerful politics and newspapers can be. Thank you again.
I do wish to address the accusations regarding Nancy Willing looking for a lobbyist position – although Nancy and I have disagreed on various issues in the past, I still stand on the side of truth, regardless of any personal feelings.
This story about her is absolutely false. Whether anyone will accept it or not – please pause before running with it again. It never happened. Thanks all for allowing me to share here yesterday and again now.
I hope to leave you with a better understanding of who I am and what compelled me to post the audio clips, why I believe being honest is unpopular, leaves us exposed and ridiculed – many of you may have experienced that in your own lives. The benefit of truth allows all of us to weather any storms of opposition or attack. It still hurts but not as much as the humiliation one might feel once they’re exposed for being a liar.