UPDATED: Challenger Candidates in BOE Race Will File Complaint Over Campaign Signs

The campaign manager for the opposition candidates running for seats on the Barnegat Board of Education said the challengers plan to file a complaint against former Township Committee member and current Democratic candidate for State Senate Dorothy Ryan after Ryan pulled up their campaign signs at the entrance to the Heritage Bay development where she lives Friday.

Scott Sarno, who has helped run the campaign for his brother Shannon Sarno and running mates Alice Olker and Rob Oden, said he’d noticed the opposition campaign’s signs were disappearing from the Heritage Bay entrance throughout the campaign. When he drove by Friday evening, he said he saw Ryan pulling up the Olker, Sarno and Oden campaign signs at the development’s entrance and throwing them into the woods next door.

Sarno said he confronted her and then went to the police.

Lt. Patrick Shaffery of the Barnegat police said Ptl. Lauren Keilitz investigated, and while Ryan said she had pulled up signs, the issue was settled to the satisfaction of both parties.

Ryan said she got fed up with seeing Sarno put campaign signs at the entrance to the neighborhood, a practice she said the development’s committee of homeowners frowns upon. For weeks, she said, Sarno would come by and plant a lawn sign; the incumbents didn’t put any up there at first. 

“Every time I saw it I moved it,” she said. “Most of the time I took it and put it in the empty lot (nearby) where his larger sign is. I never destroyed his signs.”

On Friday, she said, she was on her way back from services at St. Mary’s Church when she noticed a blue-and-white Olker, Sarno and Oden sign was back. This time, the sign was secured with plastic zip ties and wire.

“He had put it there so that it couldn’t be moved,” she said. “I did get it out and I tossed it.”

A campaign sign supporting incumbents Lisa Becker, Armando Quiroz IV and Denise Pilovsky had also showed up. She moved it back to the property line, but “I didn’t toss that, because they weren’t as abrasive as (Sarno) was,” she said.

When Keilitz showed up to speak to her about the signs, Ryan said she was straightforward about the incident. She didn't want any signs on Heritage Bay property, no matter whose they were.

“There's no law that says you can't touch those signs," Ryan said. "If it were my lawn, he’d have to get my consent to put it here, and I’m taking and applying that same philosophy. That’s Heritage Bay’s lawn out there.”

Ryan said she didn’t even place her own campaign signs at the development’s entrance when she was running for Township Committee. “They don’t belong there,” she said.

Ryan said she’ll just ignore the signs from here on out – a necessary campaign evil in her eyes, she said, and one she still doesn’t want to see on her neighborhood’s property. 

As for the police, “I’m just very sorry that they had to be involved in something that’s so petty,” she said. 

But Sarno said the issue isn’t over for his brother and the other challenger candidates. After discussing it, they decided to file a formal complaint, he said.

“Since that incident, our signs in that area have been touched again,” said Sarno. “I’m not saying it’s her, but they have been taken out and moved and placed behind the other ticket’s signs.”

The candidates agreed that “the only way to stop people from doing this is to hold them accountable,” Sarno said. He’ll go with Olker ­– the only challenger candidate currently in town ­– to the police station today, he said, because he witnessed the original incident.

Sarno said he and his brother have found their signs pulled up all over town. The candidates on the other ticket have claimed the same has happened to their lawn signs.

“I don’t blame the candidates,” Sarno said. Anyone could be doing it. But he’d like to see the other side recognize the action as wrong. 

“(Ryan) is part of the Barnegat Democratic Club,” he said. “Armando is the president and Lisa is the secretary. They should be taking a stance and saying we don’t support this type of action in support of our campaign. It’s not the Democratic process.”

"We're not asking anyone to do that," Becker said when asked for comment about the incident. "We don't want people to do that."

The fact that she and Armando share a party with Ryan was of no consequence, she said. Based on what she understood of what happened, Becker said it sounded like a Barnegat resident just got fed up with signs on private property – signs that she said the challenger candidates put up weeks before they were allowed to by law.

"This has nothing to do with who's in what club," said Becker. "It had to do with signs on peoples' property for going on seven weeks now."