The sentencing for Sean Caddle, the New Jersey political consultant who pleaded guilty to hiring hitmen to kill his associate Michael Galdieri in 2014, has been rescheduled to Dec. 7.
Caddle’s sentencing hearing was initially scheduled for June 7, but his attorney said in court that he is collaborating with the FBI in an important investigation,” although the nature of his cooperation arrangement remains undisclosed.
Caddle pleaded guilty before Judge John Michael Vazquez in January, less than one month after former state Senator Raymond Lesniak paid him to influence the Bayonne mayoral election through a super PAC.
Caddle, 44, whose October guilty plea to conspiracy to commit murder was made public by federal authorities on January 25, 2022, was a longtime Lesniak associate.
The super PAC was financed largely by the developer who stood to profit from a construction deal at the former Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne (MOTBY), the 432-acre site that hangs like a fruit to be plucked by Wasseem Boraie if Bayonne Mayor James Davis is re-elected to a third term.
Bayonne City Council President and mayoral candidate Sharon Ashe-Nadrowski, who is also a commissioner on the Planning Board, criticized the deal between Bayonne Partners Urban Renewal, a subsidiary owned by Boraie, who donated $25,000 to Government for the People, the Lesniak-controlled super PAC that paid Caddle $2,500 shortly before his guilty plea in the murder plot became public.
Caddle told a federal judge he hired George Bratsenis and another man, Bomani Africa, to murder Michael Galdieri, son of a onetime Democratic state senator and one of Caddle’s former employees.
He managed Lesniak’s 2017 gubernatorial campaign, aided the power broker in a successful takeover of Elizabeth’s school board and operated a number of super PACs that used dark money—largely unreported revenue—to buy influence from corrupt politicians.
Caddle is out on a $1 million bond under house arrest in his Hamburg, Sussex County, residence, wearing an ankle monitor and awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to federal charges of conspiring to commit murder for hire.
He potentially faces life in prison but a plea bargain calls for him to be sentenced to 12 to 25 years.
According to his bio on a defunct website for his consulting firm, Arkady LLC, Caddle first got involved as a volunteer on political campaigns in the late 90s and eventually began working as a field organizer for late Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham.
He then served as the Hudson County field director for Jim McGreevey’s successful 2001 gubernatorial campaign before then-U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez, also the chair of the Hudson County Democratic Organization, named Caddle their executive director.
Caddle received $63,175.09 for running Menendez’s 2004 re-election campaign, when the Congressman received a challenge from a relatively unknown young upstart challenger Steven Fulop, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Since 2013, Caddle was a key player in Union County, where he was paid millions of dollars from Lesniak and his firm, Arkady, made at least a dozen payments totaling $46,000 to Democratic operative Antonio Teixeira and his late wife, Marlenes, between May 2015 and September 2017.
Lesniak dismissed payments to Teixeira and questions about the Committee for Economic Growth and Social Justice, a super PAC that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in New Jersey in 2013 and 2014.
Teixeira, who is known in political circles as “Tony Tex,” was chief of staff to Lesniak at the time of those payments. Teixeira now heads the Democratic Party in Elizabeth — New Jersey’s fourth-largest city — and he is chief of staff to Sen. Nicholas “No-Show Nick” Scutari, the president of the state Senate.
There is speculation that Caddle is sharing information about Menendez, Scutari, Teixeira, Davis or Lesniak —and he may have worn a wire over a period of several months—but it seems that revelations about any investigation could still be months away.
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