While many residents of Elizabeth, Union, Roselle, and Kenilworth have struggled with low wages, declining quality of life, and rising inflation, 2022 was a banner year for Senator Joseph P. Cryan, when the politician pocketed at least $1.1 million.
Cryan has a compensation package of $273,704 in 2023 as executive director at the Middlesex County Utilities Authority, where the average annual wage is $77,458.
Cryan has a base salary of $208,840 with $65,625 in other compensation, which is paid on top of his $49,000 state Senate paycheck.
The state Senator also reportedly made a profit of close to $800,000 last year on the sale of his Pennsylvania home in Carbon County. Critics say Cryan turned that property into cash rather than run the risk of needing to explain to voters why 70 percent of his real estate assets were in Pennsylvania.
Cryan sold the property at 122 S. Lake Drive, Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania for which he paid $593,000 in March 2018, to Joseph Balbi for $1.4 million. Balbi, of Allentown, is the owner of Thrifty Car Sales of Coopersburg and Thrifty Car Sales of Easton.
Despite his apparent greed and a host of scandalous episodes that have been revealed in the past, the Union County political establishment never seemed to even consider distancing itself from the perverted politician.
Cryan sent more than 150 emails to Karen Golding, a lobbyist that the Union County politician allegedly beat up for having an abortion after he impregnated her in 2004.
Cryan, “has an insatiable lust for bondage, oral sex and spanking,” according to a report in the New York Post after the newspaper obtained a trove of secret e-mails.
“Assemblyman Joe Cryan, of Union, graphically spelled out his kinky proclivities in more than 150 e-mails that he sent to a lobbyist — and then fought to keep them hidden after he stunned the state political world by having her busted for stalking in 2006,” said the New York Post report. “After her arrest, Karen Golding said that they were intimately involved — and that she had the e-mails to prove it. Cryan has denied the relationship.”
“’Available for a bj this morning?’ Cryan lustfully queried. ‘I’m really hard and horny’,” said the Post. “The e-mails were written when the pol presumably would have been at one of his government jobs — either his $49,000-a-year Assembly gig or his $111,000-a-year post as Union County undersheriff.”
Neither his apparent lies about the affair nor his perverse abuse of taxpayer-funded computers and time on the public payroll had any negative consequences for Cryan, who was promoted to Democratic Party chairman, Union County Sheriff, and ultimately the New Jersey Senate, where he makes $49,000 on top of his salary of $273,704 from the Middlesex County Utilities Authority.
Cryan is being challenged by Angela Alvey-Wimbush, a 3-term Roselle Board of Education commissioner who is seeking the Democratic nomination for state Senator to represent Elizabeth, Union, Kenilworth, and Roselle.
In sharp contrast with the greedy incumbent, Alvey-Wimbush is a volunteer on the school board, serving in the elected post without compensation. She previously worked as a teacher for over 28 years, but now operates her own business without imposing any cost on taxpayers.