A controversial political endorsement is casting a harsh light on the moral and ethical calculations defining a high-stakes congressional primary.
State Sen. Joseph Cryan, a sexual pervert and crooked politician whose career is a ledger of exploitation and salacious behavior conducted on the taxpayer’s dime, has endorsed warmongering millionaire carpetbagger Rebecca Bennett, a candidate who has raised serious questions about her Democratic alignment.
This partnership underscores a transactional brand of politics that prioritizes power over principle.
Cryan: A Record of Workplace Perversion and Systemic Exploitation
The foundation of Cryan’s influence is built upon a well-documented history of misconduct and greed.
His tenure is irrevocably stained by the hundreds of sexually explicit emails he exchanged with a lobbyist at Prudential, communications that occurred during official government work hours.
This was not a personal failing but a professional dereliction, a salacious use of public time and resources that revealed a profound contempt for his office.
When the personal relationship soured, Cryan weaponized his political connections to initiate a criminal stalking case against his lobbyist ex-girlfriend while publicly denying their romance — a lie laid bare by the email evidence published in a bombshell New York Post article by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Josh Margolin.
This pattern of exploiting power for personal ends extends to his finances. Cryan is a serial exploiter of taxpayers, drawing dual public salaries that exemplify systemic greed.
He collects a $49,000 legislative salary on top of a $305,456 paycheck from the Middlesex County Utilities Authority, where he takes four times the average MCUA employee wage.
Cryan is also a posterboy for nepotism, with at least 10 family members in taxpayer-funded jobs, funneling more than $1 million annually into his own kinship network.
Cryan’s embrace of Bennett is widely viewed as yet another attempt to muscle Senate President Nicholas Scutari out of power as the Union County Democratic Chairman.
Bennett: The Corporate-Funded Protégé
Bennett, the recipient of Cryan’s endorsement, presents a problematic fit for the Democratic electorate.
A pharmaceutical industry executive and a Texas native, her political inspiration is the late Republican Sen. John McCain, a telling indicator of her centrist, hawkish ideology.
Her personal wealth — a $400,000 household income combined with a $1.8 million investment portfolio heavily weighted in fossil fuels and pharmaceuticals — is a stark contrast with the economic realities of the working-class district she seeks to represent.
Her campaign, funded significantly by corporate PAC money and backed by networks associated with conservative Democrats, is viewed by progressive critics as a project to maintain a status quo that benefits entrenched interests.
By aligning with Cryan, Bennett has made a calculated decision to embrace institutionalized corruption, betting that his political machine can deliver votes despite the repugnance of his record.
Cryan, a Catholic, cast the deciding vote to help former Republican Governor Chris Christie to shut down six Planned Parenthood clinics. His anti-abortion record and history of rank misogyny make his endorsement an albatross for Bennett in a race against several pro-choice Democratic women.
Cryan has publicly declared that he wants to outlaw abortion except in cases of incest, rape or the life of the woman is endangered.
Megan O’Rourke and Valentina Mendoza declined to comment, but front runner Brian Varela said, “I don’t think this endorsement is a net positive for their campaign. But who knows…”
A Calculated Bet Against Voter Scrutiny
The Cryan-Bennett alliance is a naked political transaction.
For Cryan, it is a chance to expand his waning influence and rehabilitate his image through association with a high-profile candidate.
For Bennett, it is the procurement of a local endorsement and a gateway to established party infrastructure, no matter how ethically compromised.
This pact operates on the assumption that voters are either inattentive or acquiescent, that traditional party machinery can override legitimate concerns about character and corruption.
It challenges the Democratic electorate to decide whether they will tolerate a candidate who seeks power through an alliance with a figure like Cryan — a politician whose legacy is defined by perversion, exploitation and the brazen conversion of public office into private gain.
Federal authorities investigated illegal political donations to Cryan, while he was an Assemblyman and also chairman of the State Democratic Committee, according to a 2007 New York Times report.
Two nonprofits—the Boys and Girls Clubs of Union County and the Center for Hope hospice—illegally gave Cryan over $3,000 after receiving roughly $1.5 million in state grants.
Those contributions violated federal tax law because nonprofit groups are prohibited from political giving. The probe, led by U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie, examined corrupt practices in which lawmakers steered grants to pet projects during state budget negotiations.
Cryan’s father was the Essex County Sheriff, until federal charges of conspiracy, extortion and bribery his bid for re‐election to a fourth term in 1979.
The indictment charged that Cryan and three codefendants — Harry Lerner, the former Democratic county chairman; Chief Inspector William J. Leonardis of the Sheriff’s Department and Undersheriff Rocco Neri — conspired over a decade to “conduct the affairs of the sheriff’s office through a pattern of racketeering activity.”
The primary in New Jersey’s 7th District has thus become a referendum on more than policy; it is a test of what standards the party will enforce for those who seek to lead.
The outcome will reveal whether there remains a line that cannot be crossed, or if Democrats excuse moral and ethical failings in the pursuit of electoral victory as much as Trump Republicans.