Assemblyman responds to exec. editor’s column Your Turn Joseph Azzolina Guest Column I read Gregory Bean’s June 15 column in your Greater Media Newspapers and found it to be your usual bias as the editor of these weekly newspapers in Monmouth-Middlesex counties. Your venomous attacks against the Bayshore Courier and Jim Purcell, the publisher of the Courier, were once again off the wall and off the mark. You and your papers have been promoting Monmouth County Freeholder Amy Handlin for years. It was no surprise that you ripped into the Courier to destroy my reputation for the purpose of influencing the outcome of a primary election. You never once mentioned Handlin’s many conflicts of interest as the chair of the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders Finance Committee during her more than 15 years on the board. You never mentioned the fact that I launched “government ethics reforms” more than two years ago as an assemblyman — long before Handlin got around to it only after the FBI sting that led to the arrest of several local and county officials in Monmouth County. Where has Handlin been all these years? Out to lunch, obviously. I have a clean record as a public office holder in the state Legislature for 24 years. What is Handlin’s record as a freeholder when it comes to “cleaning house” as a county official? She woke up only after the FBI rounded up a bunch of government officials in her own backyard that she voted for the positions they held. Handlin was no reformer. She immediately became an “opportunistic reformer” when she ran for an Assembly seat in the 13th Legislative District. She won by some 500 votes by accusing me of destroying Middletown with a proposed town center in that township, which is an absolute lie. A town center is what Middletown wanted for many years, until Handlin joined forces with some local opposition several years after my family submitted an application to the Middletown Zoning Board. Then all hell broke loose with lies, deception and outright fraud. Check the record: A town center is not a “mall” or a “megamall.” Check your dictionary. Town centers are like a compact hub, a village of diversity — Main Street, USA. They have been supported in New Jersey by state, county and local planning officials since 1993. You and your papers have done everything you can to damage and destroy our family’s reputation and business. You don’t like us because our company doesn’t place our Foodtown advertising in your papers. We advertise in several daily papers and other weekly papers, but not your throwaway weeklies. The Courier is not a “throwaway paper.” It is mostly a subscription-based publication. People buy it because they want to read it. Your papers are politically driven propaganda machines. For years, you have been Handlin’s media “mouthpiece” so you can use her to destroy our family’s proposed town center at Middletown, and the Courier. You have viciously attacked Jim Purcell, the publisher of the Courier, in a two-way battle for years. If you think Purcell is playing “dirty politics,” then you must have taught him all the dirty tricks, because he worked for you as a reporter. He learned from his mentor how to get down and dirty in destroying your competition. Your Greater Media Newspapers should be kicked out of the New Jersey Press Association as active members. You are a disgrace as an editor, slinging mud at everything that displeases you, right or wrong. That’s not the way I have operated as a successful businessman over the past half-century and state legislator since 1966. I do not tell Purcell what to do. He’s on his own. I don’t even read his columns. And I don’t read your columns, Greg Bean, unless someone tells me you’re attacking me again. I am much too busy running my businesses with some 1,200 employees, and working as a public servant in the Legislature and bringing the New Jersey battleship to her home state, a campaign that began in 1976. In your June 15 column, you imply I had something to do with a political Web site that was attacking Amy Handlin, your chosen candidate for an Assembly seat in the Legislature. Yet you wrote, “Azzolina has not been tied directly to that nastiness.” Jim Devine, the Web site owner, clearly stated in the press I had absolutely nothing to do with that political Web site. You know that. Your papers published that denial when the Web site was exposed. The accusations against me were baseless. No facts. Just your poisonous bias at play once again in your weekly column. Enough is enough! Stop being a crybaby. Your boss should fire you for what you and your papers have done to smear my family, our businesses, and me. This is the worst kind of slanderous, yellow journalism. Maybe that’s the reason you don’t sell your newspapers, but rather throw them away on people’s sidewalks, driveways and front lawns. Who wants to read that kind of trash week after week? And that’s exactly what it is — trash (garbage!) Finally, I hope you have the guts to print what I say. You’ve wasted a lot of ink in your newspapers trashing my family businesses and me. But will you give us “equal time” in your papers, in the same spirit as the professional press? Let’s see what you’re really made of, Greg Bean! Joseph Azzolina is a state Assembly-man representing the 13th District, which covers parts of Middlesex and Monmouth counties. He is a resident of Middletown.