TOMS RIVER, NJ (OP-ED) – In a recent comment session with residents on social media, progressive Democrat Ben Giovine said he can use his expertise working under Congressman Andy Kim to help secure federal funding to help Toms River in the future.
Giovine boasted that his skills as a top Democrat party insider would not only help get federal funding, but he would work his insider-baseball magic to convince Governor Phil Murphy to fix the state’s broken school funding system and restore money to Toms River.
The question is, why hasn’t Giovine done any of this during his five years with Andy Kim and years already served as a school board president for the Toms River Board of Education?
Ben Giovine was the school board president in 2017 when Phil Murphy started cutting the Toms River School District budget. With the effort of local Republican legislators in Trenton, the district was able to get $3.3 million of that money back, but since then the district has faced cut after cut by Giovine’s Democrat allies in Trenton.
Giovine started working for Kim in 2019 and hasn’t done much for the Toms River school district since, but now, he’s saying he can pull the strings and change years worth of Phil Murphy school aid cuts, something his Democrat counterparts in Brick Township, with close ties to the Murphy administration couldn’t accomplish.
He’s also saying he can get federal funding for projects in Toms River. Kim was the congressman for Toms River for years before redistricting sent him to Burlington and Mercer Counties. Why didn’t Ben Giovine secure any federal funding for his hometown through his congressional links when he actually represented the town at the federal level?
Ben Giovine has always been good at blowing smoke. He managed to hide his DUI and financial woes from the public while he managed over a hundred million dollars of school board funding and he’s trying to once again fleece the voters to become mayor of Toms River.
The truth is, he supports Mo Hill’s plan to turn downtown Toms River into a city, he supports sanctuary state status, he’s anti-gun, supports Governor Phil Murphy’s agenda, and will push that agenda locally in Toms River if he wins.