Red Bank GOP council candidate James A. Coolahan today accused Mayor Pasquale Menna of having leaked information about financial difficulties Coolahan has experienced, in possible violation of attorney ethics rules.

Coolahan made the allegation in an interview this afternoon with redbankgreen, which had been alerted to a Monmouth County Sheriff’s sale listing of Coolahan’s residence by a reader. The reader said she happened upon Coolahan’s name while perusing the list for real estate bargains.

The county lists the sale of Coolahan’s William Street home as having been scheduled for Sept. 24 as a result of a $445,000 judgment.

Further investigation by redbankgreen uncovered a filing for federal bankruptcy court protection made by Coolahan last Friday. Download coolahan_ch_13_petition.pdf

In a telephone interview, Coolahan acknowledged the pendency of bankruptcy and county-court actions, though he said the sheriff’s sale has been postponed to a future date. He said that he is well on his way to getting his finances in order after a long string of medical problems, and added that he is hopeful of saving his home from a mortgage company that is his primary creditor.

He also said he had consulted with Menna, who is an attorney, about his financial situation, and accused Menna of having leaked the information to parties Coolahan didn’t identify.

“I guarantee you got it from somebody who got it from Pat Menna,” Coolahan said. “I haven’t heard it from anybody else. Who the hell peruses the foreclosures, other than real estate people?”

Reached at his Shrewsbury office for comment, Menna, a Democrat, called the accusation an “absolute fucking fallacy. It’s a lie.”

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The 12th-District Senate race between incumbent Democrat Ellen Karcher and Republican Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck, already framed by both sides as a contest over which candidate is the most committed to ethics reforms in Trenton, got personal yesterday.

Karcher accused Beck, of Red Bank, of violating ethics rules by using state letterhead and other trappings of office for political purposes within 90 days of an election.

The complaint concerns a letter written on Beck’s legislative stationery to residents of Seabrook Village in Tinton Falls. It highlights Beck’s opposition to a plan by the Navy to allow some 300 civilian families to occupy military housing at the Naval Weapons Station Earle, and refers readers to “our online petition” expressing opposition to the plan.

The website location of the petition — nociviliansatearle.org — is prominently marked as “Sponsored by Beck for Senate and O’Scanlon and Casagrande for Assembly,” referring to Beck ticketmates Declan O’Scanlon of Little Silver and Caroline Casagrande of Colts Neck.

In letters sent yesterday to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Ethical Standards and the state Election Law Enforcement Commission, Karcher asks for investigations into whether state legislative funds were improperly used for campaign purposes. She contends the letter was sent out in August, within the 90-day moratorium.

From the news blog PoliticsNJ:

Beck responded that the complaint was “frivolous,” and that she never mailed the letter. Instead, she handed it out during a visit to Seabrook Village, a senior living center in Tinton Falls. Beck said that handing out the letter did not violate the “spirit or letter of the law.”

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