A New Jersey faculty board candidate was caught red-handed sending vicious, sexual messages a couple of conservative feminine board member in a gaggle chat labeled “ThisBitchNeedsToDie.”
Pictures of Scott Semaya’s vile texts about Danielle Bellomo at a July faculty board assembly leaked this week on social media — and the widening scandal is now being investigated by native cops and roiling the prosperous suburb of Marlboro.
“Bellomo should be chilly — her nips might lower glass proper n” learn one textual content, allegedly captured on digicam whereas Semaya’s fingers typed an “o.”
Outrage was fast, and Semaya this week dropped out of the race for the Marlboro Board of Training, adopted by his operating mate Melissa Goldberg.
The scandal within the leafy Monmouth County enclave has drawn parallels to the latest controversy in Virginia, the place legal professional common candidate Jay Jones was lately outed for a 2022 textual content message suggesting the state’s then-Republican Home Speaker deserved to be shot within the head.
“It was completely terrifying,” Bellomo completely instructed The Publish. “After I came upon concerning the messages I used to be completely shocked, particularly with the local weather of our nation. It despatched chills down my backbone.
Bellomo, 38, is a MAGA-loving, President Trump-supporting mother of three and staunch Republican, who poses in a star-spangled bikini for her Fb profile image. She believes she has been focused for her politics.
“I’m a proud and unapologetic advocate for parental rights, for my youngsters, for our city and our state and for that they’ve this hate for me,” she stated.
Semaya, 38, an accountant who has voiced progressive liberal views, was one among 5 candidates operating for 3 open seats on the Marlboro Board of Training. He cited solely “household circumstances” in saying his exit from the race. He didn’t return a number of messages in search of remark.
“My complete household has been affected by it,” Bellomo stated, noting her older son, 12, was prone to see the nasty textual content.
Mockingly, Bellomo was as soon as Semaya’s daughter’s Woman Scouts chief.
“That is heartbreaking for me,” she stated. “That is what he was considering once I was volunteering along with his youngsters — it’s a tough capsule to swallow.”
Bellomo, who’s serving her first full, three-year time period on the board, stated she’s been subjected to months of on-line threats and made a number of police studies.
Whereas the social media put up concerning the “ThisBitchNeedstoDie” group textual content included only a single shot of Semaya’s cellular phone, Bellomo stated she’s seen a number of different photographs of the messages exchanged by the group together with “very particular actions that they need to do to me and what their intention is.
“These textual content messages are the primary time I used to be capable of see they don’t need me alive,” she added, declining to share the extra photographs.
Bellomo stated she has a protecting order in opposition to one particular person allegedly within the group chat: Mitesh Gandhi, whose spouse is a board member. Gandhi declined remark and referred The Publish to his lawyer, who stated he was shifting to dismiss the protecting order.
The vicious chat group was believed to be composed of 5 males, and allegedly included Chad Hyett, present Marlboro faculty board vice chairman, in response to a supply. Many within the city of 41,000 are actually calling for Hyett’s resignation.
Hyett, who in December filed a Faculty Ethics Fee criticism in opposition to Bellomo after she posted a part of a board e mail on social media, didn’t return a message. The fee didn’t substantiate Hyett’s criticism.
Bellomo claimed Marlboro Faculties Superintendent Michael Ballone “wouldn’t present safety” at a board assembly this week, after the textual content message controversy erupted.
“The district takes the protection and safety of all members of our college neighborhood very severely,” Ballone stated. “We’ve a useful relationship with our native police division who attends our Board of Training conferences. This upcoming assembly will probably be no totally different.”
Marlboro’s Democratic mayor, Jonathan Hornik, condemned the messages as “utterly unacceptable,” including, “these accountable are clearly not geared up to carry public workplace.”
“Violence and threats of violence in opposition to public officers are seemingly turning into normalized,” he stated in an announcement. “In just a few months’ time, we have now witnessed an alarming escalation in any such conduct to an excessive, culminating within the murders of Minnesota Consultant [Melissa] Hortman and activist Charlie Kirk. This should cease.”
In the meantime, the sleepy city of Marlboro, the place the common house is priced at $850,000, has develop into a social media battleground.
“This man presents himself as a father and household man to the general public solely to then conduct himself like a pervert and prison on a gaggle chat throughout a BOE Assembly,” wrote former board member Aldo Patruno of Semaya.
“That is disgusting on each degree,” one other on-line commenter stated.
“These grown males should be arrested for threats on one’s life,” one other wrote on Instagram.
Semaya and Goldberg have been operating on a purportedly apolitical slate known as Collaborators for Accountable Training, or CORE. The third candidate on the slate, longtime incumbent Michael Lilonsky, stays within the race. He didn’t return a message.
Goldberg instructed New Jersey’s Patch.com she was abandoning her bid for the board as a result of she “at present can not decide to this position along with my different obligations.”
