State Senate primary candidate Leigh-Ann Bellew owes her supporters, and the voters of the 13th Legislative District, the truth about her resume. Any candidate’s educational and employment history is an important consideration for voters to take into account when choosing their nominees and elected officials. Bellew is asking Republican voters to fire an long term and distinguished incumbent in Senator Joe Kyrillos, and to hire her instead. In order for her candidacy to be taken seriously, she needs to be transparent about her education, career and character.
Bellew has gone into hiding since the questions about her resume and education have become public. When the questions about her legal education arose in early April, Bellew told MMM that she graduated from law school in Texas but never took the bar exam. She said she went to work in customer service for American Express rather than pursue a career as a lawyer, and then exited the work force to raise her children.
However, since PolitickerNJ questioned the veracity of her resume, Bellew has stopped returning MMM’s repeated phone calls. Her campaign manager, Dwayne Horner, has not been able to provide answers.
Bellew, her running mates and campaign volunteers have been distorting Kyrillos’s record. Kyrillos is a moderate, but he is not a tax and borrow liberal as the Bayshore Tea Party Group backed ticket is claiming. Kryillos does not support partial birth abortion and death panels, as the duplicitous literature the BTPG backed campaign has been distributing claims.
If a candidate or campaign is going to take liberties with the truth about their opponent’s record, they at the very least should have the decency to be transparent about something as basic about their own education and career.
Leigh-Ann Bellew can put an end to all of this nonsense over her past by simply proving she has the degrees she has claimed she has. She should do that immediately. If Bellew has embellished her past, she should come clean about that and explain herself.