Senator’s salacious emails leaked seven years ago today

On this day seven years ago — March 25, 2013 at 4:00am — the world was exposed to the most intimate sexual thoughts of Joseph Cryan, of Union, who was a New Jersey assemblyman then and now is in a tight re-election battle in the June Democratic primary race for state senator.

Cryan “graphically spelled out his kinky proclivities in more than 150 e-mails that he sent to a lobbyist — and then fought to keep them hidden after he stunned the state political world by having her busted for stalking in 2006,” wrote investigative reporter Josh Margolin in a stunning New York Post article entitled: Bondage pol was hard-ly working.

Until those messages were released, Cryan steadfastly denied he had an sexual relationship with Karen Golding, a lobbyist who said the e-mails proved that they were intimately involved.

The existence of that relationship was a key part of Golding’s defense to stalking charges lodged against her that resulted from a sting operation conducted by the Union County Prosecutor’s Office.

In addition to holding office as an elected lawmaker at the time, Cryan was a top deputy at the Union County Sheriff’s Office, a post that allowed him to skew the criminal justice system.

“The case burst into the headlines as Cryan unleashed at least 20 officers, a special-prosecutions unit, intelligence unit and high-tech task force to bring Golding in on stalking charges in February 2006 after she let herself into his unlocked car in a Trenton Statehouse garage and left a note,” said the Post story.

The powerful politician got away with turning Golding’s temper tantrum over the cheating boyfriend into the crime of the century, but in the days before the #MeToo movement even women’s rights organizations opted not to tangle with Cryan and his ex-girlfriend was hung out to dry.

Cryan paid no political price for his the abuse of official government computers connected to his state government post and the Sheriff’s Office or the evidence presented by timestamp that show that Cryan was seeking sexual satisfaction instead of earning his salary from Union County taxpayers.

“The e-mails were written when the pol presumably would have been at one of his government jobs — either his $49,000-a-year Assembly gig or his $111,000-a-year post as Union County undersheriff,” said the story. “Cryan also traded other e-mails with Golding from his state government account and the account assigned to him by the Union County Sheriff’s Office, the documents show. In their exchanges, Cryan admitted he was mixing business with pleasure.”

Rather than losing his job or being bounced out of office, Cryan was re-elected to the General Assembly, promoted to Union County Sheriff following Ralph Froehlich’s death in 2014 and moved up to State Senate in 2017, when he was hired as director of the Middlesex County Utilities Authority with another taxpayer-funded salary in excess of $200,000.

There are still 298 pages of salacious emails available for public review at the New York Post website.

Cryan’s abuse of his government power, sexual misconduct in public workplaces, dishonesty in persecuting his ex-girlfriend, and deviant behavior should make him unqualified but his significant support among other elected officials and interest groups signifies that the political system is seriously broken and in need of a more responsible citizenship.