in South Jersey where two of the most competitive races are playing out a fight over alleged Phantom candidates reached a boiling point that's after a superior court judge on Friday froze the bank accounts of a dark money group urging Republican voters to cast a ballot for independent conservative candidates opponents say it was an effort to siphon votes from the GOP and a senior political correspondent David Cruz reports it's one of those only in Jersey election controversies it's the kind of inside baseball the details of which generally fly over voters heads and to be sure this will not be the first time that someone was pegged to run for office as a spoiler as is being alleged by Republicans particularly in the second and fourth districts where they say Phantom allegedly conservative candidates are attempting to siphon votes away from their candidates Friday a judge just handed them some I Told You So material on the day Republicans went to court last week GOP chairperson Bob hugan warned cynic about dismissing all this as just business as usual nothing illegal about it but no that's not true that's not true I think there is illegal things going on you cannot you cannot have a fake candidate out there uh taking money from the outside that's coordination when you don't run a campaign there's potentially very significant illegal things going on that have to be examined now for instance what is Jersey freedom and who is Eric Peterson its chairman and Treasurer that's what lawyers for Republicans want to know they say the forms filed with the state's election law enforcement commission elect that created them are bogus Jason Senna represents the GOP when you file with El they require you to put an agent for service of process in New Jersey because of course if you're making political Communications in New New Jersey you're subject to jurisdiction in New Jersey and you're subject to New Jersey Law and El like wants to be able to contact you they have a problem with what you're doing Mr Peterson disclosed the Queen's New York address on that application in order to get El to give him the pin number the Queen's New York address doesn't exist either and since no one showed up in court to argue otherwise the judge ordered the group to stop all political activity and froze its accounts which showed only debt because the mailers and cable tv ads they ran have already been bought and paid for all of this proves what in your mind well they certainly violated the law in making the expenditures that they made and making the disclosures that they made to the public which were essentially nothing um and you know under the statute um a candidate has the right to go to court and ask a judge to enjoin a group from engaging in illegal expenditures which the dist the judge agreed with that here what's extra dark about this group is that you don't know either who's giving the money you don't know a lot about the candidates themselves that they're supporting right these are candidates who are not really out there they may have been put up to this task of running to draw votes away from the Republicans um so they're not only it's it's a dark money group with dark candidates that they're supporting who would do such a thing technically no one really knows although there might be some clarity after the election when El requires further clarification on donors Etc but that begs the question if they lied to open the accounts what can you really expect from them after the election the consensus is that this is a scheme by South Jersey Democrats who have not been above such tactics in the past the state party chairman however waved all this off as pre-election pattern I've read uh you know some of the uh the articles in the blogs um you know look I'm I'm focused on um you know on winning uh on uh at the close of uh no November 7th these little sidebar issues aren't issues that uh you know really resonate to voters anyway which is probably true except that they don't call it dark money for nothing and when you don't know who's really who on the ballot and who's actually behind them voters will be in the dark and could end up making ballot choices for all the wrong reasons I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight News NJ Spotlight News [Music]