In early October, RedState issued a warning about the critical need for local vetting of candidates before they run for higher office and potentially rise to positions of state and national prominence.
Citizens must work to recognize and neutralize terrible candidates at the local level, before they have the chance to not just wreck a school board or a city, but a municipality, an entire state, and potentially, the nation.
Virginia, What in the World Have You Done?
For New York City and Virginia, the die has been cast. Communist and Democrat Socialist Zohran Mamdani is now New York’s mayor-elect. As for Virginia, they elected the sociopath Jay Jones, a Democrat legislator who ran for attorney general, even though text messages were exposed where he fantasized about violent deaths for his Republican colleague, his wife, and his children. This is a tragic commentary on not just voter standards, but the cavalier attitude toward violence that certain Americans have embraced — especially when the violence is directed toward people who hold views they don’t like.
Also in early October, while the majority of politicos were obsessing over both these races and the New Jersey governorship, a school board in NJ’s Monmouth County exposed what will now be known as “The Jay Jones Effect.” Marlboro Township School Board member Danielle Bellomo, a conservative and self-proclaimed supporter of President Donald Trump, was targeted by Scott Semaya, a liberal candidate for the board, with sexually-charged and violent threats over a text thread that allegedly involved the board vice president and the husband of one of its members.
You cannot make this stuff up.
A New Jersey school board candidate was caught red-handed sending vicious, sexual messages about a conservative female board member in a group chat labeled “ThisBitchNeedsToDie.”
Photos of Scott Semaya’s vile texts about Danielle Bellomo at a July school board meeting leaked this week on social media — and the widening scandal is now being investigated by local cops and roiling the affluent suburb of Marlboro.
“Bellomo must be cold — her nips could cut glass right n” read one text, allegedly captured on camera while Semaya’s fingers typed an “o.”
Outrage was immediate, and Semaya this week dropped out of the race for the Marlboro Board of Education, followed by his running mate Melissa Goldberg.
The scandal in the leafy Monmouth County enclave has drawn parallels to the recent controversy in Virginia, where attorney general candidate Jay Jones was recently outed for a 2022 text message suggesting the state’s then-Republican House Speaker deserved to be shot in the head.
“It was absolutely terrifying,” Bellomo exclusively told The Post. “When I found out about the messages I was absolutely shocked, especially with the climate of our country. It sent chills down my spine.
It should send chills down all our spines. This is a school board, where the education and concerns for the children of the community are supposed to trump any political leanings or personal animus.
Apparently not.
So, what evil has Bellomo done that has caused these hyperbolic and vicious attacks? She ran and won on a platform of curriculum transparency and parental rights, and she continues to stand for these things.
Bellomo has spent more than a decade volunteering in Marlboro Township schools. She says she ran for the board to support curriculum transparency and parental rights, not to become a target.
“I got involved in the school boards because I’m an active volunteer in our community. I’ve been involved with the parent organization that I account for going on 12 years,” she said. “So I saw the school board as the next step in furthering my involvement in the community and I wanted it to enhance my children’s educational experience while they were in the K-3 district. I never imagined that it would have led to this.”
Yet Democrats and the left persist in downplaying this type of violent and charged rhetoric when it is directed toward conservatives and Republican candidates and officials. Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) commented on Bellomo’s case, pointing out that the political violence seems to be weighted to one side and one side only.
Dems keep embracing political violence.
This is wrong. And evil. https://t.co/U51gkCwe3c
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 11, 2025
But last week, Democrat electeds decided to create a video about the military having a constitutional duty to “defy illegal orders” from President Donald Trump, knowingly skating a line that could be classified as sedition. When the president called them out with a post that outlines what the price of sedition is, they cried about violence and hateful rhetoric.
Spare us.
Dive Deeper: Morning Minute: The Dems Released a Sedition-y Ad, and I Have Questions
To make a finer point: These types of dangerous individuals with flexible allegiances and violent fantasies are sitting in our U.S. Congress, trying to start a color revolution. How many of them started out as a city council person or on the school board? We need to start taking the vetting and ruling out of local candidates seriously. Many of these people should not be elected to dog catcher, let alone have public oversight over a school district, a city, or a county. Another illustration of this is playing out in Nashville with Democrat congressional candidate Aftyn Behn. She is being vetted and exposed ahead of a special election, and let us hope the citizens of Nashville are paying attention. Like this circumstance in New Jersey, these opportunistic and sociopathic characters must be exposed early and barred from any form of elected office.
The vicious chat group was believed to be composed of five men, and allegedly included Chad Hyett, current Marlboro school board vice president, according to a source. Many in the town of 41,000 are now calling for Hyett’s resignation.
Semaya and Goldberg were running on a purportedly apolitical slate called Collaborators for Responsible Education, or CORE. The third candidate on the slate, longtime incumbent Michael Lilonsky, remains in the race. He did not return a message.
Goldberg told New Jersey’s Patch.com she was abandoning her bid for the board because she “currently cannot commit to this role in addition to my other responsibilities.”
Unlike Jay Jones, Semaya had some modicum of shame and stepped out of the race. But it only gets worse. Weeks after the egregious text thread was laid bare, Bellamo revealed in a school board meeting that board VP Chad Hyett had been harassing her for months over social media. One of the thoughts Hyett shared about Bellomo was that she is “a real piece of work and a stain on our board.”
Lovely.
LISTEN:
The Marlboro BOE meeting last week was straight-up chaotic—and heartbreaking. Board member Danielle Bellomo bravely shared how Vice President Chad Hyett relentlessly harassed and trashed her on social media before the vile group chat surfaced, where he and others plotted her… pic.twitter.com/jbGAHSmmB9
— New Jersey Project (@fight4newjersey) October 22, 2025
The Marlboro BOE meeting last week was straight-up chaotic—and heartbreaking. Board member Danielle Bellomo bravely shared how Vice President Chad Hyett relentlessly harassed and trashed her on social media before the vile group chat surfaced, where he and others plotted her death (‘ThisBitchNeedsToDie’). He refuses to step down from the Board of Education as the vice president.
According to the New York Post, Bellomo filed a temporary protective order against one person who is alleged to be part of the text chain: Mitesh Gandhi, whose wife happens to be a board member.
A Monmouth County judge this week extended a temporary protective order against Mitesh Gandhi, the husband of another school board member, after reading aloud a series of text messages allegedly written by him. The messages included a group chat titled, “This B—- Needs to Die.”
In one of the text threads, Gandhi allegedly referred to Bellomo as “a lying c—” and wrote, “Mission is to just let her die by herself lol.”
Fox Digital reported that a judge extended that temporary protective order through January 2026.
The judge overseeing the protective-order hearing refused to dismiss Gandhi’s request to end the order, allowing Bellomo’s protective order to continue through January, when a full trial will be held.
Under New Jersey law, a harassment-related protective order can be extended if a judge finds an ongoing risk to the petitioner.
Despite the Marlboro Township Police Department recommending criminal charges, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office has declined to do so. But Bellomo’s disappointment is extended toward the Township district and board president’s handling of the situation.
Bellomo says the most painful part has been the response, or lack thereof, from her own school district. One of the text threads, she claims, was sent during an in-person board meeting while she sat just feet away.
“Our township has policies. If someone is a threat, they’re not supposed to be allowed on school property,” she said. “Our superintendent, Dr. Michael Ballone, did nothing. Our board president, Brian Cohen, did nothing. They chose not to implement the policies that are already in place.”
Bellomo also points out that this situation has produced a chilling effect. Upstanding citizens who should be running for public office are too afraid to do it because of the ugliness perpetrated by these men.
Bellomo says she has already heard from dozens of women who say her situation has scared them away from public service.
“They say, ‘I could never go through what you’re going through,’” she said. “That’s heartbreaking. Local government should not require you to put your family at risk.”
Local government should not require that citizens resign themselves to being led by unconscientious and insane people. We must confront and deny them, and encourage brave individuals like Danielle Bellomo to step into the fray. Otherwise, we will continue to foster the Jay Jones Effect and see our nation rot from the inside out.
Abraham Lincoln said it well:
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is fighting to dismantle the Department of Education and ensure America’s kids get the education they deserve.
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