The story behind Neal LeStrange’s involvement in the now defunct racist gathering Good Ole Boys Roundup is much ado about nothing, said the Democratic candidate for Scotch Plains Council.

“I went on a camping trip for three or four days” in 1990, LeStrange said in a telephone interview. “I went whitewater rafting, played volleyball, and went golfing. I went with a buddy from the police academy.” When he saw a poster hanging on a tree that depicted something racist, he said, he “asked them to take it down.”

Upon his return, said LeStrange, who served 22 years with the Scotch Plains police force and three as a Westfield police officer, he talked about the incident with his supervisor at the time.

“If it was so upsetting when it happened, why wasn’t there ever an investigation then?” LeStrange said. His superiors at the police department “knew I did nothing wrong. It wasn’t an issue back then. It’s only an issue now because I’m running for office.”

Indeed, LeStrange’s opponents think it is very much an issue and have been saying so ever since the incident became public during local media coverage of an unrelated discrimination lawsuit against the town. During depositions relating to the suit, LeStrange testified he had attended a Good Ole Boys Roundup, the annual three-day, whites-only event in Tennessee whose racist antics prompted an investigation by the Justice Department.

“Just the name would steer most people away,” said Rich Duthie, who currently sits on the Scotch Plains Zoning Board and is running for council on the Republican ticket. “Doesn’t that go toward judgment? When you see things that aren’t appropriate — it’s time to leave. As a future leader you should realize you’re uncomfortable and leave.… I think I’d be gone the minute I got there.”

Duthie’s Republican running mates already sit on the council — Carolyn Sorge and Nancy Malool. Kevin Glover and Jeff Strauss are LeStrange’s Democratic running mates.

Scotch Plains Mayor Martin Marks, who is Jewish, said he sat in on some of the depositions in the lawsuit and read some but not all of the transcripts.

“Someone said to me, ‘You know, mayor, you ought to read this deposition,’ and I read it,” Marks, a Republican, said. “This really stuck out at me and I did some of my own research” about the Roundups.

In the 1990s the Good Ole Boys Roundup was essentially a giant fraternity-type party for law enforcement officers held in Tennessee, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s fact-finding director, Mark Pitcavage. It wasn’t billed as a racist event, but there were attendees who put on skits, made jokes, and put up signs that were racist, anti-Semitic, or “in bad taste.” A formal DOJ investigation revealed “ample evidence of shocking racist, licentious, and puerile behavior by attendees occurring in various years” and criticized the law enforcement officers and federal agents who attended. The last roundup was held in 1996.

“We would not assume someone was racist or anti-Semitic just because they went to one Good Ole Boys Roundup,” Pitcavage said, explaining he couldn’t comment on the specifics in the Scotch Plains situation. “There’s nothing about the situation that raises alarms.”
LeStrange said he never went to another Roundup.

“It wasn’t my style,” he said.

The Democrats have linked their Web page to LeStrange’s deposition to answer any questions voters may have.

LeStrange, for his part, said the whole situation makes him “feel terrible.”

Is he a bigot? Is he anti-Semitic?

“Of course not,” he adamantly replied when asked by a reporter. “I wasn’t even involved in the lawsuit; I just had to testify because I was on the desk that night.”

Still, Marks, who has worked with Republicans and Democrats over the years, said if LeStrange wins, the idea of working with him “bothers me.”

“As a mayor I’m embarrassed for the town, and as a Jewish resident this raises deep concern,” Marks said. “I don’t want someone who went to what amounts to a Ku Klux Klan meeting for police representing me. I’m nauseated. If this fellow is elected, I’ll have to serve with him and that bothers me.”

Meanwhile, Duthie said, he and fellow Republicans aren’t focusing on LeStrange’s actions but on their campaign. “The real issues I’m focusing on are refurbishment of the ball fields and building a senior center — things that matter to families that live here,” Duthie said. When pressed about LeStrange, Duthie added, “I feel bad for him and his family. He’s got a lot of explaining to do. This certainly is a blemish.”

The Democrats charge the issue is a smear campaign by Republicans intending to deflect criticism on issues such as the town’s rising property taxes. They say despite all of the promises of the incumbent Republicans to stabilize taxes in the last election, Scotch Plains had its highest municipal tax increase in history in their first year in office, 16.9 percent over the prior year. The municipal tax has gone up over 31 percent since the Republicans were elected four years ago, according to Democratic campaign chair Dick Samuel.

Samuel, who is Jewish and a former president of the YM-YWHA of Union County in Union, said anti-Semitism was thrown into the erroneous charges against LeStrange because of skits performed at a Roundup in 1996. No one ever accused LeStrange of anti-Semitism, Samuel said.

“It’s like when somebody says you’re beating your wife,” Samuel said of LeStrange’s having to defend himself against bogus rumors. “I’ve known Neal eight years and I believe him.”

Samuel said he’s tried to counter rumors that he had heard about LeStrange’s Roundup attendance, as well as allegations of anti-Semitic and racist comments by the candidate, before the depositions became public.

The Democrats also issued a press release to quash rumors and turn the campaign’s focus back on taxes and other issues.

The Republicans, says the press release, “resorted to their usual bag of tricks; they turned nasty. One of the Democratic candidates was hit with a false and vicious slander. Desperation brought out the worst in them. But not once did the Republicans challenge the issues identified by the Democrats.”