Grad student alleges blog posts are GOP dirty tricks

One year ago, Juan Melli GS founded bluejersey.com, a left-leaning blog that he hoped would satisfy his passion for political debate and grant him an occasional respite from mechanical engineering research.

In the past few days, however, Melli's site has swept him into the midst of a political scandal, one that could implicate the campaign staff of a New Jersey senatorial candidate in one of the nation's most closely-watched election races.

The controversy involves comments posted Tuesday on Melli's site, submitted by users claiming to be ex-Democrats disillusioned with incumbent Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). The posts, written under the screennames "cleanupnj" and "usedtobeblue," criticized Menendez for allegedly covering up an ethically-questionable 1994 real estate deal.

After noticing that the two accounts were linked to the same Internet Protocol address — a computer's unique identifying number on the Internet — and had registered 10 minutes apart and had posted comments 15 minutes apart, Melli became suspicious.

Following a short investigation, he matched the accounts' IP address to the IP address connected with emails from the campaign office of Tom Kean, Jr., Menendez's Republican opponent and the son of former New Jersey governor and 9/11 Commission chair Tom Kean '57. Melli later discovered a user called "AmadeusNJ" who had posted from the same address as "cleanupnj" and "usedtobeblue."

Melli claims Kean press secretary Jill Hazelbaker is behind the posts, alleging that the wording of the comments on his site is similar to quotations he has seen attributed to Hazelbaker. He also said the comments on his blog cited information only Hazelbaker and a Record of Hackensack reporter could have known at the time, since they referred to information revealed in a Record article that had not yet been published.

The New York Times and The Newark Star-Ledger published reports Thursday confirming that the IP address of campaign emails regularly sent by Hazelbaker matched those of the suspicious posts on Melli's website, but since Hazelbaker uses a computer that is part of the Kean office network, the posts could have come from any computer located within Kean headquarters.

"It was obvious from the beginning," said Melli, a fifth-year grad student who helped organize last year's "Frist Filibuster." That event, which garnered national attention, protested the efforts of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist '74 (R-Tenn.) to prevent Democrats from blocking controversial Republican judicial nominees.

Posting under multiple accounts to create the impression of grassroots sentiment — a practice known as "astroturfing" by blogosphere enthusiasts — is "dishonest and unethical," though not illegal, Melli said.

"The facts in the case are pretty obvious and easy to verify," he said. "[The Kean campaign] should have just admitted to it and owned up to [the fact that] someone on their staff did it. The story would have probably gone away, but the cover-up is making this a bigger story than it needs to be."

Though the Kean campaign did not respond to The Daily Princetonian's multiple requests for comment Thursday, Hazelbaker strenuously denied posting on BlueJersey when contacted by Times and Star-Ledger reporters.

"I've never emailed them nor posted on the website," she told the Times on Wednesday. "It's a blog. You can't believe what's posted on blogs."

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But a spokesman for the Menendez campaign, Brian Fallon, said he was convinced the Kean campaign was behind the posts and seized on the allegations as evidence of the Republican candidate's dearth of substantive positions.

"It's sad that Tom Kean, Jr.'s campaign can't talk about the issues, so they resorted to using a website to smear Bob Menendez," he said in an interview, claiming that Kean's positions on topics such as the war in Iraq and stem cell research are the same as President Bush's and therefore objectionable to most New Jersey residents. "It's hard to figure out what's worse: that they're waging an anonymous smear campaign on the Web or that they lied about doing it."

Meanwhile, despite his dedication to political activism, Melli is beginning to have mixed feelings about all the media attention he has generated.

"I would be perfectly happy if reporters stopped calling me," he said, noting that blogging is ordinarily just an evening's relaxation for him, the way watching TV is for other people. "I normally never have a problem keeping up with [academic] work — it's only been that way now that this is in the news and reporters have been calling."

"Personally, I'll be happy when this goes away."