Madd as Hell

by: Juan Melli

Wed Apr 25, 2007 at 09:16:32 AM EDT

In November of 2001, the chairman of New Jersey's Mothers Against Drunk Driving announced that four of the state's thirteen chapters would be closing because "they can't afford overhead" due to lagging fundraising. That would mean that of the 5,000 calls they received each year, they would "not be able to handle about 40 percent of requests for service."

Teresa Hardt, spokeswoman for MADD's national organization...said the national funding is meant only to supplement local fund-raising, which has not been strong in the chapters that closed offices.

One of those four chapters was the Camden-Gloucester office. The state chairman of MADD at the time happened to be from Gloucester County - Clayton Borough police chief Frank Winters.

Yesterday state Attorney Stuart Rabner charged Winters and his wife with stealing $150,000 from MADD - equal to the annual operating expenses for the statewide organization. According to Rabner the couple "owned a company that was paid to create promotional materials for MADD, but never did." And while he was bleeding the organization of critical funding, Winters callously used 9/11 as cover for his crimes saying "we didn't expect to get hit as severely and abruptly as we did."

His ethical accomplishments didn't end there. After leaving MADD in 2004, he went on to run as a Republican for Assembly in the 4th district in 2005. It was alleged at the time that he used taxpayer money to purchase $2,000 worth of "pens, teddy bears and other supplies" (sound familiar?) from the same shell business. Though his defeat was nearly certain anyway, the GOP apparently wasn't concerned with ethics at the time and saw no reason to pull his candidacy. He went on to lose by over 25 points.

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