Hopefully new GOP Chairman Sam Raia, mayor of Saddle River, has a much less newsworthy life than the last GOP chair from his town.
In 1961, Nelson G. Gross – a Bergen County lawyer who married a Guggenheim heiress – was elected to the state Assembly at 29 years old.
Five years later, he took over chairmanship of the Bergen County Republican Committee, by engineering a coup of his mentor, Walter H. Jones.
His political prowess in Big Bergen brought home the GOP primary win for William T. Cahill in 1969.
When Cahill became governor, Gross was rewarded with the state chairman ship for the Republicans.
The Saddle River man paved the way for President Richard Nixon to take the Republican nomination in 1968 by undermining U.S. Sen. Clifford Case’s (R-NJ) candidacy meant to favor Nelson Rockefeller at the convention.
Gross resigned to run for the U.S. Senate, but lost to Harrison A. Williams.
In 1971, Nixon made Gross a special assistant for international narcotics control in the State Department, but Gross was shipped back to New Jersey in 1973.
Things got much worse in 1974, when Gross was convicted on five counts of tax fraud and perjury for concealing a $5,000 contribution to Cahill’s campaign.
He served six months of a two-year sentence and returned to dominate as a successful real estate developer and restaurateur, owner of a converted boat restaurant in Edgewater, the Birmingham Ferryboat.
In September 1997, he was kidnapped, last seen driving to a bank near his restaurant where he withdrew $20,000.
After a weeklong manhunt his body was found on an embankment next to the Henry Hudson Parkway.
Later, three teenagers, including a busboy from the Binghamton Ferryboat, pled guilty to the crimes.
