Ex-NJ Mayor, Husband Charged For Using Fake Ballot Signatures After DUI
Former Lumberton Mayor Faces Petition-Fraud Charges After DUI Plea - But the New Case Still Has to Be Proven
Gina LaPlaca already entered 2026 carrying the consequences of a serious drunk-driving case.
Now the former Lumberton mayor and current township committeewoman faces a second legal problem - this time over the petition that put her on the Democratic primary ballot.
The Burlington County Prosecutor's Office announced Tuesday that LaPlaca, 47, and her husband, Jason Carty, 49, have been charged in connection with allegedly unauthorized signatures on her nominating petition for the June 2026 Democratic primary.
LaPlaca is charged with making a false statement under oath, knowingly filing a false petition, two counts of tampering with public records or information, and falsifying or tampering with records.
Carty faces the same petition and records charges except for the false-statement-under-oath count.
The charges were issued by summons, and the couple is scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Mount Holly on Sept. 21.
They have been formally accused, but the new case has not produced a conviction.
The prosecution's theory centers on the petition Carty submitted to the Lumberton Township Municipal Clerk.
An affidavit signed by LaPlaca stated that she personally circulated the petition and that each signer had signed in his or her own handwriting.
According to prosecutors, multiple people whose names and purported signatures appeared on the petition said they had neither signed it nor authorized anyone to sign for them.
Investigators also determined that both LaPlaca and Carty had collected signatures.
The most consequential allegation is numerical.
Prosecutors say that without the disputed signatures, LaPlaca would not have had enough valid signatures to qualify for the Democratic primary ballot.
If that allegation is proven, the issue goes beyond sloppy paperwork.
Candidate petitions are the legal gateway to the ballot, and unauthorized signatures would undermine the process used to determine whether a candidate has met the minimum requirement to run.
But the word 'alleged' still matters.
A court has not yet determined that LaPlaca or Carty knowingly falsified signatures or committed the charged offenses.
The political outcome is already settled.
LaPlaca lost the June 3 primary badly.
Official Burlington County results show Mayor Terrance Benson received 1,100 votes, Kendra Hatfield received 1,052 and LaPlaca finished third with 323.
There were two Township Committee nominations available.
LaPlaca was not trying to reclaim a committee seat she no longer held.
She remains a member of the Lumberton Township Committee, with her term ending Dec. 31, 2026, and was seeking reelection.
Her earlier legal case makes the new accusations more politically damaging.
In March, she pleaded guilty to DUI and a fourth-degree child-abuse offense arising from a March 17, 2025 incident in which she drove while intoxicated with her young child in the vehicle.
Police said LaPlaca had picked up the child from daycare before another motorist recorded her vehicle swerving and nearly striking a utility pole.
Her blood-alcohol concentration was measured at 0.30 percent, compared with New Jersey's 0.08 percent per se legal limit for most drivers.
She was placed into a three-year Pretrial Intervention supervision program that includes mandatory Alcoholics Anonymous attendance.
That history establishes prior admitted misconduct.
It does not prove the new election charges.
The distinction is important.
In the DUI case, LaPlaca pleaded guilty.
In the petition case, she is presently accused.
The election-integrity issue is also narrower than some political rhetoric suggests.
This case concerns candidate ballot access, not the casting or counting of votes.
If voters' names and signatures were used without authorization, that would be a concrete breach of the nomination process even if the primary votes themselves were counted correctly.
The case therefore does not need to be inflated into a claim about New Jersey elections generally.
The alleged conduct is serious enough on its own.
LaPlaca is a Democratic local officeholder.
That fact does not establish a broader pattern about progressive politicians or the Democratic Party as a whole.
The conduct alleged here belongs first to the people charged with it.
The strongest accountability argument is local and specific.
Lumberton voters were entitled to a nomination process in which qualifying signatures were genuine and sworn paperwork was truthful.
Prosecutors say that did not happen; LaPlaca and Carty are entitled to contest that claim in court.
The sequence nevertheless leaves LaPlaca in an unusually difficult position.
She remains an elected township committeewoman after pleading guilty in a case involving a 0.30 BAC and a child in her vehicle.
She then lost her Democratic primary for reelection with only 323 votes.
And she now faces criminal charges alleging that, without unauthorized signatures, she would not have qualified for that ballot in the first place.
Those are three separate facts with three different legal meanings.
Together, they create a serious public-trust problem even before the new criminal case reaches a verdict.
The voters have already decided whether LaPlaca should receive another term.
The courts now have the narrower job of deciding whether the petition that allowed her to compete contained criminally false filings and whether she and Carty are responsible.
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Her DUI plea is established.
Her primary defeat is established.
