Dear Friends,
The incumbent judge in the Justice of the Peace Court, precinct 4, JP4 for short, is Vincent Venegoni. He is being challenged for this position by the First Vice-Chair of the CC GOP, Stephen Kallas. Let's do some comparisons.
Comparisons
Vincent Venegoni is a successful retired businessman. He owned and ran a security consulting company with hundreds of employees and worked for significant customers. In interviewing him, I discovered that we had both done work for the same government agency. I have signed so many secrecy contracts that I don't want to mention the name of that agency, but I can say that world class work is done by that agency and I am impressed by the caliber of work that Vincent Venegoni has done in the private sector.
Business is hard. If you have ever tried to start a business, you know how hard it is to be successful. I don't see evidence of this type of success in the history of Stephen Kallas. One precinct chair who was doing her own vetting discovered this on the internet and shared it with me:
You can read the details at this website and make your own decisions:
You can say, "that is just a fluke." There is a more detailed example of a major failure by Mr. Kallas in this article "Kallas's failure" (https://voteforcanright.blogspot.com/2025/10/kallass-failure.html). The gist of the article is this: he was given an important assignment and the assignment ended in failure. All the work that went into the "Temporary Election Review Committee" (TERC) went down the drain. How can Stephen Kallas manage the decisions of a Justice of the Peace Court if he could not manage the Temporary Election Review Committee (TERC) report? A report for heaven's sake!
You need to understand that the Justice of the Peace does more than sit in judgement. The Justice of the Peace (JP) manages the court, which has employees and a lot of processes and procedures to follow. The JP is a manager as well as a judge. Judge Vincent Venegoni has successfully managed his security consulting company. We don't see evidence of this level of success in Mr. Kallas's career.
The Judge in Action
I spent a couple of days in the courtroom, observing how the court works. You must understand that the JP is a judge and makes decisions that affect people's lives. Here is Judge Venegoni in court.
What I saw in visiting the court was that there is a lot of paperwork associated with each case and Judge Venegoni had studied all the cases and was prepared. At the beginning of each day's work, the judge explained to all the defendants how the court worked, what were the key issues of the cases that they as a group were facing, and what their options were if they were unhappy with his decisions. He was respectful and informative to the defendants, most of them representing themselves.
I was impressed at how complicated some of the cases became as they unfolded. The court cases are people's lives and they sometimes become complicated. Judge Venegoni dealt with the complexities by asking detailed questions of the defendants and the plaintiffs. I was very impressed by his knowledge and by his humane behavior to the defendants. Even if a defendant had a case that seemed "open-and-shut," Judge Venegoni listened carefully and asked questions. The defendants were heard by the whole courtroom, they were listened to attentively by the Judge so that the defendants' side of the story was clearly understood. The judge was respectful and sensitive to the defendants.
Vetting with Other Precinct Chairs
I told you how one precinct chair discovered the "Ripoff Report" on the internet when considering Mr. Kallas's candidacy for JP4 and shared it with me. The precinct chairs share information with each other. Over coffee one day I heard a precinct chair describe Mr. Kallas as a bully and a thug. I have to say that I was stunned when I heard this description.
I searched my memory and I think it was the April 8, 2024 Executive Committee (EC) meeting when either Colleen Epstein or John Donovan made a motion to vote on the calendar so that the precinct chairs would know when the EC meetings would be held so they could arrange their business travel plans in order to attend. Stephen Kallas took the microphone away from them and tried to end the meeting without a vote on the motion. When John Donovan tried to use the microphone, there were many eyewitnesses who say that they saw Stephen Kallas push John and Colleen, and there were videos of the incident. Maybe this incident was why the PC called Stephen Kallas a thug. That's a harsh word that I would not have used, but I understand that viewpoint.
When have I seen bullying behavior by Mr. Kallas? At a Rules Committee meeting I heard a member of the TERC ask the Rules Committee if they could force Mr. Kallas to follow the rules for issuing a majority report. Mr. Kallas told that lady that she was off the committee because she disagreed with him. The majority of the committee disagreed with Mr. Kallas, which is why there were two reports, the majority report and Mr. Kallas's report.
Is trying to throw a lady off the TERC because she disagreed with him an act of bullying? How about if he yelled at her when he was trying to throw her off the committee? Was ignoring the rules of committees and issuing his personal report as the official report an act of bullying? Business becomes chaotic and unclear when you don't follow the rules. Comparing Mr. Kallas's behavior towards the majority of the TERC I am reminded of these words from the Ripoff Report (grammar and spelling is unchanged):
"I brought my vehicle to have it services although I had a service plan Stephen argued with me for 30 minutes that I did Not. After I called 2 other ligitimate [sic] Dodge Stores they pulled it right up in the Dodge System."
Are illegitimate arguments bad logic or bullying or just bad form? Mr. Kallas seemed to use bad arguments at the car dealership and with the Temporary Election Review Committee. That looks like a repeated pattern of either bad judgment or bad reasoning. I shudder at the thought of Mr. Kallas sitting on the bench as a judge and making decisions affecting people's lives.
Judge Vincent Venegoni is a successful retired business man who is Justice of the Peace because he is civic minded and wants to serve the public. We are lucky that he is willing to continue to serve.
Thank you for your patience,
Robert
