One of the Democratic candidates, both of whom lost in the recent Barnegat Township Committee election, is threatening legal action over what she said were “vicious and defamatory lies” by the Republican incumbents, Jake Townsend and Pasquale “Pat” Pipi.

First-time candidate Claire Edelstein said the Committee to Elect Pipi and Townsend had alleged she had threatened a man wearing a Trump hat that “I would burn his house down. They had a witness, but that never happened.