TOMS RIVER - George R. Gilmore, under indictment for tax evasion and who, through his lawyer, disclosed Friday that he suffers from a “hoarding disorder” that caused him to end up more than $1 million in the hole with the IRS, would not be the first Ocean County political boss to struggle with mental illness.

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The most famous Republican leader in county history, Thomas A. Mathis — for whom the Route 37 eastbound bridge to Seaside Heights is named — put a .38 caliber pistol to his temple and squeezed the trigger as he sat alone in the second floor sitting room of his sprawling Main Street house in Toms River on a partly cloudy Sunday morning on May 18, 1958.

Mathis, a former New Jersey secretary of state and state senator, who had ruled Ocean County as Enoch “Nucky” Johnson had ruled Atlantic County and Frank Hague had ruled Hudson County around that same era, left no note behind and seemed to be in good spirits when his personal physician made two house calls the previous day.

At 88, “Captain Tom” as he was known, had been recovering from circulatory problems in one of his legs that had forced his hospitalization the previous week. However, he was on his way to a full mend and had previously joked that he expected to live to be 100.

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Gilmore, now 69, was a child not even 10 when Mathis ended his own life, but already he was the heir to a powerful political family of his own in his native Seaside Heights, where his flamboyant grandfather, J. Stanley Tunney — for whom the Route 37 westbound bridge from Seaside Heights is named — was the longtime mayor.

“Son,” Tunney once said to an Asbury Park Press reporter. “God put a little bit of heaven here on Earth. And he called it Seaside Heights.”

Gilmore’s grandfather had a glitzy vision of an amusement park and resort “for all the people” along the Seaside Boardwalk that he not only made a reality but which remains a beach town with a character that is unique in Ocean County to this day.

A beachfront concessionaire himself who went broke twice in business before the third time was the charm, Tunney’s capitalist mantra was: “More business brings more people here. When you get the people here and you don’t do business with them, that’s your fault.”

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A chip off the old boardwalk

“I always followed politics,” Gilmore told the Asbury Park Press in a 2003 interview. He graduated from Central Regional High School in Berkeley and went on to West Virginia University. Originally, he planned to major in biology, but he was soon drawn to a pre-law curriculum.

He enrolled at Rutgers University in Camden and graduated with a law degree in 1975. After that, he was hired by William T. Hiering Sr., a lawyer and prominent Republican in Ocean County. Gilmore worked for Hiering for a couple of years before beginning his own law practice with partners Thomas E. Monahan and William T. Hiering Jr.

When Hiering Jr. left the firm a short time later, Gilmore and Monahan formed their own partnership.

Check out the video above for scenes from when the Ocean County Republican Committee last convened in session — in September, to select a replacement candidate on the November ballot for Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr.

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Gilmore first became involved in a political campaign when he supported Republican Michael Mathis — yes, of the Ocean County Mathises — for a seat on the Tuckerton Borough Council in 1976. When Mathis won, Gilmore was asked to become borough attorney in Tuckerton in 1977.

Involvement in other local campaigns followed, as Gilmore supported Theodore “Ted” Hutler, an old high school classmate at Central, for Lacey Township Committee in 1979, and Carl W. Block for Stafford mayor in 1983. Hutler eventually would become the first warden of the Ocean County Jail and Block the county clerk, before he was appointed to his current office of county administrator.

Both men won their races back then, and Gilmore’s firm got more business. He became township attorney in Lacey in 1980 and took the same post in Stafford four years later.

Then-Ocean County Republican Chairman Joseph Buckelew soon contacted Gilmore, asking him to become involved in the county organization. He became a member of the organization’s campaign committee, and eventually took over as campaign chairman. He also served as finance chairman for several years, honing his fundraising skills.

In 1995, Gilmore was appointed to a seat on the county’s four-member Board of Elections — comprised of two Republican and two Democratic commissioners — which is responsible for protecting the integrity of the electoral process. Within minutes after Gilmore was sworn in as a new commissioner, he was elected chairman, with the support of his Democratic colleagues.

Gilmore was also the popular choice to succeed Buckelew as the county’s GOP chairman in 1996, when the latter chose not to seek re-election to the post that year.

“Each year that I worked with George, the more I got to trust him and to find out how intelligent and politically savvy he was,” Buckelew told the Press in 2003.

Gilmore has described Buckelew as his political mentor.

The boss

In the years since, Gilmore’s influence as a political leader in New Jersey has strengthened as the county’s population has grown over his tenure — about 25 percent since 1996 to nearly 600,000 residents today.

“They may be moving here from Democratic strongholds in North Jersey or New York, but when they move here, they vote Republican,” Gilmore has said. “Good government is good politics.”

And good politics has been good for business, with Gilmore’s firm estimated to receive more than $2 million each year from taxpayer-funded legal work.

No Democrat been elected to countywide office under Gilmore’s watch. Ocean County's conservative, older and therefore more reliable voters also impact congressional elections in larger districts that include the county and also in close, statewide races.

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Ben Dworkin, director of the Rowan University Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship, said Gilmore’s longevity as a party chairman and his strategic acumen has made him a leading player in New Jersey political life, especially on the Republican side of the aisle.

“He is sought out because his county generates so many votes, and in the end, politics is about getting people to vote for you,” Dworkin said.

Gilmore’s control over which candidates get the coveted party line in Ocean County makes him particularly powerful, Dworkin said, as well as his organization’s ability to reliably turn out GOP voters.

“He has produced an organization that runs up tremendous pluralities,” Dworkin said of Gilmore’s influence.

He pointed to the 30,000-vote margin Ocean County provided to former Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., who lost his 3rd District Congressional seat in November to Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., by a razor-thin margin because of a huge Democratic turnout in the Philadelphia suburbs of Burlington County.

“The reason the MacArthur-Kim race was close is because MacArthur ran up such big numbers in Ocean County; that nearly toppled the blue wave in Burlington,” Dworkin said.

Even more telling, perhaps, was the 2009 gubernatorial race, in which Gilmore was an early and vocal supporter of Republican candidate Chris Christie, who edged Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine in a three-way race that also included Independent Chris Daggett. Christie’s 70,000-vote margin over Corzine in Ocean County (he carried Monmouth by about 65,000) helped propel the former U.S. attorney to victory.

“George Gilmore ran the dominant Republican organization in the state during that campaign,” Dworkin said. Gilmore later served on Christie’s transition team.

“It’s no secret that George Gilmore has been the most important Republican Party chair in the state,” said Brigid Harrison, professor of political science and law at Montclair State University. “Ocean County has traditionally been the most solid Republican county; it’s a necessary county to win for Republicans who want to win statewide elections.”

Harrison said Gilmore has exerted tremendous influence because he controls the party line in Ocean County, and his support is necessary for candidates seeking elective office.

Winning the primary is necessary in New Jersey because about nine out of 10 races result in the dominant party winning in the November general election.

No obvious successor

For now, Gilmore does not appear to be in jeopardy of being ousted as the most powerful political figure in Ocean County.

Gilmore has made clear that he has no intention of stepping down from his positions. Moreover, he has the full support of key Republican officeholders such as Freeholder Jack Kelly, who moved quickly after the indictment was announced to shore up support for the chairman and tamp down even the suggestion of a possible rebellion in the county’s Republican ranks.

Republican leaders emphasized that the indictment is related to Gilmore’s personal finances and tax issues, not to his conduct as a public official or party leader — and therefore he should not be expected to resign while he has the presumption of innocence.

Gilmore, who lives in Toms River, has been charged with one count of income tax evasion for the calendar years 2013, 2014 and 2015; two counts of filing false tax returns for calendar years 2013 and 2014; failing to collect, account for, and pay payroll taxes for two quarters in 2016, and making false statements on a 2015 loan application submitted to OceanFirst Bank, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Several senior Republican officeholders reached by telephone seemed uncomfortable discussing the matter, with some asserting that they had not read the indictment almost 24 hours after it was published.

There is also the issue that Gilmore has no obvious successor. In the past, the chairman has viewed talk of his eventual retirement with some modicum of suspicion, as being instigated by potential rivals and young up-and-comers in waiting — which is not necessarily inaccurate. Therefore, he has not groomed anyone to succeed him in the same way Buckelew did with him a quarter of a century ago.

On the other side of the aisle, Ocean County Democrats appeared to be gloating this weekend.

“I predict some sleepless nights for Republican mayors and council members in Ocean County,” the county Democratic Party posted on its Facebook page Friday night with a link to the Asbury Park Press’ coverage of Gilmore’s indictment.

“Boss Gilmore knows where the bodies are buried. #whosnext,” the Democrats wrote.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359; @Erik_Larsenn, elarsen@gannettnj.com or Jean Mikle: 732-643-4050; @jeanmikle, jmikle@gannettnj.com