Harold C. "Hal" Turner ran for the Republican nomination for Congress in 2000 in the 13th District in an pathetic attempt to unseat incumbent Bob Melendez. He was also the Campaign Chair for Murray Sabrin when he ran for NJ Governor in 1997. If Sabrin won his current bid for Senator, he said he wanted to pass the torch to Turner. In 1995 Turner organized a rally at the New Jersey State Capitol to defend racist talk-show host Bob Grant. Barrett also had a hand in putting this event together and noted on his webpage that as they spoke, Turner and another right wing hack named Richard Pezzulo were cheered by the assembled, which included those that waved Barrett's Crosstar battleflags. Turner also had a radio program where he had openly defended not only racial profiling but police brutality as well, saying that it is not done enough. If Turner won his bid for Congress, it would have been part of an agenda to help the South secede from the Union again. "The long-term objective, which troubles independent political observers, is to send enough party members to Congress to push for a separate Southern nation," he said on his June 25, 1999 radio program. "And I would say to all the people in the states that comprise the Old Confederacy: Save a spot for me! Because, baby, I will fight on your side to destabilize these evil Yankees. And I wanna live in the New South. The South will rise again and I'll be right there to live with ya." He has also made calls to other programs as "Hal from North Bergen", and in August 1998 Turner called into Sean Hannity's WABC show and said that if it weren't for the white man, that blacks "would still be swinging from the trees in Africa." This comment drew no rebuke from Hannity, himself a racial antagonist who even calls Turner at home and plugs his campaign, but rather Hannity continued to race-bait with Turner around a number of political issues. Turner has also threatened to incite people to "dispense revenge" on Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry and New Jersey NAACP officials and their attorneys after a fire in North Bergen claimed the lives of four people in 1998. Turner charged the NAACP with the deaths because they filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit against the local fire department. Barry was the judge who presided and imposed a hiring freeze on the department until the matter was resolved. After the fire, Turner, a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker with possible access to the names and addresses of virtually everyone who lives in the state, wrote a letter that appeared on deja.com that said that he was going to release the names and addresses of Barry, the NAACP officials, and their lawyers to the families of the fire victims. "It would be interesting to see how those families dispense revenge on those who are really responsible for the deaths of their loved ones, he wrote." Turner was only recently called on the threat by the Daily Targum, the Rutgers University student newspaper, and stood by the letter.