Wilson expected to be named mayor on Wednesday.
By: Steve Rauscher
MONTGOMERY One morning in the spring of 1999, Louise Wilson was scooping rocks out of the dirt on a baseball field when a man she barely knew approached her.
"He asked me, ‘Are you a Democrat?’ " she said. "And I thought, ‘Why is he asking me that, because I have dirt under my fingernails?’ "
The man was a local Democratic Party activist, and the answer to his question was "Yes," beginning a new chapter in Ms. Wilson’s life and in Montgomery politics.
Almost three years later, she is a good bet to become the township’s first Democratic mayor in a decade at Wednesday’s Township Committee annual re-organization. One of three Democrats elected to the committee in November, she and fellow party members Jennifer Wall and Karen Wintress will have the chance to make good on their campaign slogan: "Putting people first."
"In a way, we might be held to a higher standard, but that’s OK with me," she said. "I think what’s going to matter to people is results … and I honestly don’t believe that people care much about party at the local level. I think what’s most important to people in Montgomery is being able to consider themselves independent and wanting their elected officials, at the local level, also to be independent."
Appointed to the Township Committee in January, 2001, to replace Democratic Committeeman Jim Irish after his resignation, Ms. Wilson got her start in government in the now-defunct state Department of Higher Education in 1987. The Atlanta native had moved to Plainsboro three years earlier, and felt unfulfilled after two years of managing a local Pottery Barn. As a special assistant to the department’s chancellor, Ed Goldberg, Ms. Wilson learned the ins and outs of policy analysis.
"The standard for writing and analysis, and making and defending an argument there, were very high," she said. "The quality of your work was very important, and your reputation depended on it."
She ultimately became Mr. Goldberg’s public information officer, and was on the front lines of the battle to save her department when the newly elected Gov. Christie Whitman announced her intentions to eliminate it.
"We did put up a fight," she said. But the department was disbanded, and in 1994 Ms. Wilson took a job as director of communications and public affairs at Rutgers, where she became familiar with many of the land use issues that fuel Garden State politics.
"Acting as a communications conduit with researchers, the media and state and federal legislators to explain the work that they did and the value of it … I really liked that," she said. "I liked learning the science of it, and the social and public policy aspects, too."
After a few years, she turned to independent consulting in order to spend more time with her two pre-adolescent children. In 1998, the election of Democrat Rush Holt (D-12) to Congress inspired her to volunteer for his transition team.
"He’s just such a class act," she said of the cerebral legislator. "He was one of those people for whom party just isn’t that important. And he won in a district that, at the time, was pretty darn Republican, and I thought, ‘Well, it can be done.’ "
The election of Mr. Irish to the Republican-dominated Township Committee in 1999 also steeled Ms. Wilson’s faith in township politics, she said.
"What I learned from working on Jim’s campaign was just how high the stakes were," she said. "You start going to Planning Board meetings and zoning board meetings, and you realize that all (the development) you’ve been seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. And I really came to feel that a lot of what people moved to Montgomery for and value was at risk, and I still feel that way."
Ms. Wilson took over for Mr. Irish after narrowly losing her own bid for a spot on the Township Committee in 2000. Having won convincingly in November, Ms. Wilson looks forward to tackling the issues of suburban sprawl and open space preservation.
"I think the biggest challenge for me will be to move forward with work and initiatives that I care a whole lot about, without throwing so many balls into the air at once that I drop some," she said. "It’s so much work to be on the Township Committee … that you can sometimes fall victim to analysis paralysis, because the issues are often very, very complex."
Though the committee will be dominated by Democrats and very closely allied ones at that Ms. Wilson, Ms. Wintress and Ms. Wall have all echoed their desire to build and preserve a bipartisan consensus.
"I think that the town will be much better served if we’re working as a five-person team," Ms. Wilson said. "And we’re certainly not going to be in lockstep, but my hope is that it will be a really smooth year and we’ll work more efficiently, and do such a good job that no one will want to make radical changes in leadership next year.
"In this day and age, with the sort of layers and layers of challenges we face, as long as you don’t lose that connection with the individuals and neighborhoods that you’re working for, then you’ll probably be OK."