PACKET EDITORIAL, April 18
By: Packet Editorial
Wanted: A living, breathing Republican Party in Princeton.
Qualifications: An abiding belief that one-party government sustained over an extended period of time is harmful to the democratic process.
(Previous attendance at a Borough Council or Township Committee meeting is desirable but not required.)
Experience: Open to all residents of Princeton Borough and Princeton Township.
(Preference will be given to those who are old enough to remember the last time a Republican was elected here.)
Apply to: The voters.
Deadline: Election Day, Nov. 7, 2006.
Even Democrats were surprised when last week’s filing deadline for the June 6 primary election passed without a single Republican submitting a petition to run for office in either Princeton Borough or Princeton Township. This year of all years should have been the one that had the GOP salivating to get a piece of the local action.
In the borough, not only is the mayor’s office up for grabs, but three of the six seats on the Borough Council are also in play. At no time in recent memory have four of the seven elected municipal offices been on the ballot in the same year yet not a single Republican has come forward to express interest in running for any of them.
In the township, the situation should be even more conducive to a Republican candidacy. The Democrats are gearing up for a bruising primary fight, the product of an ongoing battle that has split the party so wide open even a limping elephant would have a reasonable chance of slipping through it. What’s more, just a year ago, the GOP mounted one of its most aggressive campaigns in the past decade, winning better than 40 percent of the vote in the race for two seats on the Township Committee.
Yet this year, with just one seat at stake and the Democrats in disarray, not a single Republican has filed to run in the township.
One could, we suppose, blame President Bush, Rep. Tom DeLay and others at the national level whom the polls show leading the GOP toward what is widely expected to be one of its worst showings in years. Who wants to be running on the Republican line just as the electorate’s frustrations over the war in Iraq, the cost of health care, Medicare Part D, immigration, the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and a host of other issues have reached the boiling point?
But if, as the late House Speaker "Tip" O’Neill once observed, all politics is local, none of this should matter. Even as their national prospects dim, the Republicans should be looking for opportunities to make inroads at the local level. And places like Princeton Borough and Princeton Township, where Democrats have ruled the roost for more than a decade, should be ripe for the plucking.
It isn’t too late. Although the filing deadline for the primary has passed, the Republicans could, through an organized write-in campaign, nominate a mayoral candidate, as many as three Borough Council candidates and a Township Committee candidate. This, in turn, would give voters in both the borough and the township a real choice in November and, if the GOP candidates prove to be worthy, the possibility of restoring two-party government to one or both municipalities.
We would welcome such an eventuality. We think voters in both Princetons would, too.

