Reaction to Post’s endorsement editorial from 10/26
By: Lynda Woods Cleary and Nanette Craig
We were not surprised at the South Brunswick Post’s failure to endorse our Republican ticket or to offer any material word of support.
Nor were we impressed by the logic of your argument.
The editorial page has been very liberal over the years and appears to have difficulty in endorsing Republican candidates and ideas.
The paper’s editorial pages over the course of the campaign have said little about the absence of discussion and any exchange of ideas at the council table.
Similarly the paper has not complained about the Lynch scandal nor railed against the County Democrat Organization’s influence in the South Brunswick’s affairs. There has been no complaint, for example, about the $150,000 the local democrats received from the County over the past five years.
This editorial pays lip service to wanting another voice on the Township Council but cannot say even one supportive thing about our candidacy. That’s hypocrisy and bespeaks a bias summarized most eloquently with the phrase" we endorse (the Democrats) without qualification."
The Lynch scandal itself, the subsequent refusal to give back the Lynch dollars for which he was convicted in South Brunswick, coupled with the continued involvement of candidate Chris Kilmurray and Democratic Party Chairman Bernie Hvozdovic with high profile county Democrat law firms should have been enough to give you pause in making such an endorsement.
Not a word of the Lynch scandal in this editorial while news of it has been all over your paper in letters and news stories.
You praise the Democrats for talking about sharing services with other towns and yet you have no eye for their almost total failure in working out shared services with the local school board or anybody else. At the same time you turn a blind eye to our Republican platform which explicitly identifies the need for shared services with the school board and other towns as means of reducing expenses and saving tax dollars.
You don’t want to listen.
You claim Lynda Woods Cleary doesn’t understand the budget even though she has offered the same formula, sharing services to cut spending for all. Do the Democrats understand any better even after not having done a darn thing about shared services for 10 years and having raised taxes two years in a row?
We don’t think so.
I notice you didn’t praise the Democrats for traffic improvements. For 10 years now they have done nothing about the dangerous Route 27 and Beekman Road intersection. They have done nothing to connect Beekman Road with Northumberland Way. That interconnection would improve east-west traffic flow immeasurably. New Road, which needs two reverse jug handles, is in danger of losing that opportunity to commercial development through the inaction of these two Democrats.
Ten years in power aided by statehouse control of legislature and governor’s mansion and we have no Route 1 widening and no end date in sight. Praise that record as a reason to reelect why don’t you?
You praise the Democrats for parks and open space. With $2 million complete with bonding power available to them each and every year for the past 10 years it would be scandalous if we did not have a substantial open space and parks inventory. You choose to forget that the open space tax fund was put on the ballot by the Republicans and supported in a bipartisan manner over the years.
Your editorial is endorsing the advantages of incumbency pure and simple.
We are committed and determined to make a difference in the governance of South Brunswick and we will not be deterred by biased journalists.
Lynda Woods Cleary is a candidate for mayor and Nanette Craig a candidate for Township Council. Both are Republicans.

