DISPATCHES by Hank Kalet: Some lessons of the local vote

Election results should give local Democrats something to think about

By: Hank Kalet
   By any estimate, the South Brunswick Democrats enjoyed a banner year.
   Both of the party’s candidates — Mayor Frank Gambatese and Councilman Chris Killmurray — won landslide victories, running well ahead of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Robert Menendez in the process.
   But buried within the results was a red flag that the party needs to acknowledge as it moves forward.
   Former South Brunswick Mayor Debra Johnson garnered more than a thousand votes as a write-in candidate for mayor, just five months after narrowly losing a primary race against Mayor Gambatese.
   This should give the local Democrats pause.
   Think about it: Write-in candidacies are rather quixotic affairs, rarely attracting more than a handful of votes. Part of the reason is that the process is a bit cumbersome, requiring voters to consciously opt for someone not on the ballot and then type the candidate’s name on the keypad.
   Even Ms. Johnson, who says she was not directly involved in the campaign, assumed she would get no more than a couple of hundred votes.
   But there was enough brewing disenchantment — especially in the Eastern Villages area — with the Democratic majority that she ended up with about 1,050 votes.
   Several things caused this, not the least of which was the mayor’s initial support for a warehouse complex on Davidsons Mill Road on what is known as the Pulda Tract or Van Dyke Farm and the continued development of the township’s warehouse zone east of the N.J. Turnpike.
   Morris Realty Associates, a commercial developer from Bergen County, had proposed a rezoning of the 200-acre tract in 2005 so it could build three warehouses totaling about 2 million square feet.
   The mayor, who sits on the Planning Board, initially was receptive — he said that allowing housing on the site could result in an influx of school kids — and that the tax revenue would be good for the community.
   That didn’t sit well with the neighbors, who then banded together to fight — and defeat — the warehouse plan and the subsequent housing proposal, convincing the mayor and the council to do what it can to preserve the property.
   As much as the write-in campaign was a direct challenge to the reigning Democratic majority, it has to be viewed as an indictment of a feckless Republican organization that has managed to see the percentage of the vote it attracts shrink with each new election.
   This year, the party’s mayoral candidate, Lynda Woods Cleary, failed to crack 30 percent, while its council candidate, Nanette Craig pulled in a paltry 35.6 percent.
   The GOP — on election night and at other times — has offered a series of excuses, some legitimate, others stretching the bounds of credulity: money, media bias, unfair campaign tactics.
   This time out, there was the confusion surrounding the ticket — the party initially was without a mayoral candidate, with Ms. Cleary running for council; a write-in campaign placed Richard Kish on the ticket as the mayoral candidate in June, but he bowed out in September to be replaced by Ms. Cleary with Ms. Craig taking over as the candidate for council.
   So, yes, I’m sure there was some confusion among voters, but the problems with the ticket, rather than being an anomaly, are emblematic of the collapse of the Republicans as a real force in local politics.
   We’ve recounted this before. The party faces two distinct, but intertwined, disadvantages — one demographic and one financial.
   Demographically, the Democrats have benefited from a party shift in the township and the region that has reset the default vote for most local voters. Back in the 1980s, that default was set to Republican, meaning that most voters were likely to cast their ballots for the GOP unless given a specific reason to do otherwise. Now, most voters are likely to vote Democrat.
   Just as importantly, the Democrats have a cash advantage due in no small part to the strength of the Middlesex County Democrats and their willingness to fund local campaigns and the party’s recent record of winning elections. The GOP, in contrast, has piled up a rather remarkable record of electoral ineptitude, losing 15 of the 17 seats contested since 1997, with the party attracting a smaller portion of the vote each year.
   And in American politics, the less you win, the less money you can raise.
   But as important as these external issues may be, the real problem lies within the party itself and its lack of vision. Consider that the party has run on essentially the same platform for years (the alleged corruption and incompetence of the local Democrats), a platform that has failed to resonate with voters. And it continues to recycle losing candidates — Ms. Cleary ran fifth out of six candidates in 2004 and her presence on the ticket this year marked the fifth-straight election in which the party had run someone who’d previously lost (with most of the losses coming by rather large margins).
   It is time for the Republican Party to look in the mirror and admit it must change itself before it can make the case that change is needed on the council. That means new leadership, new candidates and a new attitude. Only then might the GOP be able to convince voters to bring back two-party governance in South Brunswick.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail, or through his web log, Channel Surfing.