Will Kole, who has moved, still defeats Reddan in vote
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Democrats knowingly nominated Tuesday a candidate for Township Committee who has moved from the township.
Now they’ll try to regroup as a party and nominate a successor.
It may not be easy.
Will Kole, who declared more than month ago he had moved from the township, outpolled John Reddan Jr., 217-199, on Tuesday.
The Democratic Party organization, led by Chairman Michael Goldberg, supported Mr. Kole to the end, saying a vote for him would allow the local party committee to replace Mr. Kole with someone else. Mr. Goldberg said his sister, Lisa Drozd, had agreed to be that candidate.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Goldberg he hoped “it was time we found a way to come together and get beyond all of this.”
The chairman said he would convene the township party committee “by the end of the month and use that as a point of discussion to talk about plans going forward,” he said.
However, Mr. Reddan said Tuesday night he had no confidence in Mr. Goldberg.
”He’s not a valid chairman,” Mr. Reddan said minutes after the results were posted. “Any candidate he picks I won’t support.”
Mr. Reddan said Mr. Goldberg hadn’t called an organization meeting since January, and has a hard time finding candidates.
”I feel sorry for these people,” he said.
Mr. Kole’s name on the ballot will have to be replaced by September. The law says that the elected municipal members of the county committee must convene and vote for a replacement, although Mr. Goldberg said, when Mr. Kole first withdrew, that he thought he could choose a replacement unilaterally.
Mr. Goldberg said Ms. Drozd was still “in the mix” as a candidate, but he might suggest organizing another screening committee and see if people were interested in participating.
Only 1,418, or less than six percent, of the 26,628 eligible voters in the township bothered to cast ballots. There were only 458 Democratic votes, and 960 Republican, despite the fact there was only a token challenge to Gov. Christie among all the races on the GOP ballot.
Mayor Frank DelCore, seeking a third term, was unopposed for the Republican nomination for Township Committee. He got 892 votes.
Mr. Kole was endorsed by a party screening in March and held the party line on the ballot. Mr. Reddan, a 26-year township resident who was one of two party nominees for local office in 2011, said he hadn’t decided to run at the time of the screening.
Mr. Goldberg insisted the party should respect the screening process and elect its choice to allow the party organization to choose the ultimate nominee.
At the municipal building Tuesday night, Mr. Reddan was dismayed at the low turnout of Democrats.
”They want to vote for an empty seat, they got it,” he said. “Democrats don’t come out to vote.”
He also said it appeared Democrats voted down the column of unopposed party candidates. Mr. Kole was on that line, with Mr. Reddan’s name in the adjacent, otherwise empty column.
Mr. Reddan won districts by margins of 18-1, 16-1, 18-2 and 10-2, but Mr. Kole outpolled him in 22 of the 33 districts, with one tie.
One of Mr. Reddan’s supporters, Meryl Bisberg, said the result showed “there’s work to be done to get Democrats interested in Hillsborough elections.”
She said she thought the result put the party “back to square one” in terms of unifying. “Having a candidate who won and is not eligible is a big problems for the Democratic Party,” she said.
Turnout was slow all day. Judy Haas said she was the sixth Democratic voter in her district when she voted at about 1 p.m. When her son voted at 6:30, she said, he was the seventh.
Mr. Goldberg said in an email Wednesday morning, “Yesterday’s vote demonstrates people have confidence in the Hillsborough Democratic Party, recognize what we have been accomplishing while we build our party and that we have a plan for moving forward.
”We are looking forward to putting our differences aside and to sit down with everyone to discuss our plans, in the very near future.”

