The local elections are over. And now it’s time for everyone to all get along. Well, maybe not.
The local elections are over. And now it’s time for everyone to all get along. Well, maybe not.
It is hoped that would be the case, but there definitely were strong divisions among the different camps in a couple of the communities before the elections and during the campaigns.
The likelihood is that situation isn’t going to change much now that the results are in.
And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One-party thinking or one-mentality thinking can be just as bad, or worse.
In Princeton, for instance, you could elect a turkey if it had a “D” after its name. Voters in the town were among the few communities in the state where Barbara Buono got more votes than Chris Christie.
So it’s no wonder that the two incumbent Democrats were reelected.
The Democrats, therefore, are left to infighting rather than across party lines.
In West Windsor, incumbent Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh managed to hold onto his job despite having not one challenger, but two.
One cannot help but wonder what the outcome might have been if there had been only the stronger of the two opponents, school board President Hemant Marathe.
Residents are clearly divided over whether they are ready for a change. That has been the situation for some time now as the mayor’s actions or inactions have come under criticism.
He would do well to work to change that situation.
He also will have to work with a divided Township Committee because the two people who were elected had aligned themselves with Mr. Marathe.
In Montgomery it all came down to party politics, with the Republican incumbents to the committee winning reelection against two Democrats. It might have helped that the Republicans held the positions of mayor and deputy mayor, but the township is pretty much GOP dominated and the council remains one party.
That doesn’t mean the Democrats are giving in. They put up a good fight and Montgomery is still a two-party town.
So, in local politics, maybe the more things change, the more they remain the same.