South Brunswick candidate leaves race

There are changes afoot on this year’s local electoral landscape. Richard Kish, who won a write-in campaign during the June primary to earn the Republican mayoral nod, has announced that he is moving out of state and will be dropping out of the race. I don’t have much — he announced his decision this morning in an e-mail. We’ll be posting updates to the South Brunswick Post’s Web site as we get them.

How this will affect the race is difficult to say. A tough primary battle has shown that there is enough dissatisfaction with Mayor Frank Gambatese to potentially make him vulnerable — though with the enormous amount of cash at the Democratic Party’s disposal and the general weakness of the local Republican Party, I suspect Mr. Kish would have had a very difficult, uphill climb.

And the new mayoral candidate, Lynda Woods Cleary, has a lot to prove. I don’t want to prejudge the race, but she was not a particularly strong candidate two years ago. She has had plenty of time to learn the issues, though, and other candidates have remade themselves into strong contenders after poor first showings.

That said, this cannot be good news for a party that had tremendous difficulty finding candidates to run this year.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.
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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

One thought on “South Brunswick candidate leaves race”

  1. THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MYFRIEND Could it be that Richard Kish was used as a tool, along with all of the loyal Republicans that voted for him, to minipulate the outcome of the Primary Election? As an observer, I find it amazing that the local Republican party head, who was defeated in a previous race for mayor by Debra Johnson, and resents it, was able to convince his party supporters that Richard Kish was their answer to change in South Brunswick. How serious could Richard Kish have been, he wasn\’t even a registered Republican! The margin of victory Frank Gambatese had over Debra Johnson was almost equivilent to that of votes cast for the Republican candidate, just enough… I have to give Roger Craig credit for pulling that off, hey, at least his daughter in law landed a job with the infamous Middlesex County Democratic attorney Tom Kelso out of it. For the rest of his party, I guess they can look forward to at least four more years of Democratic county control. Debra Johnson is clearly the most electable candidate for Mayor in South Brunswick, she ran her campaign on a shoe string buget, about one tenth of what the Democratic Organizations spent to get their candidate elected. Given the same financial resources, she would have had a land slide victory. Instead she ran a fiscally responsible and clean campaign and for that she lost by less than 5% of the public vote, now that is a victory in itself! Wouldn\’t it be great if all of the voters in South Brunswick had another chance, the ones who assumed Debra would win and did not bother to vote, and all of the Republicans who are looking for change and were duped by their own party? On election day, I will plan to go to the Polls and WRITE- IN DEBRA JOHNSON for Mayor

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