Republicans in South Brunswick and Monroe can’t be too happy with the results of Tuesday’s election.
While Bill Baroni won a Senate seat rather handidly, he only squeaked by in South Brunswick — he bested a weak candidate, South Brunswick resident Seema Singha — a town that he has visited often and in which he has always been popular. Mr. Baroni was the top votegetter in town in 2005, as well, but only by 24 votes in his last Assembly race — plus, his runningmate, former South Brunswick Police Chief Michael Paquette, managed only a third-place finish, raising questions about Baroni’s coattails.
Taken together — along with Linda Greenstein’s huge showing in the township this time around (she was the top votegetter with 1,966, which probably helped put her over the top) — show once again how difficult it has become for Republicans to win in South Brunswick.
The same goes for Monroe, where a controversy over the proposed new high school should have inflicted some damage on the Democrats, especially with Mayor Richard Pucci topping the ticket. Instead, as has been the case for several years, the GOP offered only the barest of challenges (though, if the party can find a decent candidate for Ward 3 in 2009 and find some real cash to fund him or her and not come off sounding shrill and petty….).
There are several reasons for this, I think, including demographics — senior voters in Monroe, a more affluent, East Coast voter in South Brunswick. But the big reason is that both GOP organizations are broken (Monroe Chairwoman Sidna Mitchell has been working dilligently to repair things there, but the party does not have much of a farm system at this point) and have failed to offer decent candidates or a coherent platform in years.
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Hank Kalet 