Kean hopes to regenerate against Genovese

Kean has learned from his "youthful political indiscretions" and is echoing his father's salient inclusive Republican politics.

Gina Genovese, on the other hand, has nowhere to go. If she stays in the center, she is the same as Kean and loses because he is the incumbent. If she moves left, she excites the folks at Blue Jersey but the 21st is not the Village and she loses.

Don't be surprised to see Kean as a gubernatorial candidate if Christie doesn't run. If he stays on the 2007 message he can be formidable.

Kean's reform plays well in the district? He wins because he is a Republican candidate in the 21st, not because anyone cares or even knows about his issues. What the campaign last year proved about Kean is that people don't buy him as a reformer.

Who would after he ran away from both Iraq War soldier's mother and the Vice President?

Genovese is right that he's never won an election that wasn't handed to him. In 2000 he got whooped by a nobody in Mike Ferguson for the Republican nomination for Congress. Then he got appointed to the Assembly by party insiders, and then appointed to the Senate by the same party insiders.

Yeah, he won reelection to those past two jobs but there was no real competition. If he had faced a primary like he did for Congress in 2000 he might not have won.

Kean has not proved that he can campaign hard or well, getting beat whenever there is real competition and doing the minimum necessary in easy campaigns.

The only thing he has going for him is his Dad, and that's worn off.

Tom - it sounds like you're a jilted girlfriend. . .

Unfortunately, our local paper The Echoes Sentinel does not archive information online. However, you should be able to go to most local libraries and find all of the past articles. To help your search, Cecilia Cilli was her local campaign manager and David Welch was the mayor which they tried to do the smear campaign about. I also believe that there was an article in the Daily Record(which also is not archived online) about whether cecilia Cilli illegally was trespassing on David Welch's property and whether or not the LOng HIll police should have been involved in investigating the anonymous flyer.
And while your reading the past Echoes Senitnels look up the issue where gina states that her wonderful 17% budget increase that she worked so hard on was "bare bones". Then read the issue where one of the other committeeman was able to easily bring that 17% to only a 5% increase. ALso, read the issues where Gina touts about her "great negotiating abiltie" in being able to have someone donate back to LOng Hill one of our original town fire trucks. Then read the issue about how this tireless negotiation was with Anthony Spendorio, the developer who wanted to build 250 condos at the edge of our town's entrance to the great Swamp wildlife refuge. There's so much great reading regarding her 1 term as mayor!!!! Too bad for Tom Kean that we have such a small town paper and all of our town's archived history isn't available for all of district 21 to read!!!!!!

The Silver Spoon's only quality is his daddy's name. What is worse, his daddy was the beginning of the RINO train that decimated our party. It started with him and went into overdrive with Christie Whitperson, now Republicans stand for nothing and can't get elected. We keep trying to fool the public offering them candidates that are political hacks rather than prinipled Republicans.

If we ever want to turn New Jersey Red again we will have to dump our own garbage before the Democrats do it for us.

"The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." -

Daniel Webster

Here in Long Hill Township (LHT) the townsfolk have no idea what the issues are in this race, and most don't care. They just pull the lever for whichever candidate their own local party is endorsing. What most people outside this small enclave of political surrealism don't realize is that more than 50% of voters here are independents. Typically, they lean toward the Republican camp.

Research suggests that name recognition is the leading factor in voting decisions. This theory would predict that Genovese should win Long Hill Township by a landslide. So why is everyone predicting that she is going to lose her own home town? Are pundits suggesting that citizens in LHT are going to vote against their own former mayor?

LHT's Republican Mayor George Vitureira hosted a fundraiser for Tom Kean ( I think it was either last weekend or the weekend before), and, according to my sources, Kean, somewhat jokingly, raised his index finger, pointed it at the Mayor, and said something to the effect that he had better not lose LHT. That he was being forced to expend resources in a town that should have been a slam dunk must have made him pretty sore. Why would he be sore? After all, it wasn't the Mayor's fault that Gina was running against him, was it?

For those of you who don't understand, or really give a crap, about the politics of a small town like LHT, I don't blame you. The machinations of the LHT political machines are strange in a homespun, average thinking, Andy Jackson kind of way. Both sides of the aisle have problems. Both sides have pesonalities. Both sides have problem personalities. Both sides make mistakes. In this township, the side that makes the fewest and least severe mistakes usually wins. Both sides of the aisle benefit from this fact.

The question voters who live outside LHT should be asking is, why would a former mayor drop off the township committee to run against Kean? It would seem like political suicide. What was her motivation for putting a political gun to her head and shooting herself? And what is the connection between her motivator and Kean's index finger?

In last year's election for township committee, our current Republican Mayor ran alongside the Democrat, Collins, promising a united Democrat/Republican governing body that cared more for LHT than partisan politics. The local and county Democratic Party backed this unholy alliance, as did half of the Repbulican party; the half that backed the Mayor. However, the "old school" republicans who had lost much of their power when Vitureira was elected, were quite vocal about their displeasure. It nearly tore the party apart.

And after Vitureira was elected, it got worse. Republican Party county officials had to "visit" and recommend that everyone bury the hatchet. No one ever expects campaign promises to be kept. However, they don't expect them to be broken the first time their newly elected official sits down! It was obvious from day one that there would be no cooperation. The decision to back the opposition party's candidate was being questioned by both sides. I believe it is apparent now what a bad political strategy that turned out to be.

Unfortunately, the democrats made the more severe and a greater number of mistakes this time around. Genovese was caught between a rock and a hard place. She lost the mayorship in a 3-2 township committee vote that was strictly along party lines. She and the other democrat, Collins, claim that they were given the "revised" proposed township budget by the Mayor only one hour before they were expected to vote on it.

Some believe that the Republicans on the committee crossed the line between just outside of acceptable ethics and just inside the Open Public Meetings Act. So rather than stick it out in LHT and continue fighting for those who believed in her, she decided to run away from home and join the circus. She didn't even locate her campaign office in LHT; she put it in Berkeley Heights where she has her business. When the going gets tough, the tough quit and run for an office they have no hope of winning. I'm not quite sure if this story has a moral. Maybe the moral is that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time"; but I don't thnk so. Personally, I belive that is why we are in Iraq.

Maybe the moral is "never give a sucker an even break"; now that would be more like it. But that one is somewhat lacking in depth. I think Winston Churchill was close when he said "A good argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter." Had he included five-minutes with an avarage politician as well he would have been right on the money!

If you want the real news, forget the Echoes Sentinel. Read the Long Hill Observer at www.longhillobserver.com.