Hsing forgoes home county convention in 7th district

BRIDGEWATER - Citing his disagreement with the political process, Bridgewater Councilman Michael Hsing declined to participate in the Somerset County Republican Convention on Thursday night.

A candidate for Congress in the 7th District, Hsing wrote a letter to Somerset County GOP Chairman Dale Florio before the meeting and told him he would not be in attendance.

"With all due respect, I regret to say that I do not fully agree with the screening guidelines as were announced in the previous email, and the pre-screening endorsement tactics employed by many political leaders," Hsing wrote to Florio.

Hsing told PolitickerNJ.com he was frustrated from the start by the chore of trying to talk to county committee members - not just in Somerset but in the district’s other three counties - who seemed pre-set on other candidates.

"Everything’s done behind closed doors," Hsing complained. "The parties run as they did 50 years ago, and my feeling is unless the parties catch up with contemporary society, we will completely lose contact with voters. The machine is broken, and that goes for both parties."

The Bridgewater councilman said throughout the process of visiting screening committees in each of the district’s four counties, he sensed the party brass encouraging "teamwork" more than honest competition, particularly among those candidates not considered the frontrunners.

"There’s this half explicit line that you need to wait for your time, and signals about who is supporting whom, the rule that officials shouldn’t endorse at these events, and then high-ranking officials endorsing," said Hsing. "I would go in to talk to a screening committee and the people had voted before they spoke to me. Maybe I don’t know how to play politics but in some way this struck me as wrong."

In his letter to Florio, Hsing said that out of courtesy to the other candidates he "would not make an endorsement," prompting some of his rivals at the convention to conclude that he had dropped out of the race and/or that he was planning to run in the general election as a Joe Lieberman-styled independent.

Hsing offered no comment, saying only that he remains a Republican and in terms of making a run off the line in another capacity, "that will be determined and disclosed later."