Bill Layton

As Goya Foods heir Andy Unanue starts his first ever race for elected office, he’ll have an experienced team waiting for him.

Once he gets back from Colorado.

Unanue is on a vacation with his extended family in Vail, and he won’t be returning to New Jersey in time to attend the Republican conventions scheduled for this week in Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic, Middlesex and Salem Counties. He planned the trip a year ago, he said, and even a Senate candidacy isn’t enough to make him shirk the familial responsibility.

Instead, he’ll send surrogates to the conventions, and will address screening committees in conference calls. He plans to return to his homes in New Jersey and New York City early next month.

“I’m not a politician. I don’t really worry about how hard it’s going to be,” Unanue said when asked if not being able to attend the conventions will hurt his chances. “I’m worried about winning the primary and the election. I’m in the process of aligning myself with what I would consider the best and most talented staff.”

Burlington County Republican Chairman Bill Layton said he was Burlington County GOP Chair Bill Laytondisappointed in the news that Anne Evans Estabrook would be suspending her U.S. Senate bid today, and anticipates his organization throwing its support behind state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris).

"My guess is Joe Pennacchio will be the endorsed candidate barring an unforseen circumstance," Layton said.

The county GOP chairman wished Estabrook well, and expressed concern for her health.

"She called me from the hospital last night," said Layton, whose organization had endorsed the Spring Lake businesswoman at its convention after the steering committee recommended her over Pennacchio by a vote of 3-2.

GOP incumbent Dennis Roohr was re-elected to the New Hanover Township Committee yesterday, defeating Democrat Sharon Atkinson by a 191-176 margin in a special election to break a 170-170 tie in the November 2007 contest.  This is the second Republican victory this month in tie-breaker elections; the GOP won a mayoral race in Matawan.

This was the first electoral test of the new Burlington GOP Chairman, Bill Layton.  Atkinson had the active support of Democratic County Chairman Rick Perr.

Newly-elected Burlington County GOP Chairman Bill Layton
In an act that became inevitable when a state superior court judge abruptly reversed his decision from earlier in the week, the Burlington County Republican Committee elected Bill Layton as their new party chairman at a special meeting on Saturday.

The unanimous vote proclaimed party unity, but the mood in the room bore an undercurrent of anxiety, which the new chairman attempted to dissipate in his acceptance speech.

"Friends," Layton told the crowd of 300 in the Wyndham Hotel in Mount Laurel, "families fight. They fight all the time. But they leave their house unified, and they go and fight with the neighbors."

"Friends, families fight," newly elected Burlington County GOP Chairman Bill Layton tells his fellow Republicans. Now it's time to unify and battle the Republicans mobilized on the county's southern border, he adds.

Newly chosen as chair of the Burlington County Republican Party, Bill Layton calls on Sen.-elect Phil Haines to stand with him as part of a unified front.

Lobbyist Bill Layton will become the new Burlington County GOP Chairman. Dawn Lacy, who became Acting Chair when Col. Michael Warner stepped down earlier this year, will preside over the meeting today, but told PolitickerNJ.com that she will not seek election to the post.

It's a saga as old as Saul versus David, Red Cloud versus Crazy Horse. The scrappy old boss has to go out and try to defend his turf against the brazen young challenger bucking to be if not his successor exactly, then the leader of a new breed.

That's the way it is in Burlington County, where 36-year old Dawn Lacy, acting chair of the Republican Party, is facing Glenn Paulsen, 60, the party's former chair and enduring craggy-faced poster boy for GOP power. 

When Lacy threw Paulsen's surrogates out of party headquarters the day after the election on Nov. 6th, the boss went into attack mode and promptly started stirring up opposition to the bright-eyed young politico whom he'd initially brought into the fold to head up the party's youth recruitment efforts.

Backed by her cadre of allies in the Republican Party, the acting chair of the Burlington County Republicans today filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against former GOP chairman Glenn Paulsen, former campaign chairman Bill Layton and party treasurer Charles Lambiase.

Lacy said she believes Paulsen, Layton and those allied with them have used organizational property to co-opt rank-and-file Republicans, and are muscling her out of of the way as she attempts to oversee a transparent review process of the party's financial records.

Assemblywoman- elect Dawn Addiego is standing with Glenn Paulsen in the Burlington GOP warAfter feasting on the Democratic Party in the 8th district general election a week ago, Republicans promptly turned on each other in a continuing family fracas that today brought out a normally under-the-radar Republican operative who lit into Assemblywoman-elect Dawn Marie Addiego.

Irritated by Acting Party Chairwoman Dawn Lacy's post Election Day firing of two campaign strategists, Addiego on Tuesday issued a staunch-the-bleeding letter to Evesham Republicans in which she praised the "leadership" of Campaign Chairman Bill Layton and Campaign Manager Chris Russell - and ripped Lacy.