Dawn Lacy

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."

Before she launched an uprising in the Burlington County Republican Organization, outgoing Chair Dawn Lacy thought she had secured the support of Sen.-elect Phil Haines. But Haines reneged - and Lacy criticized him for that on Saturday.

"Silence is not the same as unity," Dawn Lacy tells an assemblage of the party's county delegates at a special meeting in Mount Laurel on Saturday, moments before they vote for Bill Layton as party chair.

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.

As veteran state legislator Diane Allen’s congressional star descended over the 3rd district, an opposing faction in her party inch by inch unveiled what they believe is the tantalizing candidacy of newcomer Christopher Myers, a decorated Gulf War veteran and vice president at Lockheed Martin.

"A real man's man," said an early supporter.

The popular Allen just endured a six-month long re-election campaign in which she fairly beat up the opposition by a 12% margin, but also expended energy and capital in a losing effort to pull in a pair of Assembly running mates.

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.

Rev. Aubrey Fenton, a Republican Freeholder from Burlington County, with Rep. Jim SaxtonRev. Aubrey Fenton was as shocked as any other Republican to hear that 12-term Rep. Jim Saxton’s would not seek re-election. But after getting the news on Friday, Fenton shut himself off from the political world as he typically does on weekends, taking sanctuary in his church to focus on his Sunday sermon.

So it wasn’t until Monday that the 37-year-old Burlington County Freeholder saw published reports that Burlington County GOP leader Glenn Paulsen, who’s feuding with potential congressional candidate state Sen. Diane Allen -- the early favorite for the Republican nomination – was talking up a potential Fenton run.

Paulsen later told PolitickerNJ.com that Republicans ought to look into supporting the candidacy of Fenton, an African-American, as an opportunity for the national party to reach out to minority voters. Plus, he said, Fenton is more socially conservative than Allen, meshing with the national party’s stance on issues like abortion and gay marriage more than the moderate Allen.

Dawn Lacy served as a captain in the Air Force and was in charge of the security detail that defends a base from attack. 

Now the 36-year old acting chair of the Burlington County Republican Party believes her organization is under siege, not from a foreign invader, but from a local culture of bossism and fear.

When the New Jersey native fulfilled her five years of active duty in the military, she and her husband moved to Burlington, where she headed up the Young Republicans Club beginning in 2003. To this day she receives cautious praise from boss Glenn Paulsen for her recruitment efforts.

"She was good at GOTV," said Paulsen. "She felt that was something she could grow beyond."

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.