Subsections below:
Election results for 1994 and
1995
Notes on John Whiting’s
involvement in the 1994 campaign
The phone-calling effort I made,
and other campaign ephemera
The 1995 race
Support of the Dems from non-Dems?
Preview of the 1996 campaign
story
[Edits 9/24/13. More edits 9/27/13, including important one between asterisks. More edits 7/28/13. Edit 9/30/13.]
I am trying to strike a
balance—getting this 1990s Dem story out as quickly as possible, trying not to
get hung up with a series as I did with the Sons of Joyce series I did in the
spring (which took much longer than I expected).
So I wrote the first two parts
mainly from memory, and I just perused my old records—I have several big
envelopes and folders from my 1994-96 Dems work—and came up with some useful
info to back up (or adjust) some of what I said in the first two parts.
In perusing this stuff, I
realize I have reason to be proud of that mid-'90s involvement. Not only was there a lot
of work (including my keeping track of details, not simply in a neurotic way),
but in retrospect you realize what a fortunate thing it is to be involved in a
busy set of activity that isn’t simply your own career, but is in large part
meant to provide public servants to the township, if your candidates get
elected. And even if my first two parts in this series, and the facts below,
seem to reflect a lot of details “about something old and a little irrelevant,”
I have a heck of a lot of stuff in my files on this, which, again, reflects
doing something in support of township interests. And even while the township
no longer has a partisan (two-party) form of government, this old 1990s stuff
still holds relevant lessons—what it takes to float candidates that, whether
from a different party or different school of thought, offer people simply a
choice of whom they may want as their public servant, and the work it takes,
with details counting, to get that person to be a viable choice.
First, election results for 1994 and
1995
1994 (see Part 1):
A November 10, 1994, New Jersey Herald story (by Jim
Lockwood, a solid reporter) says that of 10,426 registered voters, 5,777 people cast
votes. For the 1994 Vernon township committee (TC) election, of the two Republicans, Daniel Kadish, 3,067 votes
(53% of voters who voted); Paulette Anderson, 3,029 (52%); of the two Democrats, Howard Burrell, 2,525 (44%
of voters who voted), William Bravenboer, 2,270 (39%).
The article noted that (in 1994)
registered Democrats were outnumbered by registered Republicans 3 to 1. So,
apparently in the 1994 TC race, some Republicans (or even voters not registered
to one of the standard parties) voted for Democrats. It is not clear from the
results who voted for a Republican for one seat and a Democrat for the other.
1995 (see Part 2):
In “Vernon splits vote in bitter council
donnybrook,” The Star-Ledger (writer
Patty Paugh), November 8, 1995, p. 39: in order of number of votes, Howard
Burrell (Dem.), 2,191; Ralph
Carnesecchi (Rep.), 2,142; Christian
Fuehrer (Rep.), 2,124; Richard
Conklin (Dem.), 1,963.
Notes on John Whiting’s
involvement in the 1994 campaign
I have to correct one or two
things from Part 2 on Dr. Whiting, where I was originally writing from
memory. I have a mixture of being somewhat heartened and a bit saddened seeing
the huge amount of memorabilia from the 1994 race, not simply because of what
the race meant but because I squeezed my campaign work in amid busy paid (non-campaign) work during the fall
1994 when I was doing temp clerical work at MetLife, in a sort of career
interlude away from the publishing realm.
As for the photo shoot at the
food store Someplace Special, I have a page from The Vernon News, October 20, 1994, p. 13, with several photos, but
none have Dr. Whiting in them. Somehow I recall him posing for one or two of the photos
that were shot, but maybe I’m wrong about that. I certainly remember him taking
at least some of the photos.
More impressive, and not really
in a good way, is the large amount of material he generated in support of his
method of trying to organize the campaign. I have forms made by him with titles
like “Progress Monitoring and Control Schedule,” and “District Mailing Planning
Schedule,” along with a detailed hierarchical chart. This latter chart refers
to “District Directors,” and as I’d forgotten, such a director could “lead”
more than one district. In fact, Craig Williams and his wife were named as directors for districts 7, 9, and 15 (the last was mine). It’s noted that
for these three districts, the “goal” was 808 votes. The number of votes (i.e.,
registered Democrats to try to get to commit to voting for our people) for
district 15, mine, was 279.
Each district was to have a
“district manager”—I was that for 15. There were also supposed to be “car pool
chiefs,” and I don’t know if these were ever named for all districts, or at
least mine (I know that as I found from my phone calling, such a “chief” wasn’t
necessary). There was also a chart headed with the term “Car pool coordinator”
who would be in charge of 15 “car pool chiefs,” one for each of 15 districts.
If you recall what I said in Part 2 about whether, on a general level, people
in my district or, by extension, others in town needed rides to the polls, you
can guess whether I am stifling a snicker over this, or close to it.
There was a script—quite long
and detailed—that Dr. Whiting wrote up for phone calls, which I made notes on
to adapt to my needs. (He also drafted form letters for certain purposes, such
as to senior citizens. I don’t remember if these letters were used.)
Mind you, all this stuff he
generated—I give him an A for effort, while certainly a lower grade for
realism—testified to how hard he was working; but meanwhile, the campaign
literature, in the form of mailed or personally handed-out fliers, was written
by Chris Rohde, and I am sure she had little or no input from Whiting on this.
The phone-calling effort I made,
and other campaign ephemera
I am pleased to see that my
memory of the phone-calling efforts I made isn’t far off. I said in Part 2 that
“I think I got to about 50 or 55 (of the 200+, whatever the total was).” My
detailed notes—I made a workhorse try with this phone-calling task in 1994,
even if I proceeded with heavy heart on the suspicion that it was a pretty
futile task—show that I made 56 phone-calling tries (I got a lot of “no
answers” or occasionally disconnected numbers), with only 30 actual
conversations (per one note). Per other notes, on October 30, I reached 11
people, got (substantive) answers from 7; November 5, I reached 14 of 19 calls (there were 26
tries [not sure if this meant multiple tries to certain numbers, or…]); and on
November 6, I reached 9 of 11 tries. Election Day was November 8. (You may see
that 11 + 14 + 9 = 34, which doesn’t equal 30; I haven’t tried to further plumb
my records on this….) The bottom line is, I
made an attempt for up to 56 different numbers out of 279 registered voters.
One interesting fact is that my
phone-interview question about who the recipient had decided to vote for, which came from
Whiting’s script, met with the person saying he or she, yes, had decided who he
or she would vote for, but the person wouldn’t say—and this happened more than
once on each of the three days. I think that at the time I felt it was a nosy
question; and it’s possible one of the people I spoke to even suggested
something to that effect.
What I most distinctly remember
from this episode is that, while I paid my dues in terms of giving it a try, it
was definitely an inefficient, and somewhat evasive, way to get people
interested in your candidate, and I never wanted to do it again, even feeling a
bit indignant about it afterward. It’s likely that when fellow Dem-campaign
people talked about doing phone calling in 1995, I somewhat hoped I wouldn’t
have someone try to rope me into doing this (I could always have stood my
ground, but you know that some kind of compromise often leaks up in these
situations), but for my own preferences, I definitely was against the task
after 1994. I think that not only was there phone calling in the 1995 campaign
but also in the 1996, though in the latter case, I think it was the Democratic
county committee doing it, not anyone on the level of the Vernon Dems.
Interestingly, I found a note on a fact I had completely forgotten about: at the October 24 meeting at
Dick’s garage, it was decided (probably by Whiting) that a Ginny Crotty would
help me do calls (and not anything else, I think) for my district. I hadn’t remembered this;
she would actually be one of the two candidates of the 1996 TC race. And she
has been in touch with me via Christmas cards ever since. But I had forgotten
she was involved in 1994, even in terms of being “named” by Whiting while not really
doing the task, in my quixotic (and not heartfelt) district 15 campaigning.
Also, a note from that October
24 meeting reflects a quote by Whiting, showing his philosophy:
“Overcommunication rather than under[communication] [is] to make sure [our]
objectives don’t fall through the cracks.”
My 1994 campaign record-envelope
contains a button, a badge, invitation cards for a fundraiser, and a nice
thank-you note from Dick, also signed by the two candidates. What a lot of life
that was.
The 1995 race
I have enough of an emotional
distance from the 1995 race—I’m not sure why, because there certainly was a lot
of work the club did, which I have plenty of scrapbook stuff from, and copious
news clippings—that I’ve tended to keep my blog entries on it light. And I will
do so here.
One detail I’d forgotten is
actually a sad story. A Frank *Sharkey*, a local resident who had been a Jersey City policeman and
was a popular man in town for a variety of community involvement, was going to be
our second candidate in addition to Howard Burrell. But then his son
disappeared while “following” the band The Grateful Dead in the South of the
country, as some of the band’s hardcore fans did. Then the son’s body was found
in August 1995. Sharkey, sadly, had to bow out. Then Dick was named as the new
second candidate. [Part 5 will have important details about the 1994-96 primary races, which have some relevance here.]
The race was indeed a rather
bitter one, for the Republicans in town. You see the results up near the top of
this entry; one headline referred to the campaigning as a “bitter council donnybrook,” and this
wasn’t really hyperbole, as I recall.
Interestingly, during the
reorganization meeting of the TC, though Democrat Howard Burrell got a few more
votes than Republican newcomer Ralph Carnesecchi, the latter took a leading
role when the new TC sat in January 1996. In an article by Patty Paugh, “New
mayor eschews tradition to earn more respect for Vernon,” The
Star-Ledger (January 28, 1996), Section One, p. 31, it is noted that
Carnesecchi was named mayor—as was the statutory practice at the time, being
voted on by the duly publicly-elected members of the TC—by three of the TC:
himself, Burrell, and Republican Pete West. The two other TC members, Dan Kadish
and Paulette Anderson, who had been elected in November 1994, voted “present” (functionally
equivalent to a no). Burrell was
voted as deputy mayor by unanimous vote.
Anderson, who proved highly
controversial during her first year in 1995, was not named as a liaison for 1996, as TC members routinely were, to any committee (like the Environmental Commission, the Planning Board, etc.,
all volunteer boards; there were also liaisons to paid departments of the
township); even though Kadish nominated her to one, and there was not a second to this motion.
By the way, that reorganization
meeting was the occasion (January 1996) I was named to the Environmental
Commission to a three-year term.
As I’d forgotten (or maybe never
even appreciated at the time), a John Kraus was named to an “alternate” post on
the Zoning Board of Adjustment, instead of Chris Fuehrer, Carnesecchi’s running
mate, being named, which latter I think was expected (by Fuehrer, at least). John Kraus, a Democrat, would
later be one of the two TC candidates for 1996.
Paugh notes in her article,
summing the views of Carnesecchi, that
[F]actionalism,
[Carnesecchi] said, will not produce the open dialogue Vernon needs to solve its problems. [new
paragraph] Carnesecchi offers a similar rationale for his bipartisan alliance
with Burrell, a longtime school board member before joining the township
committee. If Vernon
is going to make progress, he said, it must transcend party lines. [p. 31]
Support of the Dems from non-Dems?
As it happened, a flier
supporting the Democrats was circulated claiming that local Republicans and
“Independents” supported the Democrats. This had not come from the Democratic
group. (An article dealt with this flier, including its rather edgy rhetoric,
in The New Jersey Herald [October 26,
1995].)
A very interesting article
appeared very early in the election season of 1995: “Mulvihill not Vernon race factor[:]
Letters lead to candidates’ reactions,” New
Jersey Sunday Herald (September 17, 1995), pp. B1, B8 (the writer was
Jessica Materna, a relatively young writer—a recent college grad, I think, but
competent enough as a reporter). The article starts,
The four Township
Committee candidates said they will not accept campaign contributions from the
township’s largest developer or any organizations associated with him.
Developer Gene
Mulvihill, a director of Great American Recreation Inc.—the owner of Action
Park and Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski areas—says that is fine with him, since
he did not plan to hand out any money anyway.
The reactions
from Mulvihill, Republican candidates Ralph Carn[e]secchi and Chris Fue[hr]er, and
Democratic candidates Howard Burrell and Dick Conklin come after a barrage of
letters to the editors of local newspapers.
The letters,
written by Vernon
residents, are what some candidates call unfair because they have assumed who
has pledged allegiance to whom without bothering to ask the people involved.
It was fairly easy for the Dems
to do without Mulvihill’s donations, since the Dems had money coming, with help
from Charlie Cart (see Part 2), from the Democratic County Committee anyway.
Who was one of the letter
writers? None other than “Alice Kapitan,” or Skoder. The article by Paugh says,
Another letter,
written by Alice Kapitan, said, “If Great American Recreation employees are
writing letters to the editor week after week bashing (Carn[e]secchi and
Fue[hr]er), that could only mean one thing—Mulvihill and his people are
supporting (Burrell and Conklin).”
For information on “Alice
Kapitan,” look here, at this expose (512 KB file) by an editor of The New Jersey Herald done later in
1995.
Interestingly, Skoder never
really got in to any meetings or other doings of the Vernon Democrats from 1994
through 1996, at least what I was involved with. And I remember Chris Rohde’s saying (sometime
then or shortly after) that Skoder was asking some questions, trying
(figuratively) to get a foot in the door of understanding what our group was
doing, but was rebuffed, or some such thing.
Preview of the 1996 campaign
story
While I’ve been citing campaign
results, here are some summary numbers from 1996 for the TC race, which notably were during a
presidential election year, when more people commonly come out to vote than
other years in the county: Republicans, 7,876 (for two candidates); Democrats,
4,185 (for two candidates); “Independents,” 4,554 (for two candidates). One of
the Democrats actually got more votes than one of the “Independents.” Story to
come.
