Maplewood’s Mayor for 2019

Vic DeLuca!   Congrats, Vic! And he pledged to step down as mayor in 2020. 

Frank McGehee will be vice mayor. 

Looks like Lembrich missed his chance last year.

Money may buy a lot of things.............but not the Mayors seat in our little burg.  .   Who said the coal industry is dead?

author said:
Money may buy a lot of things.............but not the Mayors seat in our little burg.  .   Who said the coal industry is dead?

 Can you please explain this remark? Because part of it makes me cringe a little. 

Soul_29 said:

author said:
Money may buy a lot of things.............but not the Mayors seat in our little burg.  .   Who said the coal industry is dead?

 Can you please explain this remark? Because part of it makes me cringe a little. 

 I sent you a PM with my interpretation of this statement.

Soul_29 said:

author said:
Money may buy a lot of things.............but not the Mayors seat in our little burg.  .   Who said the coal industry is dead?

 Can you please explain this remark? Because part of it makes me cringe a little. 

 Uncringe my friend.  It is commonly known that he spent $20,000.  in his first attempt at election to the TC. This is also the first step at getting elected Mayor as we do not elect our Mayors directly but have them handed to us by the TC..........that does not make me cringe but rather itchy all over.

Coal...........coal in the stocking....remember?

joan_crystal said:

Soul_29 said:

author said:
Money may buy a lot of things.............but not the Mayors seat in our little burg.  .   Who said the coal industry is dead?

 Can you please explain this remark? Because part of it makes me cringe a little. 

 I sent you a PM with my interpretation of this statement.

 Joan....... no  PM received.  Maybe there is a cosmic storm.  You can E mail me directly.

PM was sent to Soul not you.  He was the one who asked for the translation of your coal in the stocking post.

Theresa May

Nancy Pelosi

Vic DeLuca

We can only hope their replacements will be as good.

BTW, how do we know that Lembrich still wants to be Mayor. I would think it's a total pain in the butt.

LOST said:
BTW, how do we know that Lembrich still wants to be Mayor. I would think it's a total pain in the butt.

 They have some bright spots!  Among other things, they get to perform weddings.

We were married by the Society of Friends.........aka Quakers...........in Plainfield

However since neither of us were Quakers,  The friends asked if we would be married in a quick

civil ceremony before the religious one. So we were married initially by the Mayor of Plainfield.

Funny note......the reception hall was adjacent to the Quacker Meeting  House.  It was made of wood and was 200 years old  There was no smoking allowed and in the Quacker tradition .....no drinking

You have never seen so many wedding guests chow down their roast beef dinner in record time so they could go outside and cut their lives a little shorter.

.

ml1 said:
.

 Pondering the matter further........I can see now why we are not allowed to vote ourselves for Mayor

Lembrich spent somewhere north of $32,000 in his last election. 

not sure why we can’t vote for the mayor ourselves, I think we’d get quite different results.

Interesting thought.............let us say that two of the TC prople are Republicans.  Or Vegetarian Party or whatever.  Now if we were allowd a free and open election among the populace........a minority party rep might be elected as Mayor.  Might make for some interesting watching on channel 35.

mem said:
not sure why we can’t vote for the mayor ourselves, I think we’d get quite different results.

 Thanks, mem, and I appreciate you putting me forward again, but I honestly think my community energy is better spent fighting from the outside in.

It’s kind of like the electoral vote here.

Ridski I’d vote for you in a second, except, where’s your birth certificate, ha!

I can't help but see a contradiction between people complaining about how much one TC member spent on campaigning, and the desire for the voters to elect the mayor directly.  How much do we think candidates would be spending to run for mayor if they had to campaign among the larger electorate?

But aside from that, the office of mayor in Maplewood isn't really a chief executive position, so why would we have a direct election.  It's more akin to the Speaker of the House on the federal level or the Senate President on the state level. It's a legislative position that carries some weight in setting the legislative agenda, and aside from that it's mostly ceremonial.  I get why the office is elected by the TC members, and I don't see any reason to change it unless the township charter was amended to create a chief executive officer -- which imho we don't need at all.  

I don't know what is the Republican voter count of Maplewood.  But they do garner a decent number of votes when they field serious candidates.

Under our current system they are shut out completely from the leadership of the TC.

Maybe by the time the sun burns out this sizeable minority will get a chance to be partners in this thing we call Maplewood Twp.

There is nothing about me that is humble.

author said:
I don't know what is the Republican voter count of Maplewood.  But they do garner a decent number of votes when they field serious candidates.

 About 800 votes for the Republican in the election for governor last year, and about 7,000 for the Democrat. So, roughly one in 10 voters was a Republican.

mem said:
not sure why we can’t vote for the mayor ourselves, I think we’d get quite different results.

 I don’t.  I think Vic has done and incredible job as mayor.  There is no one more dedicated to the cause.  

jeffl said:

mem said:
not sure why we can’t vote for the mayor ourselves, I think we’d get quite different results.

 I don’t.  I think Vic has done and incredible job as mayor.  There is no one more dedicated to the cause.  

 Agree with Jeffl 100%.  I haven't agreed with everything Vic has done, but he has done an excellent job and is a relentless volunteer for Maplewood.

ml1 said:
I can't help but see a contradiction between people complaining about how much one TC member spent on campaigning, and the desire for the voters to elect the mayor directly.  How much do we think candidates would be spending to run for mayor if they had to campaign among the larger electorate?
But aside from that, the office of mayor in Maplewood isn't really a chief executive position, so why would we have a direct election.  It's more akin to the Speaker of the House on the federal level or the Senate President on the state level. It's a legislative position that carries some weight in setting the legislative agenda, and aside from that it's mostly ceremonial.  I get why the office is elected by the TC members, and I don't see any reason to change it unless the township charter was amended to create a chief executive officer -- which imho we don't need at all.  

Agree with this. I also agree with the possibility that if the mayor were directly elected by voters, perhaps one of the other four members would win. But would that substantially change or improve the community or people's lives? 

A lot of the issues which are important to people - taxes, schools, NJ Transit - really aren't heavily influenced by the mayor or TC. And controversial issues such as development and traffic are always going to be around. We're a popular suburb of the largest city in the country and will never completely be the "small town" that some folks want it to be.

I can't get past that people pay so much money to be ...mayor.  Why.  Why on earth.

DaveSchmidt said:

author said:
I don't know what is the Republican voter count of Maplewood.  But they do garner a decent number of votes when they field serious candidates.

 About 800 votes for the Republican in the election for governor last year, and about 7,000 for the Democrat. So, roughly one in 10 voters was a Republican.

 Maybe they can be declared an endangered species

for the Vicsters, could you explain your perception of what vic has done “for the cause”, that no one else could have done over all these years, if they’d have been let in? I’m not being contentious, I honestly want to know. 

yahooyahoo said:
Lembrich spent somewhere north of $32,000 in his last election. 

I think you mean in his first election (2015), not his most recent one.  I just spent a few minutes on the NJ ELEC website and found that, in fact, Nancy Adams and Greg Lembrich combined spent less than $9700 on their re-election in 2018, according to the state filings.  And, given how little opposition they had and how quiet their campaign seemed, I'd guess they spent well under that amount (that's just the threshold the state sets at which you need to file additional ELEC paperwork if you exceed). 

As for the Lembrich 2015 primary spending, I looked up his ELEC filings on the state website as well and see that he raised about half of the $33k he spent and loaned himself the other half.  Even so, $33k is substantially less than DeLuca spent when he won his 2005 primary "off the line" to get back on the TC (approx. $53k according to state filings).  And also less than Profeta and Heumer spent on their campaigns in the early 2000s (both spent north of $45k).  The same filings show that both DeLuca and Profeta loaned themselves over $20k each for their respective campaigns.  In that sense, Lembrich wasn't breaking new ground with an expensive campaign in 2015, he was just following the precedent set by DeLuca (and others). 

@author, care to revise any of your statements?     

tomdevon said:

yahooyahoo said:
Lembrich spent somewhere north of $32,000 in his last election. 

I think you mean in his first election (2015), not his most recent one.  I just spent a few minutes on the NJ ELEC website and found that, in fact, Nancy Adams and Greg Lembrich combined spent less than $9700 on their re-election in 2018, according to the state filings.  And, given how little opposition they had and how quiet their campaign seemed, I'd guess they spent well under that amount (that's just the threshold the state sets at which you need to file additional ELEC paperwork if you exceed). 

As for the Lembrich 2015 primary spending, I looked up his ELEC filings on the state website as well and see that he raised about half of the $33k he spent and loaned himself the other half.  Even so, $33k is substantially less than DeLuca spent when he won his 2005 primary "off the line" to get back on the TC (approx. $53k according to state filings).  And also less than Profeta and Heumer spent on their campaigns in the early 2000s (both spent north of $45k).  The same filings show that both DeLuca and Profeta loaned themselves over $20k each for their respective campaigns.  In that sense, Lembrich wasn't breaking new ground with an expensive campaign in 2015, he was just following the precedent set by DeLuca (and others). 

@author, care to revise any of your statements?     

 In the beginning God made heaven and the Earth............after that all bets are off.