Though one never knows when it comes to West Windsor politics, this year’s municipal elections are likely to be free of confusion and acrimony, at least in the voting booth.
After the notorious separated ballots in the 2013 election split the mayoral candidates from their Council running mates, this year’s two opposing Council slates are grouped together, one on top of the other. It also helps that there is no race for mayor. Residents will be spared one until 2017.
On November 3, voters at the booth will see this year’s general assembly and Mercer County races at the top of the ballot, two vertical columns split along party lines. Two general assembly seats are up for election. At the county level, the executive, clerk, and three freeholder positions are open.
In a clearly demarcated section below those races are the West Windsor ‘non-partisan’ Council candidates. Three Council seats are open this year, and both slates are grouped and listed in a single column. The Community First slate, George Borek, Alison Miller, Ayesha Hamilton, is listed at the top of the column. Below that grouping is Your Voice Our Commitment, the slate comprising Hemant Marathe, Virginia Manzari, and Gerald Halloran. Voters can select any three candidates.
The municipal ballot order was determined by a random drawing at the township clerk’s office on September 11. Miller and Manzari were present.
To the right of the municipal section of the ballot is the WW-P school board election. There two names running for one seat: board vice president Michele Kaish and South senior Jordon DeGroote.
West Windsor Council member Peter Mendonez is also on the ballot. He is one of two Republican nominees vying for a District 15 Assembly seat in the state legislature.
Mendonez was also on the 2013 ballot, when he ran for Council alongside Linda Geevers. The two candidates were running alongside Marathe, then running for mayor, but they shared the first column with incumbent mayor Shing-fu Hsueh.
Hsueh’s running mates, Kamal Khanna and Eric Payne, were listed in the middle column under mayoral candidate Rick Visovsky. The column on the right had mayoral candidate Marathe, followed by Debra Hepler and Martin Whitfield, Visovsky’s running mates.
Mayor and Council are two separate ballot titles, and the subsequent random drawing determined the placement order, which many voters mistook for slate groupings.
In 2013 Hsueh got the most votes, and the two Council candidates listed under him, Geevers and Mendonez, won their races as well. Geevers was an incumbent Council member, but Mendonez was a 29-year-old candidate who had moved to West Windsor in 2012.
Since that race the two Council members have formed an adversarial majority alongside Council President Bryan Maher. Hsueh’s Democratic supporters blame the ballot arrangement for swinging majority control of Council to the Republicans.
Meanwhile in Plainsboro, two township committee seats and two school board seats are up for election, but those races are uncontested.
