Bill Layton

Burlington County GOP Chairman Bill Layton is expected to endorse John McCain for President, shifting the powerful GOP organization to McCain one week before the New Jersey presidential primary.  Layton’s predecessor, Col. Michael Warner, had previously backed Rudy Giuliani, and had delivered the backing of many local Republican leaders to the Giuliani camp.

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.

First Congressional District candidate Dale Glading adddresses his fellow Republicans at the Riverton Country Club on Monday night.

First Congressional District candidate Dale Glading addresses fellow Republicans at the Burlington County Republican Party convention at the Riverton Country Club on Monday night.

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.