Chris Calabrese

Bergen County Clerk Kathe Donovan, who got the most votes of any county-wide candidate last year, today endorsed John Driscoll and Robert Hermansen for freeholder.

Donovan made the endorsement in a letter to county committee members and elected officials, who will vote to award the party line to two of four candidates for freeholder at Thursday’s convention at Bergen County Republican headquarters in Hackensack.   

“Robert Hermansen and John Driscoll are the kind of strong, positive, issue oriented candidates who can not only win but help the entire ticket in November. They think, work and act like winners,” wrote Donovan. 

Bergen County Republican freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese said today that recent setbacks in his campaign will not stop him from running.

“I’m going to fight to the end,” he said.

Calabrese lost the Bergen County Republican Organization’s Policy Committee endorsement on Monday to Paramus Republican activist John Driscoll and Mahwah Councilman Robert Hermansen, who also beat him in a non-binding vote at last weekend’s Northeast Republican Organization convention (NERO).  

The tide started to turn against Calabrese, who started off this internal race as the frontrunner because he was the top vote-getting Republican freeholder candidate last year, after a flyer he sent to county committee members backfired, galvanizing influential party activist Ed Trawinski, a Fair Lawn councilman to work against him.

Calabrese, however, said that he was just trying to remind party insiders of how close he came last time around.

“All I wanted to show is I’m the proven vote getter.  I did very well last year, came within 2%, and I want to finish what I started,” he said.

In the race for the Republican nomination for Bergen County Freeholder, John Driscoll and Robert Hermansen won decisive victories at the Northeastern Republican Organization (NERO) convention on Saturday.  While NERO is essentially a scrimmage, it is the first formal test of strength before the Bergen County Republican Organization (BCRO) convention on March 19, and therefore an important barometer of political support.

Bergen County freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese, who was considered a favorite to win the Bergen County Republican Organization's (BCRO) endorsement, has suddenly found his candidacy in jeopardy over a flyer he distributed to county committee members.

Calabrese lost his freeholder race last year by a relatively narrow margin, but he was the top vote getter of the three Republican candidates for those positions.  He highlighted that fact in the flyer by comparing his vote totals to those of the party's other freeholder candidates over several past election cycles.

The controversy over the flyer centers on its lack of context -- that it failed to take into account the much higher turnout in 2008 than in years when the other candidates ran.

Five Republican are seeking the Bergen County Republican Organization’s nod to take on incumbent Democratic Freeholders Julie O’Brien and Vernon Walton in November.  

Altogether, six candidates filed letters of intent with Bergen County Republican Chairman Bob Yudin, although one has already withdrawn her name.  The party will award the line to the two candidates that win a convention later this year.  

Among them is Chris Calabrese, an Upper Saddle River resident with a business in Rutherford who ran last year and was the Republicans freeholder candidates' top vote getter.

The other two Republican candidates last year, Jeff Heller and Paul Duggan, have not expressed an interest in running again. 

votecalabrese.com

Former and future freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese

After a relatively narrow defeat this year, former Bergen County Republican freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese plans to run again next year.

“I will be running next year,” said Calabrese, 33. “I’ve taken a little time in the last month or so just to collect my thoughts for the next election.”

Calabrese, who lives in Upper Saddle River and owns a real estate business in Rutherford, was the top Republican vote getter in an election year when the GOP capitalized on Democratic Chairman Joe Ferriero’s legal troubles to come closer to winning a seat on the all-Democratic board than in the last several election cycles. Despite having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, Calabrese only came 8,423 votes short of incumbent Democrat David Ganz – a difference of about two percentage points.

With two prominent Democratic leaders indicted, a subpoena dropped on the clerk of the Democratic controlled freeholder board shortly before the election, and running against three incumbents who all had been voted out of municipal offices in their hometowns over the last couple years, Bergen County Republicans still could not pick up a single freeholder seat.

“Those guys did an outstanding job, to be honest. We were in this thing right until the end. So from that perspective, I thought it was a huge improvement – especially over four years ago,” said Republican consultant Thom Ammirato, who ran the campaign.

It’s not as if the Republicans had everything working for them. Ammirato argued that, despite the corruption issue, Democrats had a myriad of advantages, most of all having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, not to mention the power of incumbency. Presidential years in Bergen County are generally the strongest ones for Democrats. It’s the off years that Republicans tend to come closer.

In a strongly worded editorial, The (Bergen) Record endorsed blind Rabbi Dennis Shulman in his bid to unseat three-term GOP U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett.

"Scott Garrett is afraid. And he wants voters to be afraid. But the only thing voters should fear is Garrett's reelection to the House of Representatives," the editorial said. "The race in the 5th District is less about who is challenging Garrett and more about what Garrett is challenging. He is challenging the basic tenets of common decency. The high-minded, fiscal conservative has resorted to the lowest form of campaigning. In a post-Sept. 11 world, Garrett is shouting 'terrorist' in a crowded room. The congressman has been running television ads, in addition to sending out a direct-mail campaign piece, that link Shulman to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Garrett wants voters to believe that Shulman, a rabbi, would sell out Israel. It is beyond the pale."

Democrat Frank Lautenberg also won The Record's endorsement in his bid for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate. This is a pickup for Lautenberg: in 2002, The Record endorsed Ted Glick, the Green Party candidate. "Six years ago, we wrote that Frank Lautenberg did not 'have his good stuff' when he reentered politics to run for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. Six years later, a clearly energized Lautenberg has the right stuff to serve six more years."

Greetings from Bergen Community College in scenic Paramus, where the audience is just starting to roll in for a freeholder debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters at 3:15 this afternoon.

Incumbent Democrats Bernadette McPherson, David Ganz and Vernon Walton will defend their seats – and likely their reputations -- against Republicans Chris Calabrese, Jeff Heller and Paul Duggan.

It could get ugly.

Republicans have been in the political wilderness in Bergen County for some time, though they still had a Republican Freeholder – Lisa Randall – until 2006. But with the Democratic Chairman Joe Ferriero, recently indicted on eight felony corruption counts, Republicans see an opportunity, even if they’re still massively out-funded by the dominant party.