Jenny Crumiller

Impressing even some of the Democrats who opposed him was Mendy Fisch, a 20-year-old Princeton University sophomore who came within 63 votes of ousting Princeton Borough Councilman Kevin Wilkes in the Democratic primary.  Wilkes beat Fisch 472-409, with Jenny Crumiller finishing first with 531 votes.  Fisch made it a race by securing 193 absentee ballots, mostly from Princeton students who voted before they left campus last week.  (Crumiller received 30 absentee votes and Wilkes got 9.)  If Fisch had been able to get all the students who requested absentee ballots to return them, he would have won the nomination - which is tantamount to election in this heavily-Democratic municipality.

The Princeton Community Democratic Organization voted Sunday night to endorse Jenny Crumiller for Borough Council over incumbents Kevin Wilkes and Peggy Karcher.  Crumiller, a former PCDO President, will run on the Mercer County Democratic organization line with the endorsement of the local party organization.  Wilkes got enough votes to run on the line, but without a formal party endorsement.  Karcher, who was married to the late Assembly Speaker Alan Karcher and is the mother of former State Sen. Ellen Karcher, did not receive enough votes to win either an endorsement or a position in the Democratic column.

PRINCETON - Shirley Kauffman, former president of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization, died Monday at 82 after a long battle with cancer.

"Shirley was an outstanding member of the community and will be greatly missed," PCDO President Jenny Crumiller said in an email to Democrats. "For many years she was the backbone of the PCDO."

Democrats in Princeton knew Kauffman as a hard-nosed veteran of political campaigns and activist for progressive causes.

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton) worked with Kauffman on the late Barbara Boggs Sigmund’s Democratic Primary race for governor in 1989, when Sigmund ran against Alan Karcher and eventual winner Jim Florio.

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora’s early legwork to get former vice president Al Gore into the 2008 presidential race ran amok when Gore flatly said he wasn’t going to run.

The left Gusciora, a prime co-sponsor of the state’s Global Warming Response Act, without his optimum green candidate.

Still hoping for former Vice President Al Gore to enter the 2008 presidential race, Assemblyman Reed Gusciora filed an “Uncommitted” slate of delegates to run in the February 5 Democratic primary.  Joining Gusciora are Princeton Councilwoman Wendy Benchley, Princeton Democratic Organization President Jenny Crumiller, and former Princeton Mayor Jim Floyd.