Jon Hornik

Marlboro Mayor Jon Hornik

MARLBORO - His name isn't on the ballot this year, but the race for three council seats in Marlboro has much to do with Mayor Jon Hornik, who believes his local brand's solid enough to withstand a barrage that starts at the top with GOP candidate Chris Christie and his potential to create a down-ballot shock wave.
 
Going back to when he beat incumbent Mayor Robert Kleinberg in 2007, Hornik has excelled in the last two election cycles - first trouncing Kleinberg with over 60% of the vote and winning all of the town's 28 districts, then helping Freeholder candidate Amy Mallet secure solid footing in Marlboro, Monmouth County's third most voter-concentrated town after Middletown and Howell.  
 
Riding in on a Kleinberg backlash, Hornik helped turn the town's arguably most powerful R into a D to win control of the council by a 3-2 margin, vocally fought his own party's power structure on the affordable housing issue, and consolidated bipartisan support on his way to becoming the man many area Democrats' see as the future of their party in Monmouth.

Dislodged from his seat of power and relegated now to a halfway house in Newark, former Middlesex County Democratic Party Chairman John Lynch sits in a landscape in which this gubernatorial contest unfolds and the candidate from his party fights for political survival.

Indicted for failing to report income by former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie (now the Republican nominee for governor), convicted and sentenced in 2006 to three years and three months in prison, Gov. Jim McGreevey's political genii and hard-nosed boss of the Raritan River rustbelt occupies political no man's land while Corzine flails and discord punctuates much of the sprawling county he once ruled.

"We need John Lynch," one Middlesex County Democratic Party insider moaned a coupled of weeks ago at the issuance of yet another poll showing incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine struggling to get his chin over 40% and eight points behind Christie.

"He's a missed leader in Middlesex," County Democratic Party Chairman Joe Spicuzzo said of his party forbearer. "He had his own style and it was successful. I talk to him once a week. He's doing fine and will get out around Nov. 13th."

Mayor Jon Hornik, left, and Councilman Jeff Cantor or Marlboro

MARLBORO - Although Councilman Jeff Cantor submitted a letter to the chair of the local Democratic Committee detailing his redeployment to the Middle East during an election year, Mayor Jon Hornik wants Cantor to remain on the ticket.

"I have spoken to our party chairman and we want to run Jeff anyway," said Hornik. "He can attend meetings via the Internet. I don't think he should penalized for serving our country."

An Iraq War veteran who ran unsuccessfully for Monmouth County Freeholder in 2007, Cantor told the Township Council on Thursday night that he has been redeployed, this time to Afghanistan.

"This is my last council meeting until next year," said Cantor, who changed parties from Republican to Democrat to run for re-election with Mayor Hornik's team this year.

"It's hard to leave my family, my friends, and my town," said the councilman bound for his Airborne unit.

Friendly rivals: Manalapan Township Committeewoman Michelle Roth and Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon (R-Little Silver)

MARLBORO – In this Monmouth County political hotbed where officials now shoulder a new era and try to salvage their town from those years that left several real estate finagling electeds behind bars and a built-out wreck in the wake of their corrupt handiwork, Gov. Jon Corzine this evening supported Mayor Jon Hornik’s efforts to create a coalition of 22 local suburban governments dedicated to pursuing tax saving shared services.

Here to kick off the formation of the Central Jersey Council of Governments (CJCOG), there festered, of course, some pent up party rivalry in an ostensibly smiling and bipartisan Town Hall crowd, which included Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver) and Manalapan Township Committeewoman Michelle Roth. 

O’Scanlon and his Republican running mate, Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande (R-Colts Neck), intend to fend off a 12th District Democratic challenge from Roth and her running mate, teacher John Amberg of Tinton Falls.

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy

TRENTON - Street people help in an election year, and Gov. Jon Corzine may have a few more of them in the form of those in the political establishment arguably most naturally resistant to the Wall Street outsider who leapfrogged over all of them to become governor: mayors.

Ticked last year when Gov. Jon Corzine made substantial cuts to state aid for municipalities, big city and suburban Democratic Party execs warmed to the governor’s plan this year to cut municipal aid by less than 2%, even as he slashed 850 line items to repair a long-term budget gap of $7 billion.

Marlboro Mayor Jon Hornik

MARLBORO – The self-professed good government tag team of Marlboro Mayor Jon Hornik and GOP rising star turned Democratic Party Hornik-backer Councilman Jeffrey Cantor amped up their anti-Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) effort at last Thursday night’s meeting. 

Just days after Cantor scrapped the local Republican Party as a band of naysayers and became a Democrat, the Marlboro Township Council on Thursday night voted unanimously in favor of a resolution calling on Democratic Party leadership in Trenton to step up and abolish the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH).

The governing body undertook the resolution at the request of Hornik, widely seen as a Democratic Party rock star and potential opponent for state Sen. Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth) in 2011. 

“We should be focused on keeping taxes stable. To overlay the social demand of COAH at this time is irresponsible,” said Hornik. “When something’s broken, it’s time to revisit the whole structure, and I think in the case of COAH, it’s time to start at square one. I think we’re at that point right now.”

Marlboro Councilman Jeff Cantor

MARLBORO – The Iraq War vet who once exhorted a crowd of Monmouth Republicans to "cowboy-up" in the cause of his campaign, has donned the dreaded black hat of the opposition.  

Councilman Jeff Cantor, a 2007 Republican candidate for Monmouth County Freeholder who nearly won, has changed parties and become a Democrat, according to a press release issued by the Marlboro Democratic Party.

Once seen as a rising GOP star, Cantor came within a heartbreaking handful of votes of winning his bid for freeholder against John D’Amico. 

Locally, he appeared to be the best-positioned Marlboro Republican to take on new Mayor Jonathan Hornik, a Democrat who in 2007 defeated Robert Kleinberg. 

But he’s happy with Hornik’s work, he said, and noted that “the Democrats are making the needed changes to move our community forward.”

Unlike Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan, Marlboro Mayor Jonathan Hornik doesn’t want Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) obligations scrapped.

But like a lot of other mayors who found it hard to generate a party mood at the League of Municipalities conference in the face of a deadline at the end of this month to submit finished plans in concert with the new rules, the mayor does want lawmakers to review COAH – and at the very least make some exceptions.

Specifically, Hornik wants Gov. Jon Corzine and the Legislature to consider amending the new regs so years-long, painstaking work Marlboro officials undertook to transfer some of the Monmouth County town’s affordable housing stock to Trenton won’t be rendered invalid.  

In Monmouth County, every town comes intriguingly into play on some level, several more critically than others.

Republicans have owned the Freeholder Board for over 20 years, but in the last two elections Democrats picked up two seats to bring them to within one of county control.

A profusion of newly registered Democratic voters have boosted the party’s confidence heading into Nov. 4th, and now Democrats Amy Mallet and Glenn Mason are ready for that 11th hour jolt of cash from the Democratic State Committee.

State Party Chairman Joseph Cryan wants to win here.

He wants it more than he would like to pick up additional warm bodies in the Assembly next year, where his party’s already built a comfortable majority.

A victory by either Mallet or Mason would make a Democratic Party statement.  But neither is a name candidate running against incumbent Freeholder Director Lillian Burry and auto dealer vice president John Curley, an intensely focused campaigner who served as a Red Bank Councilman and has close political connections to state Sen. Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth).

In 1980, a 10-year-old Jonathan Hornik stood in the recently renovated barn that had just become Marlboro’s town hall to watch his late father, Saul, get sworn in as the town’s new mayor.

Today, just over two years since his father died of lung cancer, Hornik stood in the same room, filled to the rafters with spectators to see the 37-year-old sworn in as mayor.

“Marlboro was a young community well on its way to what I call modern day Marlboro,” reminsced Hornik in his inaugural speech. “….It was a feeling of optimism in 1980, and our town leaders were eager to meet the challenges of their time. Today I feel the same sense of optimism and assure you that this next generation is ready, willing and able to move Marlboro forward to its bright future.”

Hornik is one of the Monmouth County Democrats’ rising stars, having handily defeated incumbent Mayor Robert Kleinberg in a particularly nasty battle while the full slate of his 12th district Democratic legislative counterparts –led by state Sen. Ellen Karcher, a former Marlboro councilwoman – went down in defeat.