Glen Ridge, pop. 7,271, the Essex County municipality where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Carl Bergmanson served as Mayor from 2003 to 2007, has a unique method of electing candidates for Mayor and Borough Council.  While local elections are technically partisan and held in November, since 1913 the Glen Ridge Civic Conference Committee (CCC) has dominated local politics and candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans.

The Democratic Club and the Republican Club elect delegates to the CCC, as do six other civic groups: the Friends of the Glen Ridge Library, the Women's Club of Glen Ridge, the Glen Ridge Historical Society, the Freeman Gardens Association, the Golden Circle, the Northside Association, and the South End Association.  The CCC interviews (and sometimes recruits) candidates for Mayor and Council, and for most of the last 95 years the voters simply ratified their choices on Election Day.

Bergmanson, who can legitimately call himself a reformer, was one of the few people to buck the CCC with any success.  He was elected Councilman in 1990, 1993 and 1996 as an Independent, beating the CCC candidate.  He lost a bid for Mayor to CCC-backed candidate Steven Plate in 1999, but when Plate became the first Mayor to eschew the one-term limit tradition and sought re-election as the CCC candidate in 2003, Bergmanson ran again and beat him by a comfortable margin.  Bergmanson did not seek re-election in 2007, choosing to follow the one-term limit custom.

As a small town without a local political structure, Glen Ridge has not been a force in Essex County politics.  Glen Ridge has produced two Assemblymen in recent years, Republican Herbert Rinaldi from 1968 to 1972, and Democrat Buddy Fortunato from 1978 to 1986, but neither held local office. 

Corrected -- Glen Ridge has elected one Freeholder under the new form of government: Republican Arthur Clay, who served from 1981 to 1993.