She’s personally popular, Save Jerseyans, but the Hamilton Republican brand took a hit in 2012 when former Mayor John Bencivengo was charged and convicted of corruption.
According to the Times of Trenton, new Mayor Kelly Yaede spent her first full day in office greeting employees… after having the door to her office removed (literally!) in a symbolic act of transparency. She was selected by township council last Friday to right the ship for New Jersey’s 9th largest municipality with 2012 total general appropriations just shy of $100M.
Yaede, the first woman to have Hamilton’s top job in its history, now faces a ballot challenge in November 2013 to earn the right to complete Bencivengo’s unexpired term.
A cakewalk is unlikely.
Despite a nearly 8k Democrat voter registration advantage in this state worker-populated suburb of approximately 90,000 souls, Hamilton Township is a quintisential “battleground” in New Jersey statewide politics that once propelled Peter Inverso and Bill Baroni to the State Senate. Obama carried Mercer by almost 60k votes this November but, back in 2009, Chris Christie garnered 47.4% of the Hamilton vote (14,234) to Jon Corzine’s 45.0% (13,490 votes). Bush lost there by just 0.5% in ’04.
ICYMI, check out Yaede’s first moments on the job (h/t Hamilton Pulse):
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwVwlqNE0hY
