By Matthew Gilson | The Save Jersey Blog
That’s it. Nearly 2,500 voters have spoken in our online poll, Save Jerseyans, and Mayor Chris Kelemen of Bogota has been chosen by our readers as “Best in Bergen.”
Throughout multiple rounds of voting, the attention garnered by the poll was staggering and the things we learned about social media engagement at the local level could prove invaluable moving forward. All seven finalist candidates who made it to the last round either personally or, through close surrogates, mounted viable social media campaigns to vote for their candidates.
Mayor Kelemen was the most aggressive of the pack, posting on both his personal Facebook page and “Believe in Bogota” campaign page and many of his friends and relatives did the same. The runner-up, Bergenfield Mayor Norman Schmelz, shared the poll-embeded post as well; one supporter of his went as far as to produce a video urging Bergenfielders to vote for their hometown mayor!
Of the seven finalists, Schmelz, Kelemen, John Cosgrove of Fair Lawn, and Kevin Rooney of Wyckoff personally shared the link. Mayor Joe Bianchi was repped online by North Arlington Councilmen Dan Pronti and Brian Fitzhenry (the latter of whom remains the most “liked” local official in Bergen County), Will Roseman by Carlstadt Republican Club and their president Bruce Young, and East Rutherford Mayor Jim Cassella by Councilman Joel Brizzi.
Lessons abound.
Coming into the contest, I expected Schmelz as well as Cosgrove to be the two heavy favorites due to their extensive use of social media in promoting their prior municipal campaigns. Cosgrove ultimately finished a respectable third place but Kelemen surprised me by leveraging and amplifying his personal network through Facebook to crack 1,000 votes. An added bonus for the victor? The “Believe in Bogota” page saw a strong uptick in the number of likes as a result of poll-related activity.
The bottom line should be obvious, Save Jerseyans, but too few NJ GOP’ers are catching on: local campaigns must continue to build their social media presences particularly in a cycle expected to see record low turnout. In our initial regional semi-final rounds, the towns where mayors received in a few instances ZERO votes need to do a gut check and get busy improving their social media presence. The thousands of voters mobilized in just this single poll could make a difference in a tight local race.
It’s not rocket science either. Expanding Bergen’s digital footprint has been a central goal of my YR Chairmanship and I personally helped set up five towns on Facebook. If any towns are reading this article and want their town to get involved, feel free to reach out to me!
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Jersey political officials are driving middle class and higher incomes to leave this damn state drives business to lower taxes and the damn Dems keep raising taxes on us ,because the teacher’s unions 80 % are our property taxes.