Common Sense For New Hampshire

Belmar Republican Party Chairwoman Tracy Bean on Bill Straus’ impending move to Florida:

As Chair of the Belmar Republican Committee I cannot begin to tell you how much Bill Straus will be missed, by not only everyone on the Committee, but our Belmar community as a whole.

Bill grew up in Belmar, graduating from St. Rose High School. He left when college began only to return in 2000 to care for his father. He has been active in the community ever since, and the Marina and Maclearie Park became his passion.

He participated annually in the Shark River clean-ups sponsored by Diver’s Two and for ten years worked as a SCUBA instructor, where he lobbied for years to have the Belmar Council secure construction for a new and safe diver access point at the bulkhead of Maclearie Park. At his persistence this was done. As most know, he continues to care for Maclearie Park and to make sure this land, loved all over the County and State as being a family friendly, safe and beautiful Green Acres Park with a gorgeous view of the inlet, remain untouched and unmarred by cars and buildings. He also lobbied for the disabled, to try to assure there would be clean and accessible bathroom facilities there.

He does not do this for any personal benefit to himself, but rather for our community at large. In his role as a member of our Republican Committee he has been a huge asset and I am at a loss at his departure. The Committee, as well as our candidates in the past few years, relied heavily on Bill. He was always the one every year that on the day the candidates were chosen, would personally reach out to give them a call and ask “Okay what can I do? I have ideas, can we meet and talk?”  Running in Belmar as an opposition candidate can be downright scary and it was immeasurably reassuring to our candidates to know there would be someone of Bill’s character standing right at their side, fighting just as hard as they were.

The moment anything was asked of him he jumped at it and was in constant communication about it. Bill also accompanied me to every County meeting. I knew I could always count on him to be there for me and for the party. I respected his opinion very much and I would call and email back and forth with him prior to meetings to discuss the agendas. He also knew which county and state politicians were doing right and who should be the ones we should support and reach out to. He is a great political strategist, always in the furtherance of his solid principles, and often gave me very sound advice as to how I should handle certain situations.

What I really love about him is that he is always truthful, even when the truth is not what you want to hear. That is just who he is. In every scenario, no matter what, you could count on Bill to sit you down and lay it out. As Chair I have made my share of mistakes and Bill never shied from telling me! But when it came to the kind of hardball politics that exists in Belmar these days, I would appreciate that more than anything. We worked together as long as it took until we came up with a solution.

Understand that I’m speaking from my experience as party Chair, but it wasn’t only me that Bill reached out to and worked to help. Every member of the Committee, every recent Republican candidate, and all active members of the party can tell you how much Bill has done for all of us, particularly the way he would scrutinize and analyze the voter data before and after every election. We never quite got over the top, but Bill’s help certainly made all the election counts very close!

As hard as Bill works, either in his personal life or his political, he never asks for accolades, never did he seek recognition. He is the guy behind the scenes, doing the grunt work that no one sees. He could care less about whether he is acknowledged, he simply wants to help. He will be sorely missed in Belmar and sorely missed by me.

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I might add that Straus was a vital participant in every one of the petition drives we’ve had to mount and I also want to mention that when I ran for Council nobody worked harder than Bill Straus to get me elected…..myself included.  Thank you, Bill.  I am going to miss you too.