Common Sense For New Hampshire

First I’d like to point out something that should be fairly obvious: if I wanted to run as a Republican I could have.  And if I did run in the Republican primary I would have had the support of the local party.  I believe I would have had a very good chance of defeating Tom Burke.

Certainly many of those 68 votes he received were because he was the only name on the ballot.  They might have voted another way were they given a choice.  Moreover, turnout would have been much greater had it been a contested primary.  Remember, nearly half of Belmar voted for Bean and Seebeck notwithstanding Mr. Burke and others’ assertion that the Republican party here is too extremist or whatever to get elected.

But I didn’t want to run as a Republican.  Actually nobody, other than Tom Burke, wanted to run as a Republican.  It’s not because any of us would have been embarrassed to or anything like that.  It’s because it’s an impossible task.  It requires the commitment of a tremendous amount of time, effort and money even to lose against the machine in Belmar as it currently exists.  Who needs the headache and who wants to throw their money away?  Given the current situation I would feel guilty about even asking people for donations or to volunteer their time.  But if you’re going to run as a Republican you still have to try as hard as you can, so this would have been a conflict for me.

I also don’t want the pressure to take popular positions when I feel they are in contradiction to my principles.  For example I don’t believe we should try to use the beach utility fund’s money to subsidize the municipality.  If we want to hold taxes down we should hold spending down.  It’s not right to force other people to pay for what we want, even if we could have gotten away with it.  Bing!!  There goes 45 votes.  Oh well.

Another reason I chose not to run as a Republican is that I didn’t want to push Tom Burke out of the race.  It’s clear he really wanted to run as a Republican and it doesn’t matter to me if he wants to do it.  Whether it’s Nicolay alone or Nicolay with Burke, what’s the difference?  Actually, having him in the race to split off some of the pro-Doherty vote is probably a good thing.  Anyway, unlike Mr. Burke and his friends, I say the more the merrier, let’s give the folks some real choices.  Why would you want anyone not to run if they want to do it?

Still another reason I am running independent is that I’ve been saying that Belmar needs and deserves a non partisan government so I’m walking the walk here.  Most of you will remember that I ran as an independent in 2010 for the same reason, even though my friend Jim Bean was in the race.  (He and Tracy even signed my nomination petition that year.)

Hopefully someday every candidate in Belmar will be independent.  (Actually, Mr. Burke held this position for about ten minutes last year.)

So as it currently stands I’m not planning on spending a dime of my own money or anyone else’s.  I’ll go to any debate they have (even though even though the debates are basically a just competition between cheering squads.  Despite any claims to the contrary, very few attend debates so they can decide who to vote for.)  I’ll also answer the Coast Star questionnaires when they start coming.

I’m not planning on walking door to door at this point.  I won’t have any literature to leave anyway.

One more thing I should note:  This will most likely be the last time I run for public office in Belmar.  As everyone knows I plan to move to New Hampshire when my younger daughter graduates from high school, so this would be the last time I could take office and finish out my term without holding up the move.  I know people will criticize me for running for office when I’m planning to move and it would be legitimate criticism to some extent.  But even though I want to leave….and you really can’t blame anyone for wanting to leave New Jersey….I do care about Belmar and if by some miracle I were to win I promise I would do the best job I could.