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County Commissioner
This year 2 seats are open on the County Commissioner board. The republicans are running two incumbents, Director Commissioner Sileo and Commissioner Romero.
The democrats are running two challengers, former Commissioner Capizola and former Sheriff Austino.
Both parties appear to be running 'slate', which means they are running as a team within their parties, potentially all the way up to the national level (in fact, the
democrat candidates have officially endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket on their facebook). All candidates have been reached out to in terms of clarifying their individual
characteristics, agendas, policy positions, and comparisons to other candidates. While some candidates have posted some information and spoken to us at various events, only
former Sheriff Austino has directly responded to those detailed requests with a brief explanation regarding the current board potentially spending too much money on
County Park projects, to which current Commissioner Romero responded that the projects are within budget and there is no need for concern.
The two republican incumbents for County Commissioner inherently have experience, generally promote conservative values and policy, and have addressed local issues from a
conservative perspective, such as voting no for the Middle Mile Broadband project for fiscally conservative reasons and bringing up concerns on how national immigration policy is
affecting our county (apparently MS-13 gang members have been identified here in Cumberland County - Commissioner Sileo stated at a recent Republican breakfast meeting).
It is also common messaging from the local Republicans that the Democrats have been predominantly in charge for the past 40 odd years and have made a mess in the process,
with some recent articles suggesting some of our cities are the worst in the state, so maybe it is time for the County to give Republicans a chance for a while to clean
up the mess. With that in mind, it is the opinion of InformTheVote that the Democrat challengers ought to present more information on why a change in the current
Republican dominated leadership might be beneficial.
With such little information regarding how local candidates might handle local issues, it remains difficult to know what the actual choices are, and it
could be fair to say that the incumbents are doing a good job... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. On the other hand, since no differentiations have been made regarding the candidates
from their parties, with some candidates openly endorsing their national ticket,
if you more generally agree with Democrat or Republican party platforms, voting party-line is also understandable. Be sure to check out the
Republican Party Platform and
Agenda 47 (Donald Trump's agenda) to see the general direction of Republicans. Also be sure to check out the
Democrat Party Platform and the Harris-Walz ticket
Campaign Site). It should be noted that the DNC and Harris did not officially post their platform and stances on issues up
until mid to late September, leaving voters little to no time to look it over before early/mail-in voting.
To get some sourced idea of what has been going on at the county level, you can view our Cumberland Couty Issues page,
our Nabb Ave Extension report, some info regarding the
election ballot design, a videa regarding
design of election mailers, and a video regarding issues with the CCIA
issues with the CCIA. You can also do a bit of following yourself by joining the
Cumberland NJ GOP facebook group and the
Cumberland NJ Dems facebook group.
Hopefully more county-specific information will come out and some type of town-hall or candidates forum will happen in the coming months to help inform our
choices. Click the red x at the top of this box and then scroll down down for more in-depth information and sources.