Candidates Rob Lombardi, left, and Kim Senkeleski were joined by former Councilman Jim Giannell as the returns came in at Senkeleski’s home. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Tuesday’s narrow defeat of Republican council candidates Kim Senkeleski and Rob Lombardi doesn’t mean the end to their fight for change in Red Bank, they said last night.
After conceding that incumbent Democrats Art Murphy and Mike DuPont took the race for two council seats, Senkeleski assured a crowd of dozens at her John Street home that she’d be back on the Red Bank political scene, and said the results were the encouragement she needed to do so.
“I just want to let you know I’ll be back,” Senkeleski said. “We’re going to get you what you want.”
Contrary to a report in the Asbury Park Press, Senkeleski told redbankgreen shortly before midnight that she accepted the vote tallies she’d seen and was not considering a recount.
According to the numbers called in at Senkeleski’s home, doubling as GOP headquarters, she got 1,359 votes and Lombardi received 1,301. On the winning Democrat side, their numbers showed Murphy received 1,386 votes and DuPont, 1,401. Unofficial tallies later in the night showed Senkeleski narrowed the margin between her and Murphy down to seven votes.
Senkeleski, who has become a regular at council meetings in recent months, said she’ll continue pushing for lower taxes and taking concerns from residents straight to the council.
“I’m not going to let up,” she said. “You don’t have to be on council to make change.”
Lombardi, on the other hand, said his return to politics in Red Bank won’t likely be immediate.
“I’ll be back at some point in the near future,” he said. “This encourages me to run again in the future.”
Lombardi said considering he and his running mate came so close in votes on their first try, and with a recent history of all-Democrat councils, he feels their chances will be even better if they do run again.
“We knew going into this it was an uphill battle,” he said. “To get within 100 votes for both of us, that’s amazing. I feel like if we run again, we’ll win.”
While the results were slowly filtering in, it looked at one point that the Republicans had a shot at taking the Democrats. Before District 4 came in — the area bound by Broad Street, Harding Road, Branch Avenue and the Little Silver border — the numbers tallied at Senkeleski’s house showed she and Lombardi were down by only about 40 votes each.
“The excitement is killing me,” Senkeleski said, biting her nails staring at the tally board.
Though disappointed that they lost, Senkeleski and Lombardi ran a hard and admirable campaign against formidable incumbents in DuPont and Murphy, said former Councilman Jim Giannell.
“These two are winners tonight,” he said.
Thanks to all that supported Rob and I in this campaign.
Here are the counts I got from borough hall this morning, which include actual counts from the machines and absentee ballots. These counts do not include provisional ballots:
Dupont – 1503
Murphy – 1481
Senkeleski – 1455
Lombardi – 1372
At this point, I don’t know how many provisional ballots were sent to Freehold to count and will not claim defeat until I know.
This is proof of the power of each and every vote.
Good work Kim and Rob! The apple cart is turning over — see you on the council next time around.
Congratulations, Kim, on your terrific showing…and I agree, do not concede.
Keep counting …. and recounting ….
Even those beyond the borders of Red Bank were rooting for you!
Godspeed.
Bea Sena
Maybe it would be a good idea to count how many absentee ballots are from the living?
Do we have a viable candidate for mayor in the GOP somewhere?
Yes, plenty of viable candidates on this site. Nemo, Padrone & notsureanymore (may be one and the same), tomatoface, mike, ditch….
Could that be Padrone in that picture above? It sure would make a lot of sense. Was he a councilmann before being appointed to fill a seat a few years ago?
Are any of those viable candidates willing to take on all that work for a measly $3,600? Maybe if we sweetened the pot, perhaps by offering them free health insurance….
$3600 is not that bad plus the perks; greasing the zoning issues, greasing the purchase of public properties to develop for cronies, greasing the way for more parking lots, greasing the way in courts, all you can eat grease, and all the *no conflict of interest* legal fees associated. Hell, one would feel like a happy pig at the troth.
Was Giannell a councilman before? Padrone?
tomatosauce,
If one or two GOP members got on the council, I don’t think they’d get any grease.
Beck and Curley were able to go from the RB council to higher office, where they can get some grease, so there is hope for GOP council candidates.
But wouldn’t it be better to have council members fairly compensated, so we could attract people who see it as a real job, rather than a chance to network? I say we pay them $20,000 a year and set a 6-year term limit. We’d get some quality people, and they’d be gone before they got stale.
Good idea, anything but self serving development attorneys and law firms. You can always ire spin masters, but putting them in charge of citizens??.. folly.
RBer,
Thank you for the recommendation. If they wish to nominate me (don’t think the Democrats would), here is my platform: I would do the job for free and no benefits, I would lower spending in town which would then lower property taxes, I would do away with charging to park on public streets, I would expose people who are attempting to benefit from their positions with the town and do favors for their friends, make Stanley work one job and review other jobs that may not be necessary, increase police department to keep crime down, crack down on illegals to make it an unfriendly place for them to be, review affordable housing to see what, if any, obligation the town has, improve the train station area to encourage travelers to visit the businesses in town by train, improve the public schools and hopefully end the cost of running the Charter School which was created due to the poor school system, encourage owner occupancy on the westside, and I also promise to never drink and drive, hang out in Bueno Sera, or run someone over while in a crosswalk.
actually Dan this is something we can agree on - provided the salary was either matched in actual spending cuts elsewhere, say in the water authority, or in efficiencies, like partnering with other towns to share services, etc., or in locating legitimate new revenue streams – say in the taxation of tomato sauce or the sale of kayak launches (just kidding, sort of)..
Or better yet, we can sell red bank citizenship licenses to all the standing around crowd at the Wawa…