By JOHN T. WARD
An eleventh-hour write-in campaign for Rumson council ended with a pair of soccer dads missing their goal but feeling they’d scored some points Tuesday.
Tim McCooey and Tom Ridgway, running under the banner of Rumson Family since launching their campaign less than two weeks ago, polled a combined 1,445 votes, compared to incumbent Republican Joe Hemphill, with 1,176, and zoning board member Laura Atwell, also a Republican, with 1,143, according to unofficial tallies posted by the Monmouth County Clerk’s office.
Inspired in part by what they saw as an insufficient response by the current administration to the sudden appearance in town of Oxford House, a drug-and-alcohol recovery home that was the scene of a drug fatality on October 13, McCooey and Ridgway hastily built a campaign that they said would live on, win or lose.
“This really should put some people on notice,” Ridgway told redbankgreen at Molly Maguire’s after the race had been decided.
Here are the unofficial vote totals:
Michael Steinhorn (D) 363
Philip Wagner (D) 338
Laura Atwell (R) 1,143
Joe Hemphill (R) 1,176
Write-ins 1,445
