By Allison Perrine
RED BANK – Two borough residents will challenge council incumbents Kate Triggiano and Hazim Yassin in this year’s municipal election.
Ed Zipprich, councilman and Red Bank Democratic Party chairman, said Monday that Democrats LeRoi Jones and Bruce Maida have submitted letters of intent to run but Triggiano and Yassin have not. However, according to an article by Red Bank Green, Triggiano and Yassin did file petitions with the borough clerk seeking nomination from the Monmouth County Democrats, Triggiano said.
The Two River Times reached out to both Yassin and Triggiano for comment but did not receive responses by press time Wednesday.
“Our Democratic Party process is long-standing and very simple,” Zipprich said in his release. “Party members were advised, via multiple email notifications and social media posts, of the nominating requirements.” That includes submitting letters of intent to the municipal chair and vice chair Lauren Nicosia by Feb. 15 at 5 p.m.
In a joint statement issued Wednesday, Jones and Maida said they decided “independently and without coercion” to challenge the incumbents. “We were fully aware of the upheaval to the ‘politics as usual’ approach to municipal government this would cause. We understood that our opponents would be shocked and disappointed to know they were being challenged,” they wrote. “We knew, as citizens who have been voting for decades, that loyalties would be tested and usual alliances questioned. We knew we would have to convince Red Bank residents that our shared vision for the town was genuine, fact based, and inspired by our collective sense of town history and local pride.”
The two also wrote about alleged “baseless personal attacks” against Zipprich, which they claim are false, dishonest and “beneath the dignity of the town and its government.”
“For the past three years we have watched our public discourse coarsen, our facilities fall into disrepair, our public payroll bulge and our residents become angrier as Triggiano and Yassin openly advocated, encouraged and supported turning our Borough Council into nothing more than a rubber stamp of the sitting Business Administrator’s desires,” they wrote.
They also said they are “deeply concerned citizens who believe the very fabric of Red Bank’s quality of life is being threatened” by the two incumbents and cited their eagerness to embrace borough administrator Ziad Shehady’s opinions and the redevelopment agency’s opinions. They referred to the recent dispute surrounding the Red Bank Senior Center and what constitutes an appropriate path moving forward.
The formal Democratic nominating convention will be held via Zoom Tuesday, March 2 at 5 pm. The winning candidates will receive the endorsement of the Monmouth County Democratic Organization, Zipprich said.
This article originally appeared in the Feb. 18 – 24, 2021, print edition of The Two River Times.
