Steward
By Bill Sanservino
For Sarah Steward, the newest member of Ewing council, her appointment to the township’s governing body couldn’t have happened at a better time. After all, it’s not often that a person has an opportunity to contribute to the future direction of their hometown.
With the construction of the Parkway Avenue Redevelopment Area expected to start this year, continued growth at the Trenton-Mercer Airport, and the continued demand for commercial development in town, Steward joins council at a pivotal moment in Ewing’s history.
“It’s a really exciting time,” said Steward, a 31-year old township native and graduate of Ewing High School. “There are a lot of big decisions being made right now. Things like the development of the former GM site. I remember when that was a bustling area, and I’ve also seen it in disrepair. I think there’s a real excitement in the town about what the next chapter holds.”
“I’m happy to have a voice in making sure we’re doing it the right way,” she added, “so that the character of the town is being preserved, and we’re bringing in development that’s not only going to benefit that area, but the whole town.”
“Back in high school there were some people who were a little down on Ewing sometimes,” Steward said. “There’s been a real turnaround in that perception, and I’d love to be a part of that turnaround in how people think about Ewing as an up and coming place. I think the decisions we make now will have a lot to do with what Ewing looks like 10, 15, or even 20 years from now.”
Steward was chosen by the council in November to fill a vacancy created when former Council President Hilary Hyser was hired as the township’s new director of personnel.
She will serve out the remaining year of Hyser’s term that expires on Dec. 31, and said she intends to run for re-election to a new four-year term in the November 2014 election.
A Democrat who works as the deputy chief of staff and district director for Congressman Rush Holt, Steward is the youngest person to serve on council since Ewing changed to a mayor-council form of government in the 1990s.
Mayor Bert Steinmann said that Steward was a strong choice and believes the fact that she works for Holt can be a boon to the township.
He also said that her youth is positive because Ewing needs to have more people of her age involved in township government.
Steward recently bought a home in the Wynnewood Manor neighborhood where both sets of grandparents and her parents also owned homes.
Her father, George, who ironically ran an unsuccessful bid for council as a Republican in the 2012 municipal race, recently retired from Capital Health Systems, where he worked in the admissions department. Her mother Caroline is a nephrology nurse at Capital Health. She has one sister, Christine, who now lives in Bayville.
Steward is a product of Ewing schools — in addition to Ewing High, she attended Antheil and Fisher. She went to college at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where she graduated with a double major in government and psychology.
Steward said that when she started college, she had no intention of study politics, no less pursue a career in the field. In fact, she wasn’t really involved in political science or government until college.
“In my freshman year, they put me in an American government class,” she said. “It turned out to be an interesting time, because it was during the 2000 election. Bush versus Gore, the recount, the Supreme Court and the whole nine yards.
“It was a really cool time to start thinking about government. All these things that they talk teach about in theory were really happening. That class opened up a whole new world for me and I got more involved in political stuff afterwards.”
Ultimately, that’s how she wound up working for Holt. Franklin & Marshall had a program that provided financial support to students while they worked at a summer internships, and she was one of the students chosen. She worked as an intern in for Holt in Washington, D.C. during the summer before her senior year.
Steward said her experience there cemented her desire for a career in government. “I really fell in love with Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill, and politics.”
After the internship, Steward finished out her senior year of college and graduated. She wanted to find a job in Washington, D.C., but there were no openings at the time — not even in Holt’s office, and she had to move back home with her parents while she looked for a job.
It didn’t take long, though, and she actually ended up working for Holt anyway, thanks to a chance meeting at a pancake breakfast.
“My father is involved in Knights of Columbus, and they were having a pancake breakfast,” Steward explained. “I was sitting at a table with my mother reading the newspaper and not really paying attention while my mom was chatting with the people at our table.
“Well, she’s so proud of me, and she was telling everyone all about me —that I had just graduated magna cum laude, etc.”
Steward said that her mother mentioned to one of the men at the table that she had done an internship in Washington. The man she was talking to inquired who she had worked for.
“My mom very proudly said, ‘She interned for Congressman Rush Holt,’ and that’s when the man said, ‘Oh, that’s me.’”
Steward explained that Holt had heard about the breakfast and decided to attend unannounced. Busy reading the paper, Steward didn’t realize that he was sitting at their table.
“He immediately recognized me because I had done the internship, and he asked what I was doing,” she said. “I filled him in and he asked if I would be interested in working at his office in New Jersey, where there was an opening. That was Sunday, and I started in his office on Tuesday. It was very fortuitous.”
Steward started there working in constituent services where she did things like help people who were having trouble becoming citizens, getting passports, or getting visas to travel.
“Doing that work and having had the experience of helping people with their government has been really helpful to me in the things I’ve gone on to do,” she said.
In her current role as deputy chief of staff, Steward manages Holt’s office in New Jersey and works in concert with his Washington D.C. staff to review pending legislation in Washington and evaluate how it might impact on people in New Jersey.
Steward said that right now she has no long-term plans for career other than continuing to work with Holt.
“I have been very fortunate to be able to move up and do different things in Rush’s office, and I intend to stay with him in the short term, if he’ll keep me, and we’ll see the next thing as it comes,” she said.
It was Steward’s work on Holt’s re-election campaign in 2010 that got Steward involved in Ewing Township politics and eventually led to her selection as a council member.
She had worked in Holt’s office in New Jersey for several years starting in 2004, and then in Washington for three years on an assignment working on policy, constituent correspondence, and then as the congressman’s executive assistant.
She moved back to New Jersey in 2009 to work in Holt’s campaign office as finance director and ultimately campaign manager for his re-election campaign.
“That was when I really got to know the local political folks in Ewing, through coordinating Rush’s campaign with the local campaign and working with the local Democrats,” Steward said. “Then I started attending the local meetings, because I’m a Ewing Democrat and I wanted to understand what was happening in my town and get more involved in that way. I remained involved after that.”
Through that involvement, Steward heard about the council vacancy and decided to apply for the opening.
“The chairman (of the Ewing Democratic Committee) sent out a note that they were looking for people who were interested,” Steward said. “I thought, ‘Well this is a really amazing opportunity I don’t want to pass up.’”
She said she did some research to make sure that she would be able to commit enough time to the job, got the okay from Holt, and submitted her name for consideration.
“I didn’t have any expectations of being picked, and when I put my name in, I didn’t know that I would get it. I just had to take a shot in the dark.”
The process moved fast, and she heard about a day later that she had been selected.
Steward said her increasing involvement in politics coincides with a growing interest over the years in social and political psychology.
“There’s actually a whole field that studies how people come to hold their political beliefs and what influences them,” she said. “Is it what you your parents believe? How do you come to learn these things and how do you socialize them into your political thoughts?”
In Steward’s case, her political party affiliation certainly didn’t evolve from her parents —they’re both Republicans.
As for the possibility that she and her father could run again and they might face off against each other in this year’s council election, it’s possible, but highly unlikely.
“My dad is very proud and excited about my appointment to council,” she said. “I give my parents a lot of credit for being role models for being involved in their community and the church and the neighborhood.”
“I also give them a lot of credit because they didn’t indoctrinate me in one political philosophy. They really let me find my path. I’m proud of my dad for being involved. I’ve never yet found one family that agrees on everything all of the time. So I don’t think this is any different.”
“There’s a good lesson to be learned about disagreeing without being disagreeable,” she added. “There are things we don’t see eye to eye on, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not one big happy family.”
Steward said she would like to extend that philosophy to the way she works with township residents as a member of council.
“The only way I’m going to be any good at this is by hearing what everyone in the town thinks about things,” Steward said.
“I’m not doing this to bring what I think is the right thing all the time. It needs to be informed by what people throughout the township think, and I want to encourage people to share that with me,” she said. “If you just listen in an echo chamber all the time to the people who reiterate what you think you already know, you don’t ever get challenged and come to a decision. I want my decisions to be informed by the residents.”
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