Courtney and Edward Lester and their son, Trevor W. Fisher, have suffered financial setbacks since Courtney lost her job in June. (Photo by Mark Czaijkowksi.)
In a candidates forum moderated by the Ewing Observer in October, the host asked a question of all the candidates for Ewing Township’s town council: how do you handle your household finances?
Most of the candidates talked up their responsibility, their ability to manage money and stick to a budget. When it came time for Republican candidate Ed Lester to answer, he gripped the podium with both hands, leaned forward and said: “I am facing bankruptcy.”
It was an answer that stunned the audience. Lester went on to talk about the financial hardships he and his family have endured since he came home from his service in the Marines in 2010. Lester, 27, spoke of how he, his wife and his 7-year-old son had been forced to move in with his in-laws, and how he had to drive around in a beat-up pickup truck as old as he is.
It wasn’t the first time, or the last, that Lester surprised people with his straightforwardness.
“He is honest almost to a fault,” said Judith Peoples, head of the Ewing Township Republicans. “That comes with being new to the process. There are times when it’s better to say nothing. But Ed is so forthcoming that he feels the need to answer any question in as much detail as possible.”
Lester and his running mates, George Steward and Ron Prykanowski, lost badly to the Democratic slate, which Republican leaders attribute to the fact that their opponents shared a ballot with Barack Obama and enjoyed the turnout of a presidential election year.
Now that the election is over, Lester said he is done with party politics after three years in the Township and County Republican organizations. Lester said he has become disillusioned with the two-party system.
“If I ever run again, it will be as an independent,” he said.
What Lester didn’t say at the candidates forum was that he blames his own bankruptcy on the political system in Mercer County, Republicans and Democrats alike.
Earlier in 2012, Lester said, his family’s finances were looking up. Lester had a job as a corrections officer in Trenton and his wife Courtney was working as a registration clerk for the Mercer County Board of Elections. They lived in their own home in Ewing, and Ed was heavily involved in various township recreation programs as well as the Republican party.
But in June, Courtney was fired. The reason she was let go remains in dispute. According to documents provided by the Lesters, her time with the county had been tumultuous. Courtney had filed a harassment complaint against her supervisors in February, which was dismissed in April. Also in April, she was disciplined for insubordination for a February incident in which she got into an argument with her boss.
Ed Lester said he and Courtney are still working to have an employment hearing for Courtney. He blames the Democrat and Republican political machines for treating his wife unfairly. Superintendent of Elections Cathy DiCostanzo is an appointee of Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican. Lester said he appealed to Christie and to County Executive Brian Hughes, a Democrat, for help investigating the situation with his wife, but was ignored.
“It’s just so tainted and so cutthroat,” he said.
The financial impact of Courtney losing her job was devastating for the Lesters. Ed had recently taken a pay cut to work as a corrections officer instead of his previous job at the Princeton Sewer Authority. Suddenly, the family found itself unable to make ends meet.
Even as Ed was knocking on residents’ doors asking for their support in the upcoming election, he was paring down his possessions to satisfy the conditions of bankruptcy. He sold the used Hyundai Sonata they had bought earlier in the year and replaced it with the $1,000 truck he alluded to at the candidates forum. Smart phones were replaced with flip phones. But it wasn’t quite enough.
“We had our power shut off once,” Lester said. “That’s devastating, especially to my ego. I was in the Marine Corps. I took care of my family.”
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Lester doesn’t fit the mold of a politician. A lifelong Ewing resident and high school graduate with some college credits towards psychology and fire science, Lester has neither the long experience nor the education that help many other politicians along in their careers.
Lester said he was in trouble a lot as a child and teen and had a rebellious streak. But he always owned up to his misdeeds.
“One day, Patrolman Frank Masterson caught me doing 80 mph in my Firebird down Pennington Road,” he said. “When he pulled me over, he said, ‘What the hell were you thinking son?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m an idiot sir. I am stupid and I don’t know why I was doing 80 mph.’”
Lester remembers getting a long lecture and a ticket, but he has no regrets about not making excuses for his mistake. It’s how he was raised.
“My dad would look at me and say, ‘The truth will set you free. For a little bit, because you still have to pay the consequences,” he said.
Both of Lester’s parents were county employees.
At 17, Lester joined the Marine Corps, where he guarded prisoners in stockades. Service in the military seemed to curb his wild ways and when he came back, he took a job with the Princeton Sewer Authority. In 2009, he was called back to Iraq. Before he left, he had one thing to do: marry his sweetheart Courtney, whom he met just after high school.
“We had to change our wedding date five times because the Corps kept moving up the date I was going to be deployed,” he said.
Fortunately, Mastoris Diner in Bordentown accommodated his hectic plans and the couple wed on July 17, 2009.
When Lester returned for good, his innate curiosity kindled an interest in local politics. He would stay up late, dissecting his ELSA water bill, wondering where all the money was going. He would go to the Ewing Township municipal building and see the mayors’ portraits hanging on the wall, the same names showing up in different positions over and over through the years. Although he voted for Obama in 2008, Lester was drawn to the Republicans because they opposed the firmly entrenched Ewing Democrats. He believed the Democrats had controlled the town for too long, and started to go to the Republican meetings.
“I would go to their meetings, and hear their ideas,” he said. “This was brilliant stuff. Don Cox tried to get solar panels in Ewing five years ago. Now Lawrence has them and Princeton has them and Ewing still doesn’t have them. Don tried to get televised sessions of the council. I think that’s a brilliant idea.”
Peoples said the members of the club took note of Lester’s passion.
“He was full of enthusiasm and very caring about the issues that hit the common person in Ewing,” Peoples said. “Certainly not jaded in any way.”
By going to the meetings and helping out with campaigns, Lester learned about the behind-the-scenes dealings of the party.
In 2012, when the Republicans needed a candidate to run against Jennifer Keyes-Maloney, David Schroth and Kevin Baxter, another corrections officer, Lester volunteered.
Jeff Prunetti organized their campaign. Lester began knocking on doors.
Against conventional wisdom and advice, Lester viewed his door-to-door campaign not so much as a get-out-the vote effort, but as a way to win people over with his ideas. He visited districts that were long ago written off as solidly in the “D” column. When people he visited disagreed with him, where many politicians would have deflected the disagreement, he argued with them and tried to get them to see things his way.
Prykanowski remembers Lester being a great running mate.
“He was very exuberant and animated,” he said. “He had the fire in the belly. When he wanted to do something, he made his points known and came across well.”
But all of the Republicans’ shoeleather campaigning was to no avail and the Democrats won handily.
The experience left Lester frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the Republicans to oppose the Democratic agenda. He said they received no support from the state organization, whom he said had written off Mercer County as Democratic territory.
Prykanowski agreed with Lester’s assessment.
“I don’t think Eddie’s talking out of school,” he said. “The County Republican Party’s not the strongest. It’s a little tough to get things going.”
Lester said he thinks it’s in the best interest of taxpayers to support politicians who will create strong social programs on the national level, but who will keep taxes low on the local level. Therefore, he often splits his ticket between national and statewide Democrats and local Republicans. He said he wished voters would consider the policies and the merits of individual politicians instead of voting with blind party loyalty.
Blind voting, he said, contributed to the Democrats in Mercer County, and the Republicans in their stronghold in Hamilton, becoming set in their ways and able to do whatever they wanted with no one to keep them in check.
“At this point, I wouldn’t mind if it was Socialists vs. Democrats as long as there’s a balance,” he said. “Right now, there’s nothing stopping them from doing what they want to do, raising taxes how they want to raise taxes and spending how they want to spend.”
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