Though the municipal election filing deadline (Tuesday, September 3) is still months away, speculation is mounting in West Windsor as to who will be running in the Township elections in November. The position of Mayor and two Council seats are up for election this year. While there has been no formal announcement from either the Democrats or the Republicans regarding their candidates, one team has already announced: Richard Visovsky, Republican, is running for Mayor, and Martin Whitfield, Democrat, is running for a Council seat. And they are running together.
“We are running as an independent ticket,” Visovsky said. “This town is supposed to be non-partisan, which is an ideal goal where everyone works together, but is an unrealistic expectation. Having said that, we are a non-partisan team. We are not about the ideology of either party. We are of one accord: We are about change.”
Added Whitfield, “The parties are not working together, whether it is here in West Windsor or in Washington, DC. The system is not working. We are about people, not politics. We want to make this a model for all government. We have to start somewhere to change the system. Why not here?”
Although neither man has run for elected office before, both have been involved in community service for a long time. Visovsky was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, as was his wife of 33 years, Cyndy.
“We grew up nine houses from each other,” he said. Both of their fathers were long-time council members in Johnstown, and Visovsky credits his father, who was also a teacher, and his mother, a home-maker, with instilling a sense of community service in him.
When he turned 16, Visovsky volunteered with the local fire company. Many years later, WW Volunteer Fire Department #43 Chief Richard Glover recruited Visovsky and his son Richard, who was also 16 at the time, and both joined together “one day before 9/11. This is my 12th year, and my only regret is that I didn’t join sooner. I really enjoy being a firefighter and helping the community.”
Visovsky started as a firefighter, and became the president for one year after Kevin Tindall stepped down. “I wasn’t the president for the following two years; then I became the president again, and have remained in that position for the past seven years. I run the executive side of the firehouse; Chief Glover runs the fire operations side. I still go out on calls, and then I am just a firefighter.
“It is a great experience. Not just helping the community, but working with a bunch of Type-A men — and one woman — and getting them to work together. This is a great accomplishment. Plus, we pay all of our maintenance and operating costs. We receive a fixed $45,000 stipend from the Township. The rest of the money we raise ourselves through our fund drive because we are a volunteer organization. We also rent out our hall for parties and functions. We paid for the original building and for an addition in the 1970s. We are now building a second addition without using taxpayer dollars for any of it.”
Visovsky has lived in West Windsor for 22 years, along with Cyndy, who runs kindergarten extension for the WW-P Community Education Department. In addition to their son, Richard, who is now 27, they also have a daughter, Caroline, 21, who is a student at Mercer County Community College.
Visovsky, who graduated from Penn State University as a mining engineer, has traveled all over the world during the course of his career. “I have visited lots of different countries and have been to every continent except Australia and Antarctica. I always take the time to learn about the customs, culture, and food of the countries I have visited.”
For the past two years Visovsky has worked for Power Survey. Though he is based in New York, his work finding and helping to identify strong voltages coming from common metallic objects takes him all over the country.
Technology deveoped by the Sarnoff Corporation helps detect voltages in everything from manhole covers to light poles. “This technology has truly made New York a safer place,” Visovsky says. “I recently located some exposed wires hanging where a pole had sheared off, which was next to a bus stop where customers were waiting in the rain. Had anyone touched that, they would have been in real trouble.”
The Visovskys moved to West Windsor in 1980 for several reasons. “I was working for Midland Oil and Gas in New York City at the time. I was executive vice president of Development, and we were putting together an oil service company in Turkmenistan at the time. I wanted a one-hour commute or less to New York. We looked here, and on Long Island, and in Westchester. We moved here. We have a close friend who lived here and he really loved it. Also, the property taxes were so much lower than Westchester. We could get a bigger house with more land and pay far less in taxes.”
West Windsor had another advantage: It was within reasonable commuting distance to Penn State, and Visovsky is a season ticket holder and “huge fan” for 37 years.
In addition to being a firefighter, Visovsky has also volunteered to help out with his kids’ activities. “I was very involved in West Windor Little League. I coached both boys’ baseball and girls’ softball for many years. I was also the president of the High School North Football Booster Club for four years. I really liked being involved with the kids’ sports teams.”
Martin Whitfield is also very involved with kids here in West Windsor. He should be. He and wife Dionna Amos-Whitfield have five children: two daughters, Cristal, 16 and a senior at High School South and Makala, 11 years old, at Village School; and three sons, Bryson, who is 8 and a student at Dutch Neck; Blake, who is 5, and Brock, who is 2.
Whitfield and his family have lived in West Windsor for almost seven years after moving from Plainfield. “We decided to move here because of the school system and because of the town’s diversity, and also because of the strong sense of community here,” says Whitfield. Whitfield, who is a former Division I basketball player, has himself gotten very involved in the West Windsor community, especially in the area of basketball.
“I mentor high school student athletes here, try to help them not only with their skills, but how to navigate the system, apply to colleges, deal with athletic departments, and such. I try to act as a liaison between the students and parents and the colleges because many of them don’t really know how the system works. I have trained and mentored students in basketball through AAU groups off and on for years, and wanted to do that here in West Windsor,” adds Whitfield.
“I know what that is like from personal experience. I was not a star basketball player in high school — I wasn’t even that good, or that tall. I went to Bishop G. Ahr Catholic School in Edison, and I was no superstar there. I came up the hard way, by training myself. I had no offers coming out of high school. I went to a junior college, Middlesex County, and worked really hard on my basketball skills. Then I transferred to the University of Texas, San Antonio, and was a starting player for the Roadrunners both years there. Because I went through this, I want to help out kids who may be in a similar situation.”
After college, where he and Dionna met, he remained in San Antonio as a student assistant coach, and then began working at NewTeck, a computer software company. Like Visovsky, his employment involved a great deal of international travel. “I acted as a liaison between the company and customers all over the world. I dealt with the product lines, finance, and communications.”
Whitfield then moved back to New Jersey, became the manager of a sporting goods store, and then landed a job with the National Basketball Association for nine years. “I worked in broadcast operations, monitoring and managing live games, programming on NBA TV, international live features, shows, and more. Then I began working in the corporate services side, in promotions, production, and placement within the TV, radio, and print landscape. I worked both on a regional and a national scale.
“Unfortunately, I was one of the casualties of the NBA lockout, so I am currently unemployed. I am considering several career options, but right now am focusing on volunteer and community work,” says Whitfield.
In addition to mentoring basketball students, Whitfield helps out with many of his own children’s activities — daughter Makala’s Pop Warner Cheerleading, and the High School South marching band with Cristal.
Also like Visovsky, Whitfield’s volunteerism began when he was a teenager. “When I was 17, I started a group called ‘Men of the World.’ We would mentor and read to children in Middlesex County schools. Then, at UTSA, I became involved with ‘Roadrunners for Education.’ We would visit local schools and encourage reading, and also mentor the kids. We ‘adopted’ the poorest school in San Antonio, with the lowest test scores. We brought in the NBA, the community, the city council, held pep rallies about the importance of education. We wanted to help raise test scores, and we did.
“When I returned to Plainfield, through the Plainfield Kairos Ministry, I would work with adult prisoners at Northern State and Rahway prisons. We would converse with them, pray with them, and listen to them.”
“I credit my parents for instilling in me a strong sense of community service. My father worked for 35 years at the Essex County Youth House, and my mother taught for 36 years at the Paul Robeson School in New Brunswick. Both are retired now and still live in Plainfield. My parents taught both of us that we need to make a difference in our community, in the world.”
“That’s why I am running for Town Council. I love this town. Just because Rick and I are critiquing some of the things going on doesn’t mean we don’t love it here. We just want to make it better, make the Township more communal. Rick and I want to bring people back into the mix. There are so many talented people here in West Windsor, and too many of them are driven away from our government.”
Visovsky agrees. “Martin and I want the same things. We have a different philosophy than the Democrats or the Republicans. We believe the residents are our customers. We believe that Township employees should be more responsive to them, and more of them should be residents so that they have a vested interest in what goes on here. Our main problem is the dysfunctionality of our government — everything takes too long. We believe government should be truly transparent. I want to provide a leadership role. People can and should be able to talk to me.
“Martin and I met at the Martin Luther King Program, and we began talking. I had met [our campaign manager] Rocky Procaccini last summer. A number of people had spoken to me about running over the last year, and that piqued my interest. Then Rocky and I spoke, and then I met Martin. I was very impressed with him. We have had a number of conversations, just the two of us, and we are of the same accord. We wanted to be friends and give ourselves the opportunity to become friends. We are both fiscally conservative and socially moderate. It is a good fit.
“If anyone else is interested in running with us, they should contact us. There is another vacancy on the Council, and we are happy to have someone else on our team who feels the way we do. The bottom line is, if you are satisfied with how things are here in West Windsor, then so be it. If you are looking for change, then here we are,” says Visovsky.
Editor’s note: In West Windsor the office of the mayor (Shing-Fu Hsueh is the incumbent) and two council seats (currently held by Kamal Khanna and Linda Geevers) will be contested in the November election. The News will profile all candidates as they formally announce their decisions to run.
