Greg Harris, the one candidate for West Windsor Council who is not affiliated with a party slate, now has two other reasons to stand out from the crowd: He will not accept any campaign donations and he is running as a write-in candidate.
The write-in distinction is not of his own choosing. Harris says he submitted 225 signatures — 60 more than the 165 required — to the township at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 6, beating the filing deadline by half an hour. Two days later, however, he received a letter saying his application had been denied.
“He had residents of the township signing three petitions. You can only sign one petition, as mandated by state statute,” says Clerk Sharon Young. “We went through his entire packet in hopes that we would still have enough to get 165 and get him on the ballot.”
While Harris interprets the state statute differently, he says he will defer the fight over the ballot process and instead concentrate on his campaign, one hallmark of which is that he is refusing monetary donations for his campaign.
“I will not take ANY donations,” he says on his website. “Support me by donating your time and energy to making this a better town.” His website statement also addresses his independence status: “I am not affiliated with any other member of the township government, and I am not a member of any other partisan ‘club.’ There is no place for political agendas and partisanship in West Windsor.
Harris has spoken at recent Council and Planning Board meetings and has raised several points from his perspective as a property owner, taxpayer, single parent of three school-aged children, and observer of the business scene in West Windsor. At meetings Harris can be seen taking notes on an iPad and later posting comments and reports on meeting proceedings on his website, www.gregoryharris.org, and Facebook page, www.facebook.com/GregHarrisWW
One of Harris’s recent public commentaries at a Planning Board meeting concerned what he calls “Las Vegas-style signs” that have popped up. Harris gave an example of his own daughter and other inexperienced teenage drivers being distracted when driving to school, leading to potentially dangerous situations. Harris says that the signage is disconcerting to even experienced drivers.
Harris describes his motivation for running on his website: “We live in a town where lawsuits are expected in the course of doing business, partisan politicians sit on our ‘non-partisan’ council, and the Mayor would rather go to court than admit he is wrong for not providing Council members with requested details. Redevelopment is going nowhere. New businesses are put through lengthy processes and inspections before being able to open their doors or hang a simple sign. Residents are not kept informed, and it appears even encouraged to not attend meetings.
“Other than the Police and Emergency Services departments that took communication above and beyond during Hurricane Irene, this township operates like it’s still the 1980s. It’s time you get informed.”
Harris, a Piedmont Road resident, has been a serial entrepreneur, with varying results in his business career. An article in U.S. 1 Newspaper on August 15, 2007, summarized his background:
The son of the president of Commodore Computers, Harris grew up on Long Island and got his first computer at age 14 and has been involved with computers ever since. After attending the State University of New York at Albany from 1986 to 1988, he left college to work at a variety of information technology jobs and eventually turned to website development, as well.
Moving to West Windsor, he worked for a time for Dow Jones and then started, among other ventures, an Internet hosting service, a website where users could find local dentists, a company that transferred video tapes to DVDs, and another that collected and sold leads to mortgage brokers. His wife started a company called Beautiful You in 1999. She did hair and makeup at home for events such as weddings, and she used products from Herbal Life, a multilevel marketing firm.
As his three kids began to have access to computers he saw a need for another product, Kidzmail, which would allow parents to monitor their children’s E-mail (U.S. 1, March 31, 2004).
As a candidate for public office, Harris notes that “right now we have a council that has a number of attorneys on it. With this election we have at least three or four people running that I know work for big companies. The council should be diverse and include people across all types of business whether it’s somebody who owns a garage in town to somebody who runs a corporation. As an entrepreneur and small business owner you learn to move fast, to move smart, cut out the bureaucracy, use guerrilla tactics, and get things done.”
“All the reasons why I left the corporate world are what is needed in this town to get things done,” Harris said.
Harris began considering a run for council over the past six months. He wanted to wait and see whether anybody running would be somebody he could support, but he points out that the process of waiting until all the petitions are in to see who’s running is “a backwards way.”
“In reading the instructions and language on the petition it clearly says a voter can sign as many petitions as there are positions open to be filled. Nowhere does it say that they can’t sign more than one certificate for the same candidate. My understanding was that since there were three seats available they could sign three certificates.
