After a six-year respite, it seems the West Windsor Town Council may be returning to the circus politics that characterized the body for much of the 1990s. In the middle of summer, council’s election season has arrived, with members taking sides, calling for a “code of conduct,” the censure of a colleague, and firing allegations back and forth.
Within the past two weeks, council members Barbara Pfeifer and Charles Morgan each released dueling press releases, public statements, and letters outlining allegations of misbehavior by the other. Franc Gambatese joined in the fray, supporting Pfeifer in her quest to censure Morgan. They claim that Morgan singled Pfeifer out for scrutiny that was not applied equally to all candidates seeking the vacant council position in the spring. All three occupy seats that will be up for election in the next year.
The bitterness surfaced publicly during a special daytime work session on Friday, August 4, when Pfeifer read a prepared statement accusing Morgan of unethical conduct while serving as council president last year. When township attorney Michael J. Herbert told her to stop reading the statement and submit it for public record, she handed copies to the clerk and members of the press and left the meeting, saying “I’m not prepared to discuss the issue.”
The meeting had been called to discuss procedural guidelines concerning the process by which Pfeifer, an interim council member, was appointed. Pfeifer alleged that during the selection process, Morgan aligned himself with one of the other nine candidates for the position, Will Anklowitz, and conducted a “witch hunt” against her, unfairly examining credentials on her application.
Before he or Anklowitz were mentioned by name, Morgan interrupted, called Pfeifer out of order, and asked for a cessation of what he characterized as a “political speech.” Said Morgan before the work session resumed: “The campaign season has begun.”
Will Anklowitz announced his candidacy for the November Council election on Thursday, August 3 (see story on page 16). Pfeifer has not officially announced her candidacy for the same seat. In the past, she has spoken about running, but now says, “I’m not going to dive into the cesspool until they clean it up.”
In a letter received as the News went to press on August 10, Council president Linda Geevers and member Heidi Kleinman joined Gambatese in supporting Pfeifer and criticizing Morgan for “a secret investigation” that was “handled in an inappropriate way.”
Pfeifer and Gambatese have said that they plan to call for a censure of Morgan, which would involve formal public criticism of the councilman. Morgan has released his own public statement defending his actions and questioning those of Pfeifer. He accused Pfeifer of fabricating a credential on her application for the council seat, and said, “I will not get into a war of words with two people who clearly have begun their election campaigns. I decided eight years ago that I would not engage in attack politics and I am not going to start doing so now.”
The rest of his statement outlines and refutes various claims made by Pfeifer, both as an applicant and as a member of council. “I’ve never seen anyone walk out of a council meeting,” said Morgan. “It’s weird. She walked out in a huff. I’ve had decisions go against me before. Everything I did followed our rules. It makes it difficult for the council to conduct business when not all members are present.”
Along with his 2,”100-word statement analyzing the feud, Morgan attached copies of Pfeifer’s original application form for the Council job, her revised application, and — without comment — a document entitled “Psychoanalysis.” It included definitions, apparently downloaded from the Internet, of “defense mechanism,” “narcissism,” “distortion,” “projection,” “intellectualization,” “delusion of grandeur,” and “grandiosity.” Morgan declined to elaborate.
Gambatese was absent from the August 4 meeting, citing conflicts with his job (see related story on page 16). He came to Pfeifer’s defense with a written statement released after the meeting, saying, “while Mr. Morgan protested that this was a political statement, I feel nothing could be farther from the truth, as on this date Council was to discuss procedures and a code of ethics for filling Council vacancies. Mrs. Pfeifer was a first hand witness to Mr. Morgan’s relentless attempts to discredit her. Had I not observed and protested behind closed doors I would not have believed this could happen to any candidate by a Council I was serving on. This is an embarrassment, but I will not remain silent while decent people are undercut by underhanded, old time politics.”
The ill feelings apparently were not limited to the three council members facing elections. At one point in the resume flap, Pfeifer was given a “heads up” phone call from Council president Linda Geevers. That drew the following reaction from Morgan, in a subsequent E-mail to Pfeifer.
“With respect to Linda, she violated a confidence made between two members of Council. Worse, she elected to alarm you before I had finished my homework. It would have been more appropriate for Linda to wait for all the facts to come in before alarming you since the facts might have shown the absence of an issue. It seems that Linda has again violated a confidence by reporting to you that I expressed my disappointment to her. That simply means that I can’t trust her. That’s a sad thing,” Morgan wrote.
Morgan says Anklowitz first called his attention to the fact that Pfeifer listed “Samford-Pre-law” among her educational credits, yet Samford does not offer this degree, and Pfeifer does not have a degree from the Birmingham, Alabama. university. She attended the school, but completed her studies at Fairleigh Dickinson. She admits her course of study at Samford was “general education, with a concentration in paralegal studies.”
In the course of his inquiry into the matter, Morgan received the following E-mail response from the dean of academic services and registrar at Samford, Paul Aucoin:
“This is to confirm that Barbara Novellino (Pfeifer) earned an Associate of General Studies degree with a major in Paralegal from Samford university on May 26, 1979. She supplied me with her date of birth and SSN, which is sufficient to match to the records in our file.”
In a follow-up E-mail, responding to Morgan’s question of whether or not the associate degree with a major in paralegal was considered to be part of the prelaw program at Samford, Aucoin wrote that “I think in the time that has elapsed she may have referred to pre-law incorrectly but not intending to inflate anything. Perhaps at the time, after earning the A.S., she intended to major in a B.A. program and go to law school.
“We have no ‘degrees’ in pre-law nor do most institutions, only a program where they get special advice in addition to their major, which can be anything, but is usually English, History, or Political Science. The paralegal program (we now have a certificate program but not a degree program) is for those who wish to work in a law office but not practice before the bar. Her degree was offered by our Cumberland School of Law and she remains an alumna in good standing with our alumni office.”
Morgan said he brought his findings to the other members of council, who at the time included Gambatese, Geevers, and Kleinman. He says he does not remember whether the issue was discussed publicly or in private, but says, “I decided I was not going to be the one who was going to make it public.”
Herbert says when the perceived discrepancy was brought to his attention, “I informed all members of council that it was a non-issue. She didn’t say she had a degree, and she may have paraphrased what she did study at Samford, but that is a common practice.”
Pfeifer alleges that Morgan called her to threaten that Anklowitz supporters would be at the meeting when council voted for the interim council member. “He said there would be 12 or 15 people there that would bring up the issue of something untruthful on my application. I couldn’t get him to tell me what that was.”
Morgan confirmed that he spoke with Pfeifer, but said, “I was trying to protect the woman.”
Anklowitz supporters did show up to the meeting, and many spoke publicly, but none mentioned Pfeifer’s application. Gambatese, Kleinman, and Geevers all voted for Pfeifer, and Morgan cast his vote for Anklowitz.
Said Morgan: “It would have been interesting to see what happened the night of the vote if it had been made public.”
The vote came as a result of Kristin Appelget vacating her council seat upon taking a job with Princeton University. When she left her position in April, she told the News, “We have a great group of council members. They’re very dedicated, and very thoughtful. The mayor has set a good tone for the working relationship with council. It’s very different from the council I stepped onto in 1999.”
Morgan, who was Appelget’s running mate that year, said, “before we ran, there was a general air of contempt and lots of noise. The township seemed to be in the newspapers all the time, and it was not good publicity.”
Added Appelget: “It was an embarrassment to the community, what was going on. It’s gotten to the point now where we can have dignified conversations about critical issues. It doesn’t always have to be about making a headline.”
Now Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh says he is disappointed with the turn of events. “This is a council issue, and I hope they will be able resolve the dispute and move on to important township issues. We have important decisions to make with the redevelopment.”
When asked if he might consider intervening, he said, “If it is necessary, I will do that. I try not to interfere in council operations. Now I just tell them, let’s try to focus on important issues.”
The nit-picking of the candidate’s resume was on the order of what the U.S. Senate might reserve for a Supreme Court nominee — except that in this case it was Pfeifer, not Sam Alito, and the job was a six-month interim council seat, not Supreme Court justice.
At a town hall meeting held by Hsueh on August 8, about 30 residents gathered to question the mayor and voice concern about a number of issues, including the redevelopment of the train station, re-valuation and taxes, the phasing out of the town’s composting site, and the inclusion of Hindi in the school curriculum. Though Geevers and Kleinman were present, no one asked about any issues concerning council members, their allegations, or their election.
