Fort Lee Republican Mulls Run for Freeholder

Fort Lee resident and former District 37 Republican candidate for State Assembly Keith Jensen says he kept quiet on the issue of "Fair School Funding" during the run up to the Fort Lee Board of Education’s school bond referendum out of respect for the borough’s school children and at the behest of borough and school officials and other community leaders.

But he says now that the referendum has passed, “It’s time for me to get loud about [Fair School Funding] again.”

He also said he’s considering a run for Bergen County Freeholder.

“If people thought I was silent on [Fair School Funding] or just gave up because of the election, au contraire,” said Jensen. “It’s because I was asked by a lot of the leaders in the community who were focused—as was I—on the children and didn’t want this to be a distraction.”

He added, “So now that’s done, and I’m going to start pressing.”

That means he’s going to push for the Fort Lee Mayor and Council to put the issue on an agenda and make a decision one way or the other, he said.

“I’m going to press the Mayor and Council again to make a decision; take it up, and say either we don’t want it or we do want it,” Jensen said. “All they have to do is help get a little more pressure on our legislators to fight for us.”

The Fort Lee Board of Education passed a resolution in September 2011 supporting “fair distribution of state aid for education,” and Jensen has spoken publically to the borough’s governing body about doing the same.

On Wednesday evening, Jensen and his Assembly campaign running mate, John Aslanian of Englewood Cliffs, who were defeated in November’s General Election by Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-Englewood) and Assemblyman Gordon Johnson (D-Englewood), hosted a dinner at in Fort Lee with about a dozen people who helped out with the campaign “to say thank you; it was appreciated what they did,” Jensen said.

But it was more than just a dinner party. It turns out Jensen is putting together an exploratory committee and leaning toward a run for Freeholder.

Although he hasn’t made a decision yet, Jensen said he’s “putting my feelers out there” and deciding “whether to focus on business and personal” or to “make this selfless move and run for office again.”

“A lot of these different positions I have to consider and where I think I can best help the community,” Jensen said. “But I’ve had a lot of people ask me to do it within the party. I’m going to feel it out and talk to a lot of people and see what would be best for those I might represent.”

While he hasn’t ruled out another run for Assembly, that opportunity wouldn’t come up for another couple of years, and Jensen said that would be “a harder decision to make.”

“But running countywide across 70 towns, people are more open minded across the board,” Jensen said.

While Fair School Funding will remain a priority for the Fort Lee Republican, he’s also focused on energy in the state, which he called “near and dear” to him, and other issues.

He said he has openly opposed the use of solar panels in the past, for example, and pointed to a study “questioning … the role of it, the productivity, the value of it.”

In a series of articles on the website, Conservative New Jersey, about the issue of solar panels, Jensen made extensive comments, including the following:

I am a ‘green’ republican. I have degrees in this area, am a member of groups that help the environment, and in the Army I dealt with solar panels on my combat vehicles. I installed small ones on howitzers and humvees so the batteries (which are very different then simple car batteries) do not die …

I do not think global warming is true and I could not be happier that NJ has exited RGGI. That being said and my position now qualified, I have been outspoken with respect to these solar panels.

The straw that broke the camels back is when one of these panels was installed in front of my parents’ bay window, about 15′ from their glass, smack dab in the middle of their view …

I put myself on the Record at a Ft. Lee Mayor and Council meeting asking for them to speak out against the solar panels, and all they had to say was that they cannot do anything about it.

“So that’s another issue that I’m going to start taking up so people don’t look at me being completely focused on one thing,” Jensen said. “And there’s a number of other things, and I’ll get into to that if I announce.”

Republicans Robert Hermansen of Mahwah and John Driscoll of Paramus currently hold the two Freeholder seats up for reelection this year. But Driscoll, who ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Sen. Robert Gordon (D-Fair Lawn) in the state’s 38th Legislative District, announced that he's stepping down as a Bergen County Freeholder after this year, and taking all of 2013 to focus on trying again to defeat Gordon.

That leaves a potential opening for Jensen, who pointed out that he would first have to earn his party’s nomination in the primary.

“Right now my exploration is saying, ‘Okay, would I be the best person for the party for the county?’” Jensen said.

If he were to run and win, Jensen would join Fort Lee’s Joan Voss, who was elected in November, on the Board of Freeholders.

“It would be a balanced Republican and Democrat, both from Fort Lee,” Jensen said.