Keith Hamilton, former Mercer freeholder, dies at 70

Keith Hamilton, who served five terms as a Mercer County Freeholder as a champion of funding senior citizen centers and Mercer County Community College, has died following surgical complications.  He was 70.

This is Mercer County’s second loss this week: former Sheriff Gilbert Lugossy died over the weekend.

Hamilton served on the Hamilton Township Board of Education from 1991 to 1994 before winning a Democratic convention for one of the four freeholder seats up for election in 1994.

Hamilton came in second in a five-candidate field, and ran with Jim McManimon, West Windsor Councilwoman Mary Ellen Marino, and Reed Gusciora, an attorney and former congressional staffer.  Marino withdrew in August and was replaced on the ticket with former East Windsor Committeewoman Ann Cannon; she defeated Trenton Councilman John Cipriano, 106-21.

At the time, Republicans had a 5-2 majority on the freeholder board.  McManimon had been sworn in that summer to replace Assemblyman Joseph Yuhas (D-Trenton).

McManimon, the nephew of former State Sen. Francis McManimon (D-Hamilton), was the top vote-getter; he was followed by incumbent Republican Patrick Migliaccio.  Cannon captured the third seat by about 20 votes over Hamilton; another Republican incumbent, Calvin Iszard, finished sixth.   (In the race for an unexpired term, incumbent Republican Linda Lengyel, a former Ewing mayor who had been appointed in March after Carolyn Bronson resigned, defeated Gusciora.)  That brought the GOP to a 4-3 majority.

Hamilton launched a second bid for freeholder in 1995, when Mercer County Executive Robert Prunetti was facing a challenge from McManimon.  Hamilton and his running mate, incumbent Anthony Carabelli, defeated Lengyel and Iszard by over 3,000 votes, even as Prunetti scored a 4,000-vote win over McManimon. That gave Democrats a 4-3 majority on the freeholder board, making 1995 the last time Republicans had control of the board in Mercer.

(Also in 1995, Yuhas declined to seek re-election to the Assembly, and Gusciora won the open seat in the 15th legislative district.)

Hamilton and Carabelli faced two former freeholders, Lengyel and Michael Angarone, in 1998; they won by over 11,000 votes.  They won again in 2001, outpolling Republicans Chris Chianese and Ira Marks, by about 20,000 votes; in 2004, they beat Republicans Joseph DiCara and Joseph D’Angelo by more than 30,000 votes.   Hamilton and Carabelli were re-elected in 2007 by more than 20,000 votes over the Republican nominees, Shirley Guerieri and Robert Calabro.

Despite his victories in countywide elections, Hamilton was frequently passed over when he sought to run for the legislature in the politically competitive 14th district.  He had made overtures in a run for assemblyman in 1999 – the party picked Linda Greenstein (D-Plainsboro) and Gary Guear (D-Hamilton), who wound up unseating two Republican incumbents; and against State Sen. Peter Inverso (R-Hamilton) in 2001, but Democrats instead went with Mercer County Sheriff Samuel Plumeri. Hamilton wanted to run for Senate in 2003, but Democrats instead selected former Assemblyman Anthony “Skip” Cimino (D-Hamilton).  He wanted a shot at the State Assembly in 2005, but Democrats picked Wayne DeAngelo, then a former Hamilton councilman, instead.

In 2010, Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer stepped down after 20 years as the capital city’s mayor.  Hamilton opted not to seek re-election to a sixth term as freeholder and instead returned to Trenton, where he had played high school football, to run for mayor.  Princeton Borough Councilman Andrew Koontz replaced him.

Former Freeholder Tony Mack won that race after a runoff; in the May non-partisan municipal election, Hamilton finished eighth out of ten candidates for mayor with 330 votes, 3%.

Hamilton was a longtime engineer at AT&T and a U.S. Air Force veteran.