Plainsboro Mayor Peter Cantu will step down at the end of this year and spend his 50th year in local government as a township committeeman, TAPinto Princeton has reported.
Cantu, 84, is the longest-serving mayor in New Jersey.
He told TAPinto Princeton that his decision was based on “nothing dramatic, no particular health or personal crisis.”
“At the age of 84, I feel it is time for me to back away from the considerable day-to-day mayoral responsibilities and demands,” he told TAPinto.
He became mayor in 1977 after Democrats took control of local government for the first time in 56 years and served for seven years. Democrats took the majority in November 1976 when Barbara Wright unseated GOP Committeeman John Versnel.
In 1980, the township committee expanded to five members, and by 1984, Democrats had a 3-2 majority.
Wright went from being a political ally to a bitter foe. She forged a clandestine alliance with the two Republicans on the township committee and ousted Cantu as mayor at the January 1984 reorganization meeting by a 3-2 vote. Wright later switched parties.
Republicans took control in 1985, but after Democrats picked up two seats in 1986, Cantu returned as mayor in January 1987. He missed 1992 after the GOP took control for their last time in the 1991 Florio Tax Hike wave, but returned in 1993. He’s been there ever since.
Cantu served briefly as an assemblyman in 1991. He became a Democratic Assembly candidate in the 14th district after incumbent Joseph Patero (D-Manville) was moved to the 16th in legislative redistricting. That pitted him in a general election contest with Wright; he lost by 11,487 votes. But on November 25, he took office as the new assemblyman from the old 14th following Patero’s resignation to join the state Department of Labor. He served as an assemblyman for 50 days before his term expired on January 15, 1992.
Cantu was appointed to fill a vacant township committee seat in February 1975 after another Democrat, Thomas F. Sullivan, resigned for health reasons. He was unopposed in the November special election; in those days, the three-member governing body traditionally had two Republicans and one Democrat, and Republicans kept up that tradition.
Wright lost her Assembly seat to Linda Greenstein, a Plainsboro township committeewoman, in 1999. She sought political comebacks in 2001 for Assembly, 2010 for State Senate, and 2022, at age 89, as a candidate for the Cranbury Township Committee. She finished last in a field of four candidates for two seats; one of her Democratic opponents won by just six votes.
His departure will leave Gibbsboro Mayor Edward G. Campbell III, Magnolia Mayor BettyAnn Cowling-Carson, Woodbine Mayor Bill Pikolycky, and Hope Mayor Timothy McDonough as the state’s senior mayors; all three have been in office since 1991.
The record for the longest-serving mayor in New Jersey is held by Gerald Calabrese, who served as mayor of Cliffside Park for 50 years.
Calabrese was 30 when he won a Cliffside Park council seat in 1955, back in an era when the Hudson River town was politically competitive. He was elected mayor in 1959 and held the post until his death in April 2015 at age 90. He served as a Bergen County freeholder in the 1970s and 1980s and served as the Bergen County Democratic Chairman. A former professional basketball player, he is the father of Cliffside Park Mayor Thomas Calabrese and grandfather of Assemblyman Clinton Calabrese.
Second on the list is Frank E. Rodgers, who served as the mayor of Harrison for 49 years. Rodgers also served two terms in the State Senate and as the Hudson County Clerk.
Rodgers was the 36-year-old town clerk and a World War II veteran when he was elected mayor in 1946 and was one of the last Hudson Democrats to run with the support of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague before the Hudson boss’ ouster in 1947. He left office in 1995 after a knee injury impacted his mobility and was replaced by Raymond J. McDonough.