A conservative faction prevailed by a wide margin in a bitter GOP primary fight for two seats on the Readington Township Committee that included attaching tracking devices to lawn signs that led to the arrest of another local official for theft.
Mayor Juergen Huelsebusch was the top vote-getter with 1,397 votes, followed by Committeeman Adam Mueller, his running mate, with 1,404. They defeated former Mayor Benjamin Smith (968) and Planning Board member Jacqueline Hindle (925).
The race was part of a battle between moderate old-guard Republicans and a newer, significantly more conservative faction in a Hunterdon County municipality split by supporters and opponents of Donald Trump.
The two factions have been in a civil war since 2022 when three-term Township Committeewoman Betty Anne Fort, a Republican rabidly opposed to Trump, lost the primary by a 2-1 margin to conservative Vinny Panico, a former president of the Hunterdon Central Regional Board of Education who ran off the line with the blessing of party leaders.
Fort had endorsed Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) in 2020 over Republican Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) and contributed $7,900 to his 2020 and 2022 campaigns. That cost her re-election.
Last year, two incumbents from the moderate faction, John Albanese and Jonathan Heller, lost party support but ran off the line and narrowly won the GOP primary.
There have been allegations of sign stealing over the last few years – some Republicans were informally caught swiping Kean placards in 2022 after a hunting camera was used to keep watch.
The conservative faction grew tired of playing the game and built out an independent sting operation.
They decided to attach Apple AirTags to repurposed signs from Kean’s 2022 race with a severe anti-Malinowski message and position them adjacent to the Smith and Hindle signs.
AirTags allowed the group to ping the sign to determine its exact location.
The opposition followed the signal to Albanese’s home. Panico telephoned a police sergeant to report the theft. They found the six anti-Malinowski signs there and placed Albanese under arrest.