Noticias

A 20-year-old Park Ridge school board member who attends college in Nashville will avoid facing a recall election this year because organizers of the effort to remove him from office never had their petitions notarized.

That means Robert Fisher, who was elected two years ago at age 18, might not face voters again until next year, if he decides to seek re-election.

“I am delighted that the Clerk’s Office followed the law and rejected this ridiculous attempt to subvert the will of Park Ridge’s voters,” Fisher said. “Now I can get back to doing the will of the people with this distraction out of the way.”

Organizers of the recall effort collected 2,141 signatures – more than the 1,864 needed to put the measure on the ballot.  But they neglected to have the petitions notarized, which is required under state election law.

The decision to toss the recount effort was made by Bergen County Clerk John Hogan.

The move to force Fisher out of office followed allegations that he’d missed 30% of meetings this year, isn’t available to attend community events, and doesn’t serve on any school board committee.  Fisher has stated that he has spent thousands of dollars commuting back to New Jersey due to his public duties.  Fisher attends Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

He also faced residency issues: his family moved out of Park Ridge after his high school graduation, and he rents a basement apartment in town for $10 per month.

But the real objection to Fisher, at least from the recall organizers, appeared to be his socially conservative political views.

Fisher credited State Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-Park Ridge) and Assemblyman John Azzariti (R-Saddle River), and his attorney, Michael Collins, with helping him navigate the recall effort.

“They saw that this effort reeked of lies and age discrimination from the start, standing by me through every step of this process,” he said.

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President Donald Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” may have made huge headway in New Jersey in last year’s presidential election, but a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released today finds that the president’s efforts may not be so popular among the state’s voters anymore.

According to the poll, which was conducted between July 31 and August 11, 51% of likely voters in this November’s gubernatorial election oppose the “MAGA movement” – and 46% of them strongly oppose it. 36% of likely voters support the movement (21% of them strongly), and 13% said they neither support nor oppose it.

The MAGA movement is, predictably, wildly unpopular among Democrats (4%-90%) and equally wildly popular among Republicans (87%-3%), with independents more split at 30% approve, 46% disapprove. Men, white voters, and older voters – three groups that lean more conservative – were more likely to say they supported the movement than women, nonwhite voters, and younger voters.

“Historically, moderation and center-right policy have often been a winning ticket for Republicans in New Jersey, but today, both GOP voters and candidates in the state appear to have aligned themselves with the national MAGA brand,” Eagleton Center director Ashley Koning said in a statement accompanying the poll release. “Even about a quarter of independents express some level of support for the movement, a critical group for Republican Jack Ciattarelli if he hopes to cross the finish line in November.”

The question on the MAGA movement was part of a larger poll Rutgers-Eagleton conducted earlier this month, one that also included a head-to-head test of the general election between Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-Somerville). Sherrill posted a 44% to 35% lead, a result that Rutgers-Eagleton released last week.

Today’s polling release included a breakdown of those results based on respondents’ answers to the MAGA movement question. Those who oppose the MAGA movement break for Sherrill 82%-1%, and those who support it go for Ciattarelli 81%-2%; Ciattarelli also leads 40%-12% among the relatively small number of respondents who neither support nor oppose it.

The Rutgers-Eagleton poll was conducted from July 31 to August 11 with a sample size of 1,650 likely general election voters and a margin of error of /- 3.7%.

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A series of demonstrators opposing the war in Gaza interrupted a speech delivered by Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) on Tuesday evening.

Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor, spoke at a Women’s Equality Day event at Shiloh Baptist Church, a Black church in Plainfield. Sherrill was forced to pause her remarks three times, while staff and security led the demonstrators out of the room without major incident.

One woman walked toward the stage with a sign that read “Protect Women and Children, & Free Speech On Gaza.” The sign asked the congresswoman to oppose state legislation that would implement a controversial definition of antisemitism and support federal legislation that would restrict how and when the U.S. can send arms to Israel.

“I want to thank each and every person who came here tonight,” Sherrill said at the conclusion of her remarks, as another protester in the back of the room exclaimed toward the stage. “Yes, I want to thank the protesters who came here today. I want to thank the people who care so deeply about the future that they’re willing to come out and show up.”

Protesters of the war in Gaza interrupted Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s remarks during an event in Plainfield three times this evening. She finished her speech without major delays pic.twitter.com/8Tgw68eRGH

— Zach Blackburn (@zachblackburn23) August 27, 2025

Staffers for Sherrill signaled to protesters that they could speak with someone following the event, but asked for no disruptions.

After the third disruption, Rev. Dr. Danielle Brown, the church’s pastor, told the crowd to be respectful, and “if you have an outburst in you, at least respect the Black woman in the Black church.”

“If you want to be heard, there’s ways to do that,” Brown said to applause. “But we’re not going to be here all night because you cannot let her speak.”

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