Toms River Will Be Getting a New Political Party

Toms River's Independent Mayoral Candidate sees Tuesdays loss as a new beginning and announces that he will be formally starting a 3rd political party in the township.

Donald Flett says their message, distinguishing themselves as different from Republicans and Democrats began to take hold during the campaign. "I would tell people 'I'm an independent candidate. I'm your independent candidate for Mayor. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. And as Dorothy said in Munchkin land, "I"m not a Witch at all". My point is ... that everybody's eyes lit up. They said yes, of course Don."

Listen to Tom Mongelli's conversation with
Donald Flett.

Segment 1

Segment 2

Flett sees the 606 votes he received as his core, with the potential of building the party from a pool of over 50,000 unaffiliated voters. Flett doesn't believe the people who didn't vote were lazy. He believes they elected not to out of protest. "We're of the opinion that we need a third party in Toms River because the two major parties just are not functioning according to the way the constitution requires them. I don't believe that they're doing the people's business."

Flett says there's always the danger in someone trying to hijack the 3rd Party and using it for their own agenda and he says there's a real danger of that because they're not planning on turning anyone away. However, he believes one of the ways of protecting 3rd party is to recruit young voters to embrace the new independent party and claim it as their own. He believes they will jealously guard over the its purpose.

When venturing on a name for the Third Party, Flett says it could be called the "Toms River Citizens Party".