A defensive, and still elusive, U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) recently issued a press release claiming that despite his refusal to show up at Town Hall-style meetings throughout the county, his pre-arranged visits with select groups and bizarre “telephone town halls” keep him apprised of the wishes of his constituency.

Democrats in Sussex County continue to stand up and proclaim themselves, and Tuesday night two of them announced plans to do so in Trenton.

U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) has been in Congress for 12 terms, and over them his voting record has moved from somewhat progressive in the beginning (in areas such as reproductive freedom, for example) steadily to the right, to the point that his most recent voting record is 100 percent along GOP lines.

U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11), whose district includes the Sussex County towns of Byram, Hopatcong, Ogdensburg, Sparta and Stanhope, hasn’t held a town meeting in four years.

While Sussex County progressives have celebrated election of the first Democrat to represent Congressional District 5 in decades, five county municipalities—Byram Township, Hopatcong, Ogdensburg, Sparta Township and Stanhope—are part of District 11, represented by Rodney Frelinghuysen, who has held that seat for 22 years.

Sometime before April 28, Sparta will withdraw from the county’s health system in favor of reverting back to independently funding and operating its own health department, which it did prior to joining the county in 2009.

In what is probably not mere coincidence, census data reveal that Sussex County has some of the worst work commutes in New Jersey, along with the highest rate of people fleeing their towns.

It began happening in the ’90s—mostly throughout the South, the Midwest and the Southwest: Right-wing opponents of public education, often with an evangelical bent, began quietly taking over local school boards. Book bannings and bizarre curricula such as “creation science” followed closely behind.  So did the push to establish charter schools—publicly funded by privately run education institutions with various degrees of oversight.

Congressional candidate Josh Gottheimer spoke on Wednesday in Sparta. The venue was the annual meeting of the Sussex County Association for Realtors at Perona Farms.

The deadline for filing the necessary paperwork to appear on the ballot for the Sparta Municipal Council is Tuesday, September sixth. If you are interested in running for one of the two council seats up for election this year, you may pick up a packet from the Clerk at the Municipal Building, located at 65 Main Street in Sparta.