Somerset County GOP Chairman Tim Howes this evening declared Bridgewater Councilman Mike Kirsh victorious in the Somerset County Commissioners’ race.

Kirsh, a Republican, led the field.

His running mate, Amber Murad, was bunched in a pack with incumbent Democrats Shanel Robinson and Sara Sooy, in a race that was too close to call.

There was no doubt about, Kirsh, though.

“Mike Kirsh is the leader Somerset County needs and richly deserves,” Howes said.

This was a big win for Kirsh, Howes and the Republican Party in Somerset County.

At the very least, with Kirsh’s win, the GOP will have regained a seat to prevent the Democrats from having full control of the five-member board.

A three-year veteran of the Green Brook Twp. Committee, Kirsh moved with his growing family to Bridgewater, served on the zoning board, involved himself in public affairs, and won a council seat in 2019. In tumultuous times as the GOP here attempts to rebuild in the face of political loss, Kirsh sat down with InsiderNJ to discuss his candidacy and why voters should break the 5-0 Democratic command the rival party secured over the course of the last four years and elect him and Murad.

Democrats love to sing their own praises at taxpayer expense, Kirsh maintains, while blundering through county government.

“One substantial misstep they made, which you will not hear about in their press releases, is everybody’s recycling fee went up ten percent,” said the GOP candidate. ‘When our local government opened its doors [after the worst of the pandemic], we were faced with a ten percent increase and left wondering how to accommodate other programs. Their assertion that ‘we kept a flat budget’ is not necessarily true. It was them kicking the can down to the local municipalities.”

The back-to-back horrors of COVID-19 and Tropical Storm Ida slammed Somerset, and Kirsh objects to some of the way county government handled those crises.

“Those are tragedies that I will remember for the rest of my life,” said the councilman. “In Bridgewater we lost over 100 people to COVID. We suffered three casualties during Ida and a fourth resident was swept away.”