Rose Enjoying Chance to Meet Residents Through Campaign

Editor's Note: Each day this week, we will feature the biography of one of the candidates running in the elections this year. First will be the mayoral candidates, followed by the candidates for council.

For the first time, she is running for a full three-year term—and she is looking forward to continuing her service on the council.

Republican Christine Henderson Rose is running for a seat on the township council after completing one year of service to finish a term vacated by Somerset County Freeholder Patrick Scaglione. She was appointed to the council in 2010 when Scaglione left to be a freeholder and, in November 2010, won election to complete his term through 2011.

Now, Rose said, she is hoping to move forward with her own full term.

“I think that there are things we have started on council that I want to see us continue,” she said. “I think that the leadership of the town will undergo a change regardless of who wins, and I’m excited about being part of whatever that culture will be like.”

Rose is running for reelection alongside incumbent Matthew Moench, and against Democrats John Rooney and Mary Pranzatelli.

A 37-year Bridgewater resident, Rose was born and raised in Somerville, and moved to the township after she married her husband Bill.

"There were not many options for apartment complexes at the time," she said. "So we moved to the Finderne section."

From there, Rose said, she moved to Martinsville when her younger daughter, Erin—she also has a son, Bryan—was a little over one year old.

"From there, we never saw the need to move," Rose said. "The schools are good, and it was close to work, so I could get to my kids at the schools in a moment's notice."

"I never had the need or desire to live anywhere else," she added. "Bridgewater has a nice combination of green space and shopping opportunities, and the town has been well-governed."

Rose currently serves as the principal director of the planning and program unit in the county youth services office, but her initial plan had been to be an English teacher.

With an undergraduate degree in English from Hartwick College, in Oneonta, N.Y., Rose found there were no jobs to be had as a teacher in 1971. In 1982, she graduated from Rider University with a master's degree in education with a specialty in guidance and counseling.

Then, as a licensed professional counselor, Rose said she began working for the Family Crisis Intervention Unit for the county about 22 years ago. And eight years into that job, she moved to the Office of Youth Services with the county, before beginning to work with the county's Juvenile Justice System in 1993.

"I worked as a community resource specialist," she said. "It was the community work I love, and I found someone would pay me to do it."

Working in that department, Rose said, she staffed to all the municipal youth services commissions in the county, before taking on her current job as director in 1996.

"I do all planning for juvenile justice," she said. "We look at mental health needs of children and their families, as well as child abuse prevention."

For Rose, she said it is the opportunity to work with kids and the community, which is, she said, "a nice combination."

Aside from this work, Rose has been teaching psychology classes for the University of Phoenix online since 2004.

But in the early 1990s, Rose said, she decided she wanted to get involved in Bridgewater specifically, beginning with the board of education, which she served on for six years, two of which were spent as board president.

"My kids were in school at the time, and I realized that if I wanted to make a change, I needed to do it sitting at the table," she said. "That was my motivation to get involved."

When her kids graduated from the district, Rose said, she looked at that as an opportunity to get more involved in the township government, and served on the Open Space Committee and the Board of Adjustment.

"I got more involved in the Republican Committee," she said. "There were openings, and I was asked to serve so I agreed."

Throughout this past year, Rose said, she has gotten more involved in learning about Bridgewater's new position in district 23, having been moved from district 16 after the recent census, and she is involved with the Hunterdon Federation for Republican Women.

“I am trying to get to know my around the part of Hunterdon County that we are joined with,” she said.

For the coming weeks, and the months following if she is elected, Rose said she will be focused on keeping taxes low, and reducing the size and cost of government, among other issues. She said she will also be continuing to focus on open space, preserving the quality of life and reinstating the bulky trash pick-up that had been eliminated.

For Rose, this is her first time campaigning with another person, and she said it is nice to have that company while traveling around the community and talking with residents.

“It’s nice to have company in this, and the pressure is off to do the entire municipality and all districts,” she said. “But I do enjoy going out, you don’t often have the chance to hear from constituents.”

“Silence is not necessarily golden,” she added. “I enjoy being in settings where I have a chance to interact with people in the township and hear their concerns.”

The general election will be held Nov. 8.