Lakewood Vaad
The Lakewood Vaad (Council) is a voluntary organization of leaders and businessmen, who represent a large amount of the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood, New Jersey in public policy issues. Lakewood is a rapidly growing city with a population of over 100,000 (the 2017 estimate is 120,000). It is unique in that the majority of the population identifies as Orthodox Jewish. It is also home to the largest Talmudic Academy in the United States, Beth Medrash Govoha. It also hosts over 100 K-12 Yeshivas, which are non-profit private independent schools, with an enrollment of over 30,000.
The community maintains a large and unified voting block. The Vaad endorses candidates for office, and communicates the needs of the community to elected officials. It may also occasionally be involved in specific inter-community affairs. It is widely reported that the Vaad is instrumental in the unity and voting power of the community, and maintains a level of influence within Lakewood politics, commensurate with the number or residents it represents. Some of Lakewood's residents maintain opposing opinions to those of the Vaad.
Some of the members include - 1) Aaron Kotler - CEO of BMG/Cedarbridge 2) Yisroel (Shenky) Schenkolewski 3) Moshe Zev Weisberg 4) Binyomin Heineman, and 5) Yosef Atlas.
An exception occurred prior to and during the New Jersey gubernatorial election, 2009, when incumbent Jon Corzine was running versus Chris Christie. While the Vaad and the Roshei Yeshiva [1] both endorsed Corzine, many of the yeshiva's students argued for Christie.[2] In the election results, most of the community voted for Christie against the Vaad's suggestion, by more than 2 to 1, most likely because of his conservative views. [3][4] Lately, several candidates for public office have attempted to circumvent the control of the Vaad and establish themselves independently. These efforts have invariably been quickly and efficiently quashed.