United Party fields first candidate in Rockville Centre mayoral race

A new political party, the Rockville Centre United Party, has announced its first candidate for the June 21 village election: Francis X. Murray, son of former Mayor Eugene J. Murray, will run for mayor.

Jim St. John, the United Party’s president, said that its origins dated to July 2009, when a group of friends from the village met to discuss what they saw as its downhill slide, even as taxes had increased. Their central concerns, St. John recalled, included the lack of cleanliness in the business district, cuts in services — mainly garbage collection — and the deterioration of roads and athletic fields.

Over the following few months, St. John said, he also noted an increase in crime in the village, the “strange” decisions coming from the Board of Trustees and costs he called “staggering.” He met an increasing number of residents who shared his views, he said, and they concluded that the current mayor and board do not know “what it takes to run our village in the way we were accustomed to living over the past 20 years.”

Even accounting for the challenges posed by the struggling economy, they felt that something was severely lacking, St. John said, and that the only way to correct it was to form a new political party with board members who had never been involved in local politics or affiliated with any other village party. The goal of the United Party, he said, is to improve residents’ quality of life and to “open our eyes to the deterioration and do something about it.”

St. John said that Francis Murray, who will turn 60 in May, was the obvious choice to lead the new party as its mayoral candidate, calling him “an experienced, knowledgeable man” who has spent his life in the village. “We believe … he can unite this village once again,” St. John said. “He is involved in almost every aspect of village life, and as a local businessman” — Murray is president of an office cleaning company started by his father — “… he knows how to get the job done.”

St. John said that the party will announce the rest of its slate by the end of the month.

Murray has a long record of public service. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, vice president of the Rockville Centre Conservancy, a board member of the Friends of Senior Services Inc., co-chair of the Rockville Centre Community Fund’s Golf Committee and an active member of the Fire Department for almost 40 years.

“Of primary concern is the negative impact parking regulations have had on our local businesses,” said Murray, who added that he is also troubled by the neglect of many of the village ball fields and the mayor’s and board’s seeming lack of concern about these issues.