'26 Town Council

 Princeton Town Council Elections

2026

There are four Democrats running for two spots; David Cohen is running for re-election, while Jon Durbin, Leanna Jahnke, and Marina Rubina would all be newcomers to Council. (One Republican candidate, Antonio Merolli, announced his Council candidacy long after the Democrats, and has received much less coverage.)

TAPintoPrinceton published two pieces on where the candidates stand on Pressing Town Issues:

Here's Part 1: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/princeton/sections/government/articles/where-do-princeton-council-candidates-stand-on-pressing-town-issues-part-1

And here's Part 2:

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/princeton/sections/government/articles/princeton-candidates-forum-part-2-transparency-town-gown-relations-more

Here's PCDO's candidate overview, with a statement from each candidate:

https://www.princetondmc.org/town-council

An account of PCDO's candidate forum and endorsement meeting is available here: https://www.towntopics.com/2026/03/18/princeton-community-democratic-organization-endorses-david-cohen-for-town-council/ 

Town Topics has offered profiles of all four candidates; you can read about Cohen & Durbin here, and Jahnke & Rubina here.

Town Topics has also published a bunch of endorsement letters, which you can access by entering the candidates' last names in the Town Topics search bar: towntopics.com

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Here's Leanna Jahnke's website: voteleannajahnke.com

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Here's Jon Durbin's website: jondurbin4princeton.com

He was also profiled by TapInto Princeton:

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/princeton/sections/government/articles/meet-the-princeton-council-candidate-jon-durbin

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Here's Marina Rubina's website: marinaforamericandream.com

She was also profiled by TapInto Princeton:

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/princeton/sections/government/articles/meet-the-princeton-council-candidate-marina-rubina

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David Cohen (the incumbent) has been a guest on the Princeton Podcast twice:

Episode 30 – David Cohen, Princeton Councilman

Episode 64 – David Cohen, Princeton Councilman

He was also profiled by TapInto Princeton:

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/princeton/sections/government/articles/meet-the-princeton-council-candidate-david-cohen

milestone birthday —
I give my Bitmoji
bushier eyebrows

With today's post, I will have been writing and eventually posting at least one haiku I can stand to share every day for THIRTEEN YEARS. (!)

I would therefore like to invite y'all to join me in celebrating the art of haiku.

Here are some ways that you might decide to join in the fun. (Put whatever you decide to share either here in the comments or over on Blue Sky, where I am, of course @butwait. I will be working today, but should be able to check back in here tonight.)

• Poke around in the archives, find a favorite, and share it! Bonus points if you tell me why you like it. (But sometimes it's hard to say why, so no pressure.)
• Find a photo that you think pairs well with one of my haiku, and either tell me about it or create a haiga (image + haiku, e.g. this one)!
• Pick a date that is meaningful to you - just the date, not the year - and let me share a haiku I wrote on that date. Bonus points - again, no pressure! - if you tell me why the date is significant to you.
• Send me a word that you'd like to see me try to incorporate into a haiku (no promises!)
• Tell me about a moment that seemed "haiku-worthy" to you, but that you haven't quite managed to capture in the way you were hoping to
• Share a haiku of your own! (And don't worry too much about the whole 5-7-5 thing.)
• Tell me about your haiku reading practice! Where / when / how do you read haiku? Who writes haiku that you enjoy?
• Got any other ideas? In the past I've had a few friends write a haiku in response to one of mine, which has been lovely and thrilling.

Thank you for considering dedicating some of your time and energy to helping me celebrate this small thing amidst everything big and scary that's going on right now.

 (Fear not, I didn't stop writing haiku, I'm just wayyyy behind in posting them here. Stay tuned, and go ahead and poke around in the back catalog in the meantime!)

eyeing the birch trees
as it swims down the canal —
a beaver scouting

deep in the pocket
of my mothballed winter coat —
last year's present list

withered reeds —
ducks and geese winding through
speaking of summer

yesterday's wind
has fully stripped the trees —
nothing to stop the sun

our inside cricket
somehow still startles us 
with a jump

great blue heron
standing at the river's edge
water rushing by

stop and start traffic —
the way we tried to build
rock dams in the creek

little kitten paws
don't belong on the table —
or so we tell him

(Barbara Chepaitis' 5 month-old Abyssian Merlin jumped up on the table pretty much continuously while we ate dinner.)

fallen leaves folding
giving up on dreams of sun
ready to be earth

(The last message before the rise of Meeting at Albany Friends, offered by an older woman who uses a wheelchair, included an element of show and tell… an older woman passes a desiccated and falling apart leaf around, recommending that everyone smell it to remember what fall smells like, and to notice that it now tends to fold open, like the pages of a book spine broken through reading.)

a hawk's white breast
as it sits facing the sun
neither of us looks away

Thursday mornings
I staff the reference desk —
more retirement dreams

in between protests
I drive the banned bookmobile —
retirement dreams

burying garlic
under a layer of earth —
we all need tucking in

tucked under our roof
we listen for the difference
between sleet and hail

sale of the season —
squirrels excitedly shoving
acorns in every hole

last train of the night —
somewhere an owl silently 
shifts from foot to foot

dark before dinner —
I pull out stew recipes
to hold onto warmth