Looking ahead to the 2019 New Jersey state and local elections. Terrence T. McDonald and Michael V. Pettigano, North Jersey Record
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The first national debates among Democratic candidates for president had 20 candidates. At the local level, however, it was a different story as few candidates threw their hats into the Election Day ring.
USA Today Network New Jersey tracked this year’s elections across 101 towns in Bergen, Passaic, Essex and Morris county. Roughly a third of town committee, council and mayoral races are uncontested. One in five towns had no contested municipal races.
John Weingart of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick said it is healthy for people in elected office to know they might be challenged. However, lopsided party registration numbers in some parts of New Jersey can make members of the opposition feel like there is no point in running.
“The other factor, I think, is there are just too many elected offices,” he said. “There’s just a bizarre number of municipalities in the state, each of which has its own town council.”
ELECTION DAY GUIDE: What you need to know before you vote
ELECTION RESULTS BY TOWN: Bergen, Passaic, Morris and Essex results
Here are 4 fast facts about this year’s local races in North Jersey:
1. There are SO many local races
Beyond its 673 school districts, New Jersey has 565 municipalities. Bergen County has 70, and of those, 59 held elections this year.
Among the Bergen County towns, there are 159 open mayoral, town council or committee seats in Tuesday’s race. Passaic County in comparison has just 35 open seats in 12 towns, with an average of 1.8 candidates competing for each seat.
Bergen County has just 1.66 candidates per open seat. More than one in four towns — 16 out of 59 — had no contested races.
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Another potential obstacle to candidacy is the cost to one’s finances and privacy, Weingart said. Having to answer questions or manage criticism from constituents in the grocery store is fun for some but intrusive for others, he said.
“Serving in local government can be a thankless task,” Weingart said. “You have to have your own motivation … and not expect people to tell you what a good job you’re doing.”
2. Small town politics play a role
In West Milford, mayoral candidate Robert Nicholson is the lone Democrat on the ballot in a town where June’s Republican primary was the more hotly-contested battle. None of the potential candidates in the town’s Democratic Club decided to run alongside Nicholson, leaving the GOP’s slate to run unopposed for two seats on the already all-Republican town council.
Nicholson, who admits he’s an Election Day underdog due to the politics of the town, said he does not have an adversarial relationship with incumbent Mayor Michele Dale. However, Nicholson said he felt it was vital to give voters another option.
“I wanted to give our residents a choice,” he said. “It’s important to challenge the status quo.”
The northern Passaic County town is one of 53 towns among 100 North Jersey towns holding elections tracked by NorthJersey.com and DailyRecord.com. Of those mayoral races, 19 have only one candidate. Of those 19 candidates, 17 are already mayor. One candidate, Rockaway Borough’s Thomas Mulligan, is running for mayor while holding a council seat.
3. Lack of challengers
The absence of a challenge for those mayors was perhaps most pronounced in the idyllic-sounding Bergen County town of Fairview.
The town hasn’t had a contested race for mayor or town council seat since Mayor Vincent Bellucci, Jr.’s 2007 battle for the office. Bellucci won that contest over GOP challenger James Lancellotti by a 1,200-vote margin but has failed to win by as many votes since – despite finding himself uncontested on Election Day in 2011 and 2015, county records show.
While some towns have no race or token competition, others have had intense battlegrounds in recent elections. Even in defeat, strong campaigns can set the stage for future successes for candidates or their organizations, Weingart said.
It can be hard to gain control but shifts in politics are possible by miracle, scandal or shifts in population or thinking, he said.
“In 2018, Democrats were elected in places where it just didn’t seem possible two years earlier; four years earlier,” Weingart said.
4. Democrats gaining ground
While politics on the local level deals primarily with non-partisan issues, Democrats have made gains in many towns in recent years and are on the cusp of becoming the dominant force in local government in other towns.
An attempt to flip control from a Republican establishment has been in play in Ringwood, where Democrats swept the three open seats in 2017 after campaigning primarily on environmental issues in the town infamous for its Superfund site. The prior election, in 2015, saw the party’s two council candidates heavily defeated by a full slate of four Republicans.
This year, both parties put up four candidates. Only one of the eight candidates, Republican John Speer, is a true incumbent. However, two other Republicans, Linda Schaefer and Jamie Matteo-Landis, were councilwomen as recently as 2017 when they lost their seats to the Democrats.
Incumbents are running in every local election in Bergen and Passaic counties this year. Of the 101 towns in the region holding elections tracked by NorthJersey.com and DailyRecord.com, 97 feature incumbents.
Incumbents remain in the minority with 211 of the 467 total candidates, split among 91 Democrats, 109 Republicans and 11 Independents. Still, when all the votes are counted, they could retain more than 77 percent of the 272 available seats in the various mayor, council and committee races.
In Haworth, Republican incumbents Michael Bain and Andrew Rosenberg are challenged by Bruce Steinthal, an accountant with experience as a local government consultant, and Stephen Chval, a former councilman with 27 years of experience in town hall.
Bain and Rosenberg ran as unopposed incumbents in 2016. Since the number of registered Democrats in Haworth has risen from about 800 to more than 1,000. Republicans have increased from about 500 to more than 550.
In 2018, Haworth Democrats took three, previously Republican-held council seats. Democrats in neighboring Dumont did the same thing, and are likewise looking to take full control of the local government.
Democrats in Dumont this year are vying with Republicans for two council spots and the mayor’s seat being vacated by two-term Republican mayor James Kelly, who opted not to run for reelection after eight years in office.
Kelly is one of only 11 incumbent mayors not seeking reelection among the 53 mayoral races in the region. Of the 97 council and committee races, only eight exclusively feature candidates not already in office.
Staff writer Ricardo Kaulessar contributed to this report.
David Zimmer is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: zimmer@northjersey.com Twitter: @dzimmernews
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