Incumbents Keep Council Seats in Wards A and F

By • Jun 9th, 2009 • Category: Blog, Politics

With most of the vote in, it looks like the two incumbent City Council members who faced runoff elections today have won, meaning that the council will continue to be chock full of Mayor Healy supporters. Healy’s team won the election for each council seat, save for Ward E, where incumbent Steven Fulop easily beat Healy’s candidate, Guy Catrillo.

With 100 percent of today’s votes tallied in Ward A, Michael Sottolano is the clear victor with 57 percent of the vote. He has 1,776 votes to challenger Rolando Lavarro’s 1,331. In Ward F, where 29 of 33 precincts are reporting, Viola Richardson maintains a healthy lead over challenger Ron-Calvin Clark, 1,354 votes (63 percent) to 781.

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is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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  • JC Voter

    So Healy’s team has won 8 of the 9 council seats. This can’t be good. It’s never good when one party or interest has unchecked control of the machinery of government. We saw how this worked when the GOP had the presidency and the majority in Congress during the Bush years.
    Yet this latest round of elections could be seen as inevitable, given the overwhelming advantage the Healy team had in money. The Democratic voter majority in the city is coveted by state and national candidates, who help raise funds for the mayor, and in the end very few independent candidates can beat a $4 million campaign machine. Healy reportedly pledged $250,000 to help Sottolano beat Lavarro. Meanwhile Lavarro was working with less than $25,000.
    These numbers are no secret; what is underreported, however, is how the incumbent party uses government workers, many times on the job, to perform campaign functions for the party in power. Often these city workers are pressured into volunteering by their bosses, who hold the power to make an employee’s life difficult should they not comply. One of the frequent complaints from candidates who faced the Healy team this year was that city workers, working on the clock and frequently driving city-owned vehicles and trucks, spent the last couple months putting up Healy signs and tearing everyone else’s down.
    It’s been happening for so many years, and election cycles, that it’s almost considered a given by both parties and chalked up to usual politics.
    And still Lavarro seems to have made it close. Which tells you that people want change…just not enough to counter an incumbent political machine.

  • VA

    This is a real shame. I completely agree, 8 of 9 seats cannot be good. I’m from Ward A and really was hoping to see ‘real change’ around here.