Noticias

Failing to grasp the urgency of an election calendar, Superior Court Judge John Deitch has moved a hearing on a ballot access case in Hillside from October 3 to September 15, which still means council candidate Sonya McBurrows will lose weeks of campaigning, and Hillside voters might not get their vote-by-mail ballots on time.

Hours after a New Jersey Globe story noted Deitch’s Alice-in-Wonderland scheduling order, Deitch this morning ordered the Union County Clerk to halt the printing vote-by-mail ballots that are due to be mailed on September 20.

Hillside Township Clerk Rayna Harris invalidated enough signatures to get McBurrows tossed from the ballot, but the candidate’s attorney, Jason Sena, said she was never notified that he petitions had been challenged.

Deitch has given an attorney representing McBurrows two days to personally serve the defendants in the lawsuit, a punk move that denied a request by Sena to serve them via an overnight delivery service with signature confirmation, like Federal Express.

McBurrow is one of eight candidates for three at-large council seats in the November 4 non-partisan election in Hillside.  She is running on a slate with Mayor Dahlia Vertreese.

The judiciary did not respond to an email on Sunday, but did respond on Monday morning.

“Will look into this and let you know if we have a response,” said Pete McAleer, a courts spokesman.

The post Union County judge shaves nearly three weeks off ballot access case, but that might not be enough appeared first on New Jersey Globe.

In another sign of Democratic enthusiasm ahead of next year’s midterm elections, a fourth Democrat has entered the race against Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) in South Jersey’s conservative-leaning 2nd congressional district.

Bill Finn, a special education math teacher from Gloucester County, has never run for public office before and is, by his own admission, a “newbie.” Given how tired many voters are of the political status quo, though, he said it might not be so bad for Congress to gain a voice like his.

“I’m just a regular guy,” Finn said. “And maybe Congress needs a few more regular people.”

Born and raised in South Jersey, Finn has been a teacher for decades and now teaches at a high school in Philadelphia, where he’s a member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. He lives in Mantua, a Gloucester County suburb that’s just outside of the district he hopes to represent (the town was moved from the 2nd district to the 1st during redistricting in 2021).

As a working dad of two sons who also drives for Lyft to earn extra money, Finn had plenty of ideas for how the 2nd district’s member of Congress could improve life in South Jersey: increasing taxes on the super-rich to pay for social services, supporting offshore wind projects to lower electricity costs, and expanding the size of the U.S. House itself to make Washington more representative.

But what inspired him to run for Congress more than anything else, he said, was the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, President Donald Trump’s enormous legislative package that shifts hundreds of billions of dollars towards tax cuts and away from Medicaid and food stamps. Van Drew was hesitant to support the bill’s Medicaid cuts but ultimately voted for the bill, which Finn (like many Democrats) nicknamed the “Big Ugly Bill.”

“We already have an unequal tax structure to begin with, and we’re going to give more money to people who have basically unlimited funds?” Finn said. “And while we give them more money, then we’re taking it away from other things – taking it away from the poorest individuals possible.”

Three other Democrats had already announced campaigns against Van Drew earlier this summer, two of whom have deeper backgrounds in politics in New Jersey or in Washington D.C.

One contender, criminal justice attorney and former detective Tim Alexander, was the district’s Democratic nominee in 2022 and narrowly lost a Democratic primary for the district in 2024; another, Bayly Winder, worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and has already brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign. Rounding out the field is Terri Reese, a first-time candidate from Northfield.

If Finn were to win the Democratic primary, he’d face a tough general election against Van Drew, who first won the 2nd district as a Democrat in 2018 before defecting to the Republican Party a year later. Trump carried the district 55%-43% last year, and Van Drew won re-election by an even larger 58%-41% margin.

Van Drew is thus seen as the substantial favorite for another term next year, with most observers instead focusing on the 7th and 9th districts in North Jersey as next year’s marquee races. But some Democrats are intrigued enough by the possibility of making a play for the district that they commissioned a CD-2 poll this spring, one that found Van Drew potentially vulnerable with the right messaging.

The post Special ed math teacher becomes latest Democrat to challenge Van Drew appeared first on New Jersey Globe.

A tone-deaf Superior Court Judge, John Deitch, has scheduled a hearing for October 3 to first consider a lawsuit filed by a Hillside municipal candidate running in the November 4 general election, even though vote-by-mail ballots are scheduled to go out on September 20.

Sonya McBurrows, seeking an at-large council seat on a ticket with Mayor Dahlia Vertreese, was tossed from the ballot on August 27 after Township Clerk Rayna Harris invalidated 37 petition signatures that left her nine short of the required 250.

Jason Sena, a top election lawyer representing McBurrows, filed an emergent application to the court on September 2, challenging the clerk’s decision and seeking to stop the printing and mailing of ballots until the matter is heard.

Deitch has not responded to a September 4 letter from Sena saying that October 3 is too late and that an application for a preliminary injunction is “inherently emergent and, as such, are statutorily required to be decided on an expedited timeframe.”

“The case would be moot due to the passage of time,” Sena told Deitch.

Right now, McBurrows is off the ballot.  By pushing a court hearing until October 3 – a potentially absurd decision — and without the ability to challenge the clerk’s decision, Deitch has essentially ended McBurrows’ campaign

On September 3, Union County Counsel Bruce Bergen advised Deitch on the record that the county clerk needed to send ballots to the printer by September 11 to meet the statutory deadline.  Deitch ordered the county to hold just one municipality, Roselle, and didn’t address the Hillside lawsuit.

In a lawsuit, Sena said Harris disqualified eleven eligible signatories for McBurrows, one of eight candidates for three at-large seats.  He claims the Harris failed to provide written notice that an objection to her petition had been filed, “depriving her of notice and an opportunity to be heard.”  State law requires such notice to be provided.

Hillside holds non-partisan municipal elections in November.  The filing deadline was August 21, and the deadline to determine a petition challenge was August 30, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.

Pete McAleer, a spokesman for the judiciary, did not respond to an email seeking comment on Sunday.  Deitch, who is tenured and does not face mandatory retirement until 2039, was copied on the email; he did not respond.

Deitch is the judge who denied a recount in a June 10 Democratic primary for Roselle Borough Council that was decided by three votes.  A state appellate court panel reversed his decision, and the margin was slimmed to two votes after an August 4 recount; Deitch didn’t hold a hearing on a lawsuit challenging the election until September 3, and still hasn’t ruled.

Last year, a Superior Court Judge, also in Union County, may have inadvertently interfered with a mayoral election in Clark because she couldn’t squeeze Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso’s guilty plea onto her calendar before the November 5 general election – a move that might have affected his re-election bid.

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