Joshi dominates in Edison mayoral primary

Edison Mayor Sam Joshi won renomination for mayor of New Jersey’s sixth-largest municipality, defeating challenger Lav Patel, 68% to 18%.

A third candidate, Councilman Richard Brescher, is in third place with 15%.

Joshi will now face Republican Gloria Dittman, a former president and CEO of the Edison Chamber of Commerce and now the president of the Edison Arts Society.   Dittman won 40% in a State Senate race against Barbara Buono (D-Metuchen) in 2011.

Joshi’s slate of three township council candidates — Kelli Dima, Biral Patel, and Robert Kentos — defeated Patel’s running mates: Jayesh Mehta, Yingnan “Ingrid” Chen, and Anthony DeAmorin. Joyce Ship-Freeman, a former council president and the first African American to win an Edison municipal election, ran alone and finished in 7th place.

Three incumbents elected with Joshi in 2021 — John Poyner, Margot Harris, and Nishith Patel — did not seek re-election.

The three will face Republicans Russell Azzarello, Kartik Nath, and Samiksha Sharma.

Local politics in Edison have become toxic in recent years, with Democrats sharply divided between a faction backed by the Middlesex County Democratic organization and one allied with former Democratic Municipal Chairman Mahesh Bhagia.

Four years ago, Joshi, then a first-term councilman, won 61%-32% in the primary against then-Democratic Municipal Chairman Mahesh Bhagia; Patel comes from the Bhagia faction of the local party.

That race was defined by the unsolved mystery of a racist flyer in the 2017 mayoral race.  

Bhagia’s prospects of winning the mayorship dimmed after a U.S. Postal Service investigation implicated him and seven others in the drafting of a racist 2017 mailer that urged township voters to “Make Edison Great Again” and warned that “Chinese and Indians are taking over our town.”

The mailer, apparently a bid to boost the campaigns of School Board president Jerry Shi and School Board candidate Falguni Patel by animating Edison voters against racism, is now the subject of a state criminal probe.

Middlesex County Democrats broke with the Bhagia-led local party to award Joshi the line after growing increasingly uncomfortable with the local chairman’s alleged role in the mailer.

Joshi ran on a slate allied with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill; Patel and Fulop, who grew up in Edison, endorsed each other.   

In the governor’s race, Sherrill is winning the town over Fulop 4,142 to 3,398.