An independent candidate for State Senate in the 29th district was left off the ballot entirely in two Hudson County towns, which could impact the election results certification if state election officials determine that voters were deprived of a choice between all candidates.
Pablo Olivera, a perennial candidate who has run for office fourteen times, filed to run as the Labour Party candidate. He was listed on the ballot in the Essex County portion of the district, but not in Harrison and East Newark.
Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark) won a landslide victory in her bid for a seventh term in the Senate, defeating Republican Maritza Matthews with 83% of the vote, 8,766 to 1,351. Olivera received 181 votes in Essex, and none in Hudson.
It’s doubtful that Olivera would have won even if his name was on the ballot, although it’s mathematically possible that he could have. There are roughly 9,800 registered voters in Harrison and East Newark, and 8,792 of them – about 90% — didn’t vote at all. Ruiz’s margin of victory, 6,415 votes, is less than that.
His absence from the ballot in Harrison and East Newark went unnoticed even as his name was omitted from vote-by-mail ballots, sample ballots, nine days of early voting, and Election Day ballots. No one noticed Olivera’s name was missing until election officials conducted a still-unreleased audit in Hudson County.
It’s not clear that Olivera, a retired teacher from Newark’s North Ward, even knows his name was left off, or if he will challenge the certification of the election. His cell phone number no longer works, and he hasn’t responded to an email.
Still, it wasn’t Olivera’s responsibility to confirm that his name was included on the ballot. He may reasonably expect that including him in the election was automatic after his nominating petitions were certified. His name appears on a certified list of independent candidates from the New Jersey Division of Elections.
Hudson County Clerk Junior Maldonado declined to comment. Ruiz said she was unaware of the issue.
Legislative redistricting added two Hudson County municipalities, Harrison and East Newark, into the Newark-based 29th district. It’s the first time Essex and Hudson shared a legislative district in over 40 years.
The deadline for the state Board of Canvassers to certify the election results is December 7.
In a race for Atlantic County district freeholder in 2020, a judge determined that the apparent winner, Thelma Witherspoon, could not take her seat after finding that the county clerk mailed the wrong ballots to enough voters to affect the race’s outcome. The courts refused to allow Democrats to fill the seat on an interim basis and ordered it to remain vacant until a do-over election in November 2021; the political environment had changed enough by then for Republican Andrew Parker to win the seat.
The appellate division upheld that decision.
Olivera first ran for office in 2003, winning 1.4% of the vote as an independent against State Sen. Sharpe James (D-Newark) in the 29th district. He lost races for the North Ward seat on the Newark City Council in 2010 (9.6%), 2014 (3.2%), and 2018 (3.7%), for Essex County Freeholder in 2011 (3.7%), Congress in 2012 (1%), 2014 (1.5%), 2016 (2.5%), and 2018 (0%), U.S. Senator in a 2013 special election (0.1%), State Senate in 2013 (3.9%) and 2017 (1.9%) – both times against Ruiz – and for State Assembly in 2015 (3%),
The only independent to win election to the New Jersey Legislature, at least since the Civil War, was Anthony Imperiale, a vigilante who won an Assembly seat in 1971 and was elected to the State Senate in 1973. Coincidentally, Imperiale’s legislative district – Newark’s North Ward and Harrison – is similar to the current 29th.
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