Bayonne mayor fired his opponent’s sister and gave her job to his wife. Now a huge ballot blunder could put a Senate seat in danger

A blunder in Hudson County, where the name of an independent candidate for State Senate was left off the ballot, leaving the status of the Majority Leader in doubt, could be related to the way mayors become the proprietors of particular government positions.

In Hudson, the county clerk is traditionally selected by the mayor of Jersey City, and the deputy county clerk is chosen by the mayor of Bayonne.

Until she was let go at the end of last year, the deputy county clerk was Diane Ashe Liming.  By all accounts, Liming was highly competent and would have likely noticed Pablo Olivera on a list of independent legislative candidates supplied by the New Jersey Division of Elections.

But Liming lost her job because she was the sister of Sharon Ashe Nadrowski, the city council president who ran against Davis in 2022 and came within 93 votes of forcing him into a runoff.

A few months later, Davis exercised his option to pick the $107,242-a-year deputy county clerk and selected his own wife, Jamie Davis, a former police dispatcher.  She missed Olivera on a list of candidates.

Now state officials are questioning whether they can certify Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, who received 83% of the vote in the Senate race earlier this month in a race where one of the candidates’ names was left off the ballot.  A new election is potentially an option.

In 2021, Davis also exercised his option on the 31st district State Assembly seat – long considered the property of the Bayonne mayor.

The Hudson County Democrats validated the policy when Davis decided to dump Assembly Majority Whip Nicholas Chiaravalloti, a rising star in the legislature, and replace him with onetime crane operator William Sampson IV, a member of the Longshoremen’s union.