Big upset in Collingswood, with 36-year incumbent re-elected but no longer mayor

In a stunning upset, two insurgents appear to have won two of three borough commissioner seats in Collingswood, with Mayor James Maley, Jr., who has held local office since 1989, winning re-election but likely to lose the mayor’s post he’s occupied since 1997.

Maley, 67, was the top vote getter with 1,695 votes, followed by two members of the Collingswood Forward slate, Amy Henderson Riley (1,682) and Daniela Solano-Ward (1,668).  Their running mate, Mehan Adamoli, a program manager at Everytown Gun Safety, trails with 1,582 votes, three votes in front of incumbent Morgan Robinson (1,579).  Rebecca Sieg, who was running with Maley and Robinson, finished sixth with 1,510 votes.

A seventh candidate, Stuart Slattery, won 295 votes.

Maley’s team defeated a slate of progressive challengers in 2021,

Henderson Riley is the Director of Research, Evaluation, and Impact, Population Media Center, and Solano-Ward is a soccer coach and full-time caregiver.

Commissioner Rob Lewandowski did not seek re-election.

In 2019, a progressive slate won sixteen county committee seats, but the Camden County Democratic organization took them back in 2021.

Collingswood – the Montclair of the South – was one of just a few New Jersey towns that voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary.  Sanders beat Clinton 1,578 to 1,519 – a 59-vote, 51%-49% win in a state Clinton won by 26 points.

The borough of about 14,000 people has changed over the last decade, resembling a town more akin to Montclair or Lambertville than to other Camden County suburbs.

One certainty is that it’s a Democratic stronghold that no longer resembles the small town that launched William T. Cahill’s political career 60 years ago.

The Philadelphia-born son of Irish immigrants moved to Collingswood around 1939 after spending two years as an FBI agent.  He became involved in Republican politics, served as Camden municipal prosecutor, and then as the first assistant Camden County prosecutor.

He won a State Assembly seat in 1951, back when Camden elected legislators in countywide at-large elections, and served one term.

In 1958, 78-year-old Rep. Charles Wolverton (R-Merchantville) retired after 31 years in Congress.  Cahill ran for the Camden-Gloucester-Salem seat and won by 1,859 votes, 40%-49%, against Alexander Feinberg, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney from Haddonfield who would more than 20 years later be convicted in the ABSCAM scandal.

Cahill was viewed as a left-of-center Republican, part of the GOP that was more closely allied with Clifford Case and Nelson Rockefeller that Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater.

After winning five solid re-election bids for his House – he was re-elected in 1968 with 66% of the vote – Cahill decided to run for governor in 1969.

In a five-candidate GOP primary field with 39% of the vote, Cahill edged out another South Jersey congressman, conservative Rep. Charles Sandman (R-Erma), by 14,103 votes, 39%-36%.  Three state senators followed: Harry Sears (R-Mountain Lakes) with 11.6%, Senate President Frank X. McDermott (R-Westfield) received 8.8%; and William Ozzard (R-Somerville) won 4.5%.

Facing former Gov. Robert Meyner in the general election, Cahill scored a blowout 60%-38% win, accumulating a 500,902-vote plurality.  He won 66% in Camden County and 57% in Hudson.

Collingswood gave favorite-son Cahill a massive 79% of the vote.

In 1973, after Sandman ousted Cahill in the Republican primary – the only time in New Jersey history that an incumbent governor lost renomination – Collingswood shifted to the Democratic column.  Brendan Byrne received 62% against Sandman in the general election.

Byrne carried Collingswood with 61% when he sought re-election in 1977.

Since 1969, Collingswood has largely voted Democratic.  Even Walter Mondale and Barbara Buono – albeit by three votes – carried the borough.  It produced big margins for Barack Obama,  who won big twice: 69% in 2008 and 71% in 2012.  Hillary Clinton took 75% in 2016, and Joe Biden won it with 79%.  Phil Murphy won 79% in Collingswood in his 2017 campaign for governor.

While Murphy might be the most progressive governor in New Jersey history, he finished third in Collingswood in the 2017 gubernatorial primary.  Jim Johnson won it by a 29%-28% margin over John Wisniewski; Murphy finished eight votes behind Wisniewski.