Dem chair claims two Dover candidates don’t meet residency requirements

Two alderman candidates in Dover are facing challenges that they don’t meet the one-year residency requirement to run for local office.

Democratic Municipal Chair Edward Correa says that Ward 1 candidate Claudia Toro and Ward 2 candidate Sergio Rodriquez aren’t eligible to run.  He’s asked the municipal clerk to launch an investigation and then toss the two off the ballot.The two candidates are running on a line with former Mayor James P. Dodd. 

Toro may have a problem.  She voted in Randolph on November 8, 2022, which could leave her short of a one-year Dover residency.

Rodriguez is more complicated.  He last voted in Miami in 2020 and moved to Washington to work for AIPAC.

He told the New Jersey Globe that he moved back to Dover in the summer of 2021, first to his father’s home, and then to another address of a home owned by his family.  He said he got a New Jersey driver’s license in 2021.

But he didn’t vote in 2021 or 2022.

“For the governor’s race in New Jersey, I wasn’t ale to get my application for a mail-in ballot in on time,” Rodriguez said.  “In 2022, I was working on campaigns and I forgot to vote myself.  That’s my fault.”

Correa, Dodd, Councilwoman Sandra Wittner and incumbent Carolyn Blackman are facing off in the June Democratic mayoral primary.