It’s a three-way race for Manville mayor as GOP incumbent mounts independent bid

A split among Manville Republicans has created a three-way race for mayor after the incumbent filed to seek re-election as an independent.

Local Republicans voted to deny party support for Mayor Richard Onderko and instead back Joseph Lukac III, the council president.  They face Democrat Roberta Walters, who lost a bid for borough council four years ago.

Manville had long been a swing town but has leaned Republican in recent years.  The GOP has a 6-0 majority on the council; Donald Trump won 54% in 2020, and Jack Ciattarelli took 64.5% in his bid to unseat Gov. Phil Murphy two years ago.

When Lukac, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 102, sought a State Assembly seat in the old 16th district in 2021, he carried Manville by a 2-1 margin over Democrat Sadaf Jaffer (D-Montgomery); legislative redistricting shifted Manville into the safe Republican 23rd district.

In the last mayoral race, Onderko took 66% of the vote against Democrat Philip Petrone.  That represented an increase of nearly fifteen points over his 2015 tally when he edged out Democrat Mark Gregor by 21 votes.

Manville went Republican in 2022, giving Darius Mayfield a 60%-39% win against Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) in the 12th district congressional race; Republicans won two council seats by about 500 votes, scoring less than 40% of the combined vote

The challenge for Lukac is to keep Onderko from taking too many Republican votes from him or to hope the incumbent is also able to take some support from Walters.

Lukac is the only mayoral candidate who has money, based on fundraising totals from the primaries.  He had raised $9,200, nearly all of it transferred from his own warchest from his run for Assembly.

This is a considerable financial edge, in a Republican town, that could pave the way for Lukac to win the mayoral race.

Onderko has fielded two council candidates for his independent “Fighting for Manville” slate: Dayna Camacho and Jade Nicolle Puia.  They face Republicans Christina Lazzeri and Jeoffrey Puia and Democrats Ashley Neuman and Christine Sokoloski.  Besides Lukac, Councilman Steve Szabo is not seeking re-election.

The big question this year is whether Onderko’s independent Fighting for Manville effort will mirror a growing discontent with the two-party system nationally, and a increasing desire among the electorate to have candidates who do not exactly conform to Republican or Democratic identities – or whether this is just another race that follows Tip O’Neill’s old adage that all politics is local.