Former Mayor Thomas Lankey was elected Edison Democratic municipal chairman, ousting an incumbent allied with a declining faction by a wide margin, but the real drama came in a fiery speech by a third candidate, Robert Kentos.
Kentos stood before the county committee and said something along the lines of: “Fuck all of you. I’m a multi-millionaire. I don’t need this shit,” according to several individuals in attendance who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The comments still earned Kentos, the incumbent vice chairman, 17 votes.
Lankey wrestled the chairmanship from Bimal Joshi in a 73-39 vote, 57%-30%.
Reached by the New Jersey Globe, Kentos declined to comment.
Last year, Bimal Joshi defeated Mayor Sam Joshi by one vote, 69-68.
Lankey’s election marks the end of the road for the embattled Mahesh Bhagia, the controversial former municipal chairman and former mayoral candidate.
Sam Joshi trounced Bhagia by 39 percentage points in the 2021 primary after Lankey opted not to seek re-election.
Bhagia’s prospects of winning the mayorship dimmed after a U.S. Postal Service investigation implicated him and seven others in the drafting off a racist 2017 mailer that urged township voters to “Make Edison Great Again” and warned the “Chinese and Indians are taking over our town.”
The mailer, apparently a bid to boost the campaigns of School Board president Jerry Shi and School Board candidate Falguni Patel by animating Edison voters against racism, has been the subject of a state criminal probe.
Bhagia became known as a member of the “Edison Eight,” a group of local leaders allegedly involved in the racist flyer caper.
Middlesex County Democrats broke with the Bhagia-led local party to award Joshi the line after growing increasingly uncomfortable with the local chairman’s alleged role in the mailer.
Edison is the sixth-largest municipality in the state.