There’s chaos in the race for a seat on the Watchung Borough Council after a Democratic candidate admitted he’s only lived there for eight months and is ineligible to run for office.
Marcel Akende made his revelation in a candidate questionnaire published by the TAPinto Watchung, leading local Republicans to file a court challenge to remove him from the ballot. Among other things, he signed an oath saying he met the residency requirement.
But with vote-by-mail ballots being cast since September and in-person early voting, Superior Court Judge Kevin Shanahan isn’t sure what he can do about it.
“How do we stop it?” Shanahan said. “The ballots are printed. They’re using the voting machines as we speak. Correct. How do we stop?”
In a lawsuit filed early this morning by election lawyer Matthew Moench, Republicans want Shanahan to remove Akende from the ballot and enjoin him from campaign activities.
Republicans cited records that show Akende voted in Middlesex County in November 2023. That appears to bar him from being a candidate in Watchung this year.
Moench argues that “permitting Akende to continue to appear on the ballot and represent himself as a candidate perpetuates Akende’s fraud upon the public and voters, improperly influencing the election and interfering in the rights of voters to choose between legally qualified candidates.”
“Votes for Akende improperly dilute the votes of legal voters and legally qualified candidates,” Moench said. “An improper and ineligible candidate violates Watchung voters’ right to vote and disenfranchises voters.”
Shanahan said it “seems to be pretty much an open and shut case (if) those facts are true.”
Somerset County Counsel Joseph DeMarco and Deputy Attorney General Levi Klinger-Christiansen, representing the Somerset County Board of Elections, opposed any judicial intervention in the election.
“The votes have already started. We might be in the third inning of this game to try to go back, I’m just concerned that that has a broader effect and opens the county up to other challenges,” DeMarco said.
Secilia Flores, an attorney with Moench’s firm, told Shanahan, “at the very least, the candidate should be stopped from campaigning because he shouldn’t be a candidate.”
“He has publicly admitted that he does not meet the one-year residency requirement, and it’s not something that we are inferring; it’s something that he has admitted in public.”
Shanahan has scheduled another hearing for Friday.
“We’ll probably be in the seventh inning by Friday,” DeMarco said.
Akende won the Democratic nomination with 23 write-in votes.
Watchung is a Republican town, and Akende was a longshot to win anyway.