Democrats Catherine Gural and Marvin L. Schuldiner beat Republican Incumbents Christine Madrid and Kamran Quraishi in the Midterm elections on Tuesday, which will shift leadership of the Montgomery Township Committee from the Republicans to the Democrats for the first time in about a decade.
Unofficial results show Gural was the high vote getter with 4,336, followed by Schuldiner with 4,212. Mayor Madrid failed to be re-elected, with only 3,515 votes followed by Quraishi with 3,320.
“Marv and I were very committed to running a clean campaign from the very beginning,” Gural said Tuesday night at the Montgomery Township Municipal Building. “We’ve tried to keep things super respectful.”
Schuldiner stood with Gural and several members of the Democratic party in the hallway awaiting results from each of Montgomery’s 19 voting districts. “I honestly had no idea how it would turn out,” Schuldiner said of the election. “We tried to stick to the issues that we felt were important to the people of Montgomery, and to not make it personal or engage in negativity with the other candidates.”
Specifically, Gural and Schuldiner ran on a platform calling for local elected officials to be more transparent in their governing and decision-making processes, and to embrace community input. They also pledged to make local government more fiscally responsible and to address the blight on the corner of routes 206 and 518.
Schuldiner is a commercial dispute mediator as well as an arbitrator and family/divorce mediator for Sanns LLC. His wife, Francine, works for the NJ Education Association. They have a son, Eli, 8.
Gural is a strategic business support manager for Bank of America / Merrill Lynch. Todd, her husband, is an eighth grade social studies teacher. They have three children: Simon, 18, Sadie, 5, and Stella, 2.
The Republican incumbent candidates were not at the municipal building for the final vote count. They were represented by Committeeman Ed Trzaska (R).
“I think we expected a good Democratic night due to the national politics,” Trzaska said. “Montgomery is a moderate community on both the Republican and Democratic sides. The people came out to vote for a change in Washington.”
Montgomery voters supported incumbent Senator Robert Menendez (D) by a margin of 1,131 votes over Bob Hugin (R), 4403 votes to 3272.
The race for U.S. Congress had an even larger margin, with Montgomery voters supporting challenger Tom Malinowski (D) by a margin of 1,900 votes over incumbent Leonard Lance (R), 4,877 votes to 2,939.
Above: Rocky Hill resident Tom Malinowski (D) after casting his vote.
Somerset County Clerk Steve Peter announced Tuesday night that the Freeholder election results will be delayed at least until Wednesday. The clerk says he received an "overwhelming number" of vote-by-mail ballots.
There may be more than 20,000 vote-by-mail ballots. "Therefore, I will not have any vote-by-mail results tonight," Peter said in a statement. "We will update our site as soon as we have results."
Superior Court Judge Yolanda Ciccone granted Peter's request to suspending the count at 8 p.m., to be resumed Wednesday at 9 a.m.
Montgomery unofficial voter results are:
BOARD OF CHOSEN FREEHOLDERS
Shanel Robinson (D): 4372
Sara Sooy (D): 4231
Patrick Scaglione (R): 3339
Mark Caliguire (R): 3490
BOARD OF EDUCATION: Three running for three seats.
Joanne Tonkin: 4220
Minkou "Minkyo" Chenette: 3519
Richard T. Cavalli: 3330
