OLD BRIDGE – A current Board of Education member will soon transition daises.
Jill DeCaro, a Democrat, with 838 votes or 54.74%, defeated Republican incumbent Mark Razzoli, who received 693 votes or 45.26%, in a special do-over election on March 22, which determined the outcome for the Ward 4 council seat in Old Bridge.
Out of the 8,042 registered voters, 1,548 ballots, or 19.25% were cast.
“Good things come to those who wait, and I am overjoyed to represent Ward 4 on the Old Bridge Town Council,” DeCaro said, who thanked her supporters.
DeCaro, who will serve her first council term, will become the second Democrat on the nine-member dais. Kiran Desai began his first term representing Ward 3 in January.
“I am eager to make good on my promise to return our council’s focus to local issues,” she said. “As a member of a Democratic minority on council, I pledge to work across the aisle in good faith with my Republican colleagues. It is my great hope that they will in turn invite such collaboration, as whether we are building a park or paving a road, working on local issues is the true work of a town council. This is where party affiliation should bear no meaning. This is where we are one Old Bridge.”
DeCaro, whose term on the Old Bridge Board of Education runs through 2023, will step down from the board between the certification of election results and her swearing in on the council.
The Ward 4, four-year term, had been vacant since Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Thomas Daniel McCloskey invalidated the Nov. 2 election results, citing 27 registered voters received the wrong ballot and were placed in Ward 2.
He scheduled a do-over election for March 22 in his decision on Dec. 29, 2021.
Seventeen of those 27 voters casted a vote in November. Ward redistricting maps had put voters from the odd numbered homes of Cymbeline Drive in Ward 2 and the even numbered homes in Ward 4, according to court documents.