Atlantic Highlands Candidates Split The Ballot

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By John Burton

ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS – If the current numbers hold up, both the Republican and independent camps will have to settle on half a loaf in each winning a seat on the Borough Council.
Wednesday morning’s unofficial numbers – that do not reflect provisional ballots – indicate that it was a split ticket from voters, apparently choosing one of the incumbents and a Republican challenger.
The numbers showed Louis Fligor, a veteran incumbent running this year as an independent, was the top vote-getter on Nov. 8, winning 1,044 votes; Republican candidate Stephen Boracchia came in a close second with 1,023. Boracchia’s running mate, Susan Tidswell garnered 994 votes; and incumbent independent Jacob Hoffmann trailed with 952.
“This has been a heck of a race,” said Fligor on election night, acknowledging “it’s ongoing” and Hoffmann wasn’t ready to concede at this point.
“It’s still up in the air,” Hoffmann said. “We’ll see tomorrow.”
Atlantic Highlands has 39 provisional ballots to be tabulated. Those ballots won’t be counted and recorded until Monday or Tuesday, according to the county clerk’s office.
“It was a difficult race,” Boracchia noted. Boracchia said he and Tidswell were at a disadvantage, given they didn’t have the name recognition of their opponents, which they tried to make up for with aggressive campaigning. “I felt very good,” about the experience, he said. “Everyone I saw was very supportive.”
Fligor, who has served on the council for 15 years, and Hoffmann, a nine-year incumbent, had both been Republicans during their public service tenure. However, the two got into a dispute with the local GOP establishment. Fligor last year unsuccessfully challenged the party’s designated candidate for mayor in the primary, with Hoffmann offering his support to Fligor. That was enough for the local Republican Party to banish them as candidates, sparking their independent run.
In an unusual move the current Democratic mayor and the previous Republican mayor both threw their support behind the independents, as did the selected Democratic borough council candidates, who dropped out of the race to endorse Hoffmann and Fligor’s run.
Running as independents, Fligor said they were the ones at a disadvantage, given voters during a presidential election tend to vote party lines all down the ballot. “We really worked to advertise that we’re not where we would normally be on the ballot, to get people to see that,” Fligor explained.
Hoffmann charged they were victims of the opponents’ misleading campaign literature and message. “It’s hard to fight that rhetoric,” he said.