Celebrating their win at a post-election victory party were Oceanport’s Meghan Walker, Jay Coffey and Tom Trvdik.
Photo courtesy Meghan Walker
OCEANPORT – National political party allegiance “just doesn’t matter” when it comes to local elections, Mayor Jay Coffey said.
Coffey, who shared an independent ticket with Democrat Meghan Walker and Republican Tom Tvrdik, swept the open seats on the borough council with plenty of room at the polls to spare. Coffey outpaced Republican mayoral candidate and borough council member Robert Proto, more than doubling his total votes by a count of 1,393 to 620.
The totals were similar for Walker and Tvrdik, who were opposed by Republican council incumbents Joseph Irace and Stephen Solan.
The results were resounding, and Coffey believes it’s a message from his constituency to move forward with the cornerstone of their platform – changing Oceanport’s form of government.
“We’re going to move forward with our petition,” Coffey said of an effort to record signatures from 75 percent of the borough’s registered voters, an initiative that could also help change the future of how elections in the town are conducted.
“It turned out, in some pretty stark numbers, that people really didn’t care what our political affiliations were. The voters weren’t voting party, they were voting people,” Coffey said.
The group ran on the notion of transitioning away from the borough form of government to a small municipality system. Adopted as part of the Optional Municipal Charter Law of 1950, known better as the Faulkner Act, one provision of the small municipality system is a community’s ability, by way of a referendum, to implement nonpartisan elections.
Other optional aspects of government, including the size of the governing body, term length of elected officials, the use of runoff elections and the method by which the mayor is selected may also be altered with a referendum.
“Clearly the message we put out there resonated with people,” said Walker, who is finishing out her term on the Oceanport Board of Education ahead of being sworn in at the council’s January reorganization meeting. Walker said attacks from the opposition during the campaign targeting her national political allegiances played in favor of her andher running mates.
“I think over the last couple of years the tenor of the conversation in our town has gotten really combative and even vicious at times. And in the end, I think that helped prove our point and really turned the tide even further for us,” Walker said. “Whether people agree with my personal national politics or not, they didn’t like seeing a fellow resident treated the way I was,” she said, citing social media posts on the Oceanport Republican Committee Facebook page.
Proto said the change considered by Coffey, Walker and Tvrdik, “worries me a tremendous amount.”
“You can’t argue the results. Plenty of voters bought into Jay’s argument about political parties at the local level. I still disagree with it. I think it’s a total sham,” Proto said. “I don’t think there’s any way an individual can extricate themselves from their ideologies or their political beliefs when they’re making decisions on budgets and spending tax-payer dollars. That idea goes against human nature. What Jay and his running mates are pushing will forever change Oceanport, and I don’t believe it’s for the better.”
Coffey said change, particularly the new perspective on borough government affairs secured by Walker and Tvrdik’s election, is a step in a positive direction for Oceanport.
Walker said the political divisiveness in town has residents ready “for a coming together.”
“Everyone has stress in their lives. You turn on the news and national politics is nothing but division, and it’s permeated the local level. People are ready to bridge the divide. To have a council that doesn’t speak to the mayor is at odds with the board of education, parks and recreation, your first responders, your office of emergency management, with FMERA. Nothing can get done if that’s the situation,” Walker said. “People are ready to have fresh blood step up and take the mantle.”
