Independent Matthew Dumpert unseated Republican incumbent Kevin Slasinski by a wide margin in tonight\u2019s court-ordered do-over special election for Oakland Borough Council after the November 2025 general election ended in a tie.<\/p>\n
Dumpert defeated Slasinski, 1,888 to 770, a 71%-29% margin.<\/p>\n
He led Slasinski in vote-by-mail ballots, 448-215.\u00a0 \u00a0That tally doesn\u2019t include VBMs placed in drop boxes before the polls closed at 8 PM, or late-arriving ballots postmarked by tonight.<\/p>\n
Dumpert can be sworn in as soon as the winner is officially certified by the Bergen County Clerk.\u00a0 The seat has been vacant since January.<\/p>\n
The election reduces the Republican majority on the council to 4-2, with a GOP mayor<\/p>\n
Superior Court Judge Kelly Conlon ordered today\u2019s election after an exhaustive series of legal challenges that culminated in a January trial.<\/p>\n
Conlon rejected a ballot cast by\u00a0a 30-year-old woman who lives in Chicago with her husband but votes out of her parents\u2019 home in Oakland.<\/p>\n
At a trial, the woman declined to testify \u2013 she had indicated an intention to exercise her Fifth Amendment privilege\u00a0\u2013 and Conlon instead heard testimony from the woman\u2019s parents as to their daughter\u2019s political leanings.\u00a0 Conlon used that testimony to determine who the woman voted for and dropped the vote, bringing the race to a tie. \u00a0Conlon, who didn\u2019t speak to the voter, never determined if the woman was one of the 309 VBM voters in Oakland who didn\u2019t vote in the council election.<\/p>\n
Conlon also relied on expert testimony by Republican John McCann, who lost his bid for re-election to Dumpert\u2019s running mate and is now a municipal court judge in Cresskill.\u00a0 McCann says Democrats tend to run as independents in Oakland \u201cto increase their chances of being elected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, it took Conlon ten days to hold a hearing to get a recount of the tied election, and then more than a week to actually recount the ballots.\u00a0 Conlon ordered a brief to outline reasons why an error in the count might have been made, an event that doesn\u2019t really matter since the result was a tie.<\/p>\n
In November, independent William Eilert ousted GOP incumbent John J. McCann by 77 votes, but Slasinski and Dumpert each received 2,516.<\/p>\n
The estimated cost of the special election was between $50,000 and $70,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Independent Matthew Dumpert unseated Republican incumbent Kevin Slasinski by a wide margin in tonight\u2019s court-ordered do-over special election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-214275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}