In a race that national Republicans had targeted in order to flip the House, Tom Kean Jr. stopped short of declaring victory on election night while Rep. Tom Malinowski said the race was too close to call either way at midnight. Kean told his supporters that he was on the “trajectory” to a victory as he held a 13,000 vote advantage. For Malinowski, he offered that “its Election Night and we are still standing. There is no question that we would be winning hands down in the original district….we are still standing as the race is still too close to call.” But fellow Democrats Reps. Mikie Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer, races that the GOP had hoped to pull off a win in, won easily over their opponents. In races that were called by the AP before 9:30 p.m., Reps. Bill Pascrell and Donald Payne were declared winners just 90 minutes after polls closed and Rob Menendez won the race for the 8th Congressional District that opened up due to the retirement of fellow Democrat Rep. Albio Sires. North-JerseyNews.com
Control of Congress hung in the balance the morning after Election Day, with Democrats and Republicans closely monitoring yet-to-be-called Senate races in Nevada and Arizona, as well as a tight contest in Georgia that may be headed for a December runoff. As the counting moved into Wednesday morning, it was fairly clear that Democrats had defied predictions of a midterm electoral drubbing, winning dozens of key House and Senate races across the country and forestalling a “red wave” that Republicans. The New York Times
Gubernatorial elections resulted in few changes of control on Election Day, as Democrats held off challengers in several races that polls showed could be close including Wisconsin, New York and Michigan, while Republican incumbents won decisively in Florida and Texas. Democrats prevailed in the only two states to flip, Maryland and Massachusetts. The Wall Street Journal
State Sen. Renee Burgess (D-28) won a special election for the State Senate seat in the 28th legislative district, defeating Republican Joy Bembry Freeman. Burgess’ victory in the heavily Democratic Newark-based district means she’ll serve the remainder of former State Sen. Ron Rice’s term, which will expire next year. In August, Rice announced he was departing the legislature for health reasons after more than 40 years in politics and the party in a special election convention unanimously chose Burgess, an Irvington resident. New Jersey Globe
Republican Chris DiPiazza was leading the Paramus mayor’s race on Tuesday night, bidding to flip a Bergen County mayoral seat long held by Democrats. Unofficial results provided by the county had DiPiazza leading with 5,486 votes to 4,008 for Democrat MariaElena Bellinger. Both candidates are sitting council members vying to succeed Mayor Richard LaBarbiera, a Democrat who has held the position for 14 years but chose not to seek re-election. The Record
Democratic Councilman Chong “Paul” Kim has won the mayor’s office in Palisades Park, defeating Republican Councilwoman Stephanie Jang. Kim leads Jang 53%-46% in the Democratic-leaning, heavily Korean American borough. Kim’s running mates appear to have won as well: Democratic school board member Jason Kim (26.0%) and Councilman Michael Vietri (25.5%) lead Republicans Youbong Won-Yoon (24.9%) and Barnabas Woo (23.6%). The incumbent mayor is Democratic Christopher Chung, who lost Kim in the June primary. New Jersey Globe
A team of candidates running under a “Students First” banner appeared to have prevailed in a field of 17 candidates vying for the Sparta Board of Education, according to preliminary results from the Sussex County Clerk’s Office. Lauren Collier (3,441 votes), Kurt Morris (3,432 votes) and Leigh McMichael (2,949 votes) secured a trio of three-year board terms in the largest of four contested board races in the county. Walter Knapp (3,817), LeeAnne Pitzer (3,771) and Christina Longo-Keiling (3,763) earned three one-year, unexpired terms. All six presumed winners ran together on a platform that highlighted parental choice and transparency in curriculum, along with promoting shared services to improve the value of property taxes. New Jersey Herald
A Hoboken slate of Board of Education candidates that painted the race as a referendum on the opposition’s Trump-ness swept to victory. The Leadership That Listens team—Leslie Norwood, Antonio Graña and Alex de la Torre Jr.—defeated the Kids First Team of Pavel Sokolov, Cindy Wiegand and Donna Magen. In Jersey City, the Education Matters slate of incumbent Noemi Velazquez and newcomers Christopher Tisdale and Afaf Muhammed won the three open Board of Education seats, defeating the Change for Children team of current board member Alexander Hamilton, Kenny Reyes and Doris Toni Ervin. The Jersey Journal
After Morris County spent nearly $5 million this year to replace its 20-year-old voting machines, numerous local precincts reported issues with the machines. Chester Township struggled to accommodate a large voter turnout with half the complement of voting machines they have received in the past. Rockaway Township and Booton were two of numerous municipalities that reported printer problems with the new voting machines. The Daily Record
Hundreds of scanners were unable to read ballots in Mercer County, resulting in election results that will take longer before tens of thousands of votes are tabulated. A reason for the tabulating error at more than 100 voting locations in the county on Election Day has not been provided and forced county election administrators to improvise. Instead of having voters scan their own ballots at polling places, officials had them drop their paper in bins. Those votes will be transported to and scanned at a central location: the county’s board of elections. News4 New York
Final election results will go into next week as counting continues across New Jersey for another 10 days, with mail-in ballots trickling in and some voters fix issues with their ballots. The popularity of mail-in voting — 744,000 people had submitted mail-in ballots as of the end of Monday — and the various ways counties report early vote tallies makes it impossible to call close races on election night as officials don’t know how many outstanding ballots will come in. Mail-in ballots tend to favor Democrats as almost two-thirds of those received were from registered Democrats. NJ Spotlight News
Voters passed measures guaranteeing abortion access in California, Michigan and Vermont, while an antiabortion proposal in Republican-leaning Kentucky was trailing early Wednesday. The midterm elections provided the first national temperature-taking on voter attitudes toward abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June, ending federal constitutional protections for the procedure. The decision returned abortion policy to the states, creating a host of new battlegrounds. The Wall Street Journal
State Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-26) is decrying the treatment of veterans as another critical report of a state-run nursing home was revealed. State health inspectors were sent to the Menlo Park facility after it was revealed in August that a large COVID-19 outbreak starting around Thanksgiving of 2021 had resulted in the deaths of another 19 veterans. A published report found that 45% of the workforce and one-third of the residents at Menlo Park were infected due to a failure to quickly implement infection controls once people started getting sick. “The new report is a sad reminder that the Murphy administration continues to fail in its duty to protect the residents of the Menlo Park Veterans Memorial Home,” said Pennacchio. “It’s also beyond belief that they still haven’t implemented effective infection control procedures after nearly 200 residents died in veterans homes at the start of the pandemic. Our veterans deserve so much better.” North-JerseyNews.com
Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who has been jailed in Russia for more than eight months, is being transferred to a penal colony, her lawyers said Nov. 9. Griner’s legal team said that her destination was unknown and that they expected to be notified through official mail, along with the U.S. Embassy, once she has arrived, a process that can take up to two weeks. Her case has become part of a geopolitical struggle between Russia and the United States as the Biden Administration has been trying to secure a deal for her release. The New York Times
New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) recently announced it will reduce payroll taxes earmarked for the state’s Temporary Disability Insurance and Family Leave Insurance programs for 2023. Jobholders will experience some relief in 2023, as their tax rate “contribution” from the Temporary Disability Insurance program will drop from 14% down to 0% next year, along with over a 50% drop in the Family Leave rate, putting real dollars back into workers’ paychecks. State officials said there will be an averaging of over $56 dollars in savings on Temporary Disability taxes and over $55 dollars in savings on Family Leave taxes. North-JerseyNews.com
Fired Paterson Police Chief Ibrahim Baycora has dropped his lawsuit against the city, possibly ending a vitriolic public dispute in which the Mayor Andre Sayegh accused his hand-picked appointee of sleeping on the job as crime in Paterson soared. Baycora agreed to withdraw his lawsuit as part of “a resolution with the administration” over the chief’s retirement, said Adam Kleinfeldt, the former chief’s lawyer. The details of Baycora’s retirement deal have not yet been made public. The Record
And finally…The record $2.04 billion Powerball was won by a single ticket in California. NJ.com
