Arace Leads Hudak In Manchester Mayoral Run-Off: Unofficial Results

Updated, 10:30 p.m.

MANCHESTER, NJ — For Robert Arace, the third time may have been the charm, as he appears to have defeated Robert Hudak in the race for mayor of Manchester.

In the special run-off election held Tuesday, Arace held a lead of 362 votes over Hudak, 5,205 to 4,843, according to unofficial results from the Ocean County Board of Elections, with all districts and early vote-by-mail ballots counted.

Vote-by-mail ballots mailed via the U.S. Postal Service had to be postmarked by 8 p.m. Tuesday and have until 6 days after the election — by Monday, Dec. 19 — to be received by the Ocean County Board of Elections to be counted.

Unofficial results of the race for two seats on the Township Council had Roxanne Conniff leading all candidates with 5,092, Joseph Hankins had 5,089, Joan Brush had 4,808, and Timothy Poss had 4,653.

The results in the run-off election are unofficial until certified by election officials.

Brush, an incumbent councilwoman, and Poss were running with Hudak, and Hankins and Conniff were running with Arace.

The special run-off election drew just 10,090 voters, 25.8 percent of the township's 39,366 registered voters. It was required because neither Hudak nor Arace received more than 50 percent of the votes cast in the Nov. 8 election. Official results from the general election showed Hudak received 7,778 votes, 44.21 percent of the 17,594 votes cast in the mayoral contest. Arace received 5,455, 31 percent, and Ken Seda received 4,348, or 24.71 percent.

The two Township Council seats were part of the run-off for the same reason. In November, Brush was the top vote-getter in the general election with 7,202, and Poss was second with 6,870. Hankins received 5,223 and Conniff had 5,169. Gloria E. Adkinson received 4,360 and Karen Sugden received 4,123; they ran with Seda.

Hudak, 46, who was elected to the council in 2019, was appointed mayor in 2021 when then-mayor Ken Palmer resigned to accept an appointment as a Superior Court judge in Ocean County. Hudak then defeated Arace in the 2021 election for the final year of Palmer's term.

While Hudak and Arace are the faces of the mayoral contest, the outcome of the election is as much about the power struggle within the Ocean County Republican Party as it is about who is leading Manchester.

Manchester has a nonpartisan form of government and has since 1990, when township voters approved the change to a mayor-council from the committee form to reduce political influence, according to news reports at the time.

Arace, 29, has the backing of George Gilmore, who has regained the chairmanship of the Ocean County Republican Club after being forced to step down in 2019. Gilmore was convicted on federal charges of failing to pay over payroll taxes and fraud on a bank loan application; a pardon issued by then-President Donald Trump meant that Gilmore avoided jail time, but the conviction remains.

After he was convicted, a split developed in the county Republican organization as some of its members worked to distance themselves from the influence Gilmore wielded over the county clubs. After the pardon, Gilmore sought to regain his influence, and while some county Republicans welcomed him back, in Manchester there was open resistance to Gilmore's attempts to get back involved in the township.

Hudak focused on the Gilmore influence in his campaign against Arace, saying as recently as Friday: "Our opponents do not care about Manchester residents. They care about appeasing their corrupt handler so that he can dole out contracts to his politically connected friends," a post on the Hudak political campaign Facebook page said. "The same handler who is spending 100k+ on false mailers and fake newspapers to compensate for Team Arace's lack of qualifications and platform."

Arace and his team have attacked Hudak and his administration as "establishment" politicians, even though Hudak is a recent addition to the Manchester government, as is Brush, who has served since 2017.

Arace also accused Hudak of supporting overdevelopment in the township — in spite of the fact that Hudak was not on the council when Hovsons, which owns the Heritage Minerals site, sought approval in 2016 for nearly 4,000 residential units at the site. (That proposal was rejected by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.)

In that vein, Arace insisted Hudak was trying to bring a similar development to Heritage Minerals, after developer D.R. Horton approached the township about the possibility of building nearly 4,000 homes at the site.

Manchester business administrator Brandon Umba told Arace at the Nov. 14 council meeting that D.R. Horton was told a development of that size was not going to happen.

In an update Tuesday on the Team Arace for Manchester Township Facebook page, Arace put forth a list of promises:

• Proactively attract businesses our residents WANT and need to fill vacant storefronts in Whiting through updated traffic studies, discretionary residents’ income, and other key economic metrics.
• Support our veterans by working with our Congressman to bring a veteran care facility to Manchester - where we have one of the largest veteran populations in the state.
• Fight for our residents by establishing a rent leveling board to keep landlords from raising unconscionable rates on those who own their home and rent their land.
• Stop overdevelopment by acquiring all remaining vacant lots for open space and prevent building on undersized lots.
• Bring Constituent Relations to Town Hall so all residents can receive the help and resources they need and be able to voice their concerns.
• Create greater transparency in our local government by recording Town Council meetings — and potentially even holding them on the East and West sides of town each month.
• Work to bring amenities to our residents such as trash pickup — without raising taxes.
• Support our Township Recreation Department and cultivate more family-friendly activities for our young families, students, and retirees.
• Evaluate and fix the infrastructure of our roads and water system.

Have a comment, a question or a news tip? Email karen.wall@patch.com