Manchester Mayoral Race Gains 3rd Candidate

MANCHESTER, NJ — A third candidate has announced his intent to run for mayor of Manchester.

David Goldstein, who has lived in the Whiting section for more than seven years, is seeking the remaining year of Ken Palmer's mayoral term in the November election.

Goldstein is challenging Robert Hudak, who was appointed mayor in late June and is seeking election, and Robert Arace, who announced his candidacy earlier this month. Palmer resigned June 24 after he was appointed to an Ocean County Superior Court judgeship.

Goldstein, who has lived in Whiting for seven years, says he is running because he believes Manchester needs to do more for its seniors, who make up more than 60 percent of the town's population, but also improve its schools.

"Our seniors need more," he said in a phone interview. "And Manchester needs a better school system."

But he acknowledged that as mayor, his influence on the school district, where he was a substitute teacher for a few years, would be limited.

"Can the mayor make a difference when the school board and the superintendent are not contributing? I don't know," he said. But he said he feels the district needs to do more to prepare students for life beyond graduation.

Goldstein, who was born in Newark and grew up in Union, has a degree in political science from American University in Washington, D.C. He has moved several times, living in Edison, and in Long Branch's Pier Village, where he was active in fighting the city's eminent domain efforts. He lived in the Navesink section of Middletown before moving to Whiting in 2014.

He worked selling high-tech products for 25 years — "I was selling word processing in 1978, and nobody knew what it was," he said — and was a mortgage loan officer for more than six years.

Now retired, he said he worked as a substitute teacher, in the Middletown schools as well as in Manchester, "because I was bored."

It's having time on his hands that makes him feel he could serve Manchester well.

"There needs to be change," he said. "I have the time and know that I'll make a difference if elected mayor of Manchester Township."

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