Ricigliano Ousts Edison NJ’s Incumbent Mayor Jun Choi; DOJ Officials On Hand to Monitor Election
June 2, 2009
EDISON, NJ—Seventy-year-old challenger Antonia Ricigliano has scored a narrow 378-vote victory over this city’s young Korean Amercan Mayor Jun Choi in a hotly contested election that saw Choi again running without the endorsement of his party. The local race also saw Ricigliano and Choi both backing separate slates of council candidates.
The final uno
fficial tally had Ricigliano receiving 6,582 votes to Choi’s 6,204. Choi conceded at about 10 p.m. election night, according to an official in the municipal clerk’s office.
Choi, 37, became the first Korean American elected mayor in the continental U.S. in 2005. Born in South Korea, Choi grew up in Edison, a city of more than 100,000 and the home of famed inventor Thomas Alva Edison’s Menlo Park lab. He holds a bachelors degree from M.I.T. and a masters in public policy from Columbia University.
According to Choi’s campaign manager Mike Barfield, the former mayor was the target of a racially insenstive remarks by his opponents. A campaign mailer urged voters to “send Mayor Choi a one-way ticket back out of Edison.” Council candidate Thomas Hanke quipped at a public forum, “Let’s send Choi a one-way ticket back to Korea.” Barfield said there were also thinly veiled attempts to associate Choi with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Lisa Ling Extols Facebook: Says Social Media Sparked Grassroots Movement to Free US Journalists Held by NKorea
June 2, 2009
Monday was a long day for network TV reporter Lisa Ling. It started before the sun came up in a New York hotel room. She checked her e-mail and then she “friended” a few people on her Facebook account. As the sun was rising over Manhattan, she led her parents, two worried husbands and a four-year-old little girl into the NBC studios to launch a worldwide media blitz seeking the release of two American journalists being held by North Korea—one of them her sister, Laura Ling, and the other, Euna Lee, the mother of that four-year-old.
- Follow Lisa Ling on Twitter
- Join the Laura Ling/Euna Lee Facebook Support Group
- Free Laura Ling and Euna Lee, sign the petition
First was a 7 a.m. slot on the Today show at 30 Rock. Then it was over to CNN on Columbus Circle for Larry King Live which airs at 6 p.m. on the East Coast. Finally, it was up Broadway to 66th for ABC’s Nightline at 11:35 p.m.
By the time she was waiting for the start of her Nightline segment last night with Bob Woodruff, Lisa Ling, the desperate big sister with the destinies of two families and the weight of the world on her shoulders, was ready to lose it emotionally. She’d been under hot TV studio lights, working the phone or battling New York traffic for 20 consecutive hours.
Then she lost it, tearing up as she talked about how virtual strangers had used Facebook to mount a nationwide support network for her sister and Euna Lee and how she finds solace in the kind words of Internet strangers.
“You know, it’s been amazing to us. Through Facebook—It’s been extraordinary—this whole grassroots movement has been born,” she said.
“I’ve been at home late at night feeling emotional, and I’ll post something so intensely personal on Facebook, and I don’t know who’s reading it, Ling told Nightline anchor Bob Woodruff.
“After I hit ‘update,’ I think to myself, ‘Why did I just post that for thousands of people I don’t know to see?’
“I think the reason is because there is no support group for this and for some reason when people I don’t even know send me a message that says ‘We support you.’ ‘We’re praying for you.’ ‘We’re behind you’—somehow there’s the strangest comfort in that.”
Here’s an excerpt of that Nightline segment:
- Follow Lisa Ling on Twitter
- Join the Laura Ling/Euna Lee Facebook Support Group
