EPICANTHUS

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 unofficial 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.

The Edison Township has a diverse population and registered voters include 6,321 Indian Americans, 3,029 Chinese Americans, 3,190 Hispanic voters and 592 Korean American voters, according to the Middlesex County Board of Elections.

Federal elections monitors from the U.S. Dept. of Justice were on hand in this Middlesex County city Tuesday to ensure local compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was the third time since 2005 that DOJ monitors have kept an eye on an election involving Korean American Jun Choi.

Four years ago Choi challenged Edison’s longtime incumbent mayor George Spadoro in the Democratic primary after federal monitors found primary poll workers were “outright hostile toward the rights of Asian-American voters,” authorities said. They returned to observe the November election where Choi beat William Stephens for the Edison mayoralty.

The DOJ also sent monitors to two other New Jersey counties—Bergin and Salem. The Salem County elections were being monitored as a result of a 2008 court order aimed at ensuring that Spanish-speaking voters had access to the polls.

• Ricigliano Beats Choi, NJ.com
• DOJ to Monitor Tuesday’s Primary in Middlesex, Courier News
• Ricigliano Invites Choi to Join in Condeming Racist Remarks, New Brunswick Home News Tribune
  
• Edison Mayor Jun Choi Hit by Racial Attacks in Reelection Bid, epicanthus.net
• Jersey Boy, The American Prospect
• Jun H. Choi Backgrounder, Wikipedia