Bayonne City Clerk Madelene Medina says that local developer Lance Lucarelli will not be on the May 12th mayoral ballot, with the drawing set for tomorrow, but the declared candidate is still vowing to remedy the matter in court.
By Dan Israel/Hudson County View
In a phone interview, Lucarelli said today that his lawyers are actively looking into legal challenges to get him on the ballot. He added that the City Clerk’s Office made things “very hard for him” throughout the process.
“Here I am against the big Democratic machine,” Lucarelli declared.
He explained that he wanted to pick up petitions of nomination to gather signatures in September, around the time that he filed to run with New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (NJELEC), but after he was told they weren’t available yet.
Therefore, the owner of the Americano restaurant vowed to change that municipal law if elected mayor. He also took aim at the clerk’s office for repeatedly changing how many required signatures were needed.
“All of a sudden, somebody instructed Madelene, the clerk, to reduce it to 100: Isn’t that funny? It was always 800, then you’re down to 100. And then the council was 300,” Lucarelli claimed.
On January 14th, Medina first announced the required number of nominating petitions with valid signatures as 870 for the mayoral and at-large council candidates, 300 for 1st Ward candidates, 260 for 2nd Ward candidates, and 315 for 3rd Ward candidates.
Those numbers were based on the voter turnout in the 2025 General Election.
However, on January 28th, the city announced a reduction in the number of signatures required by all the candidates in the race to 100 for mayoral and at-large council candidates and 25 for ward candidates.
Medina at the time said she decided to announce easier petitioning requirements that are the minimum number of signatures provided in state law.
Following that, the Bayonne Law Department confirmed that Bill A-5117/S-3994, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Phil Murphy (D), sets the number of required petitions based on the 2020 Census.
The number of valid signatures required to be obtained by ward candidates was doubled to 50 based on the population, while the mayoral and at-large candidates requirement stayed at 100.
Lucarelli also took issue with the signature deadline as the incorrect day of the week listed as Wednesday, Feb. 26 online when it was actually a Thursday, he said.
He denounced this and what he described as other errors made by the city regarding nominating petitions and valid signatures.
“They had all this incorrect information. The whole city is whacked out with all their laws of trying to get these petitions.”
According to Lucarelli, he was notified by Medina that needed about 15 signatures to be cured because those residents weren’t registered to vote.
While he tried to present 70 more to replace them, it was too late to submit new signatures and instead he had to fix those already submitted.
“That’s my fixing them: I’m not running all over on a weekend, Saturday and Sunday … to find these 15 people,” he asserted.
Lucarelli argued that he should have been able to submit new signatures to cure the deficit presented in those already submitted.
He also felt he should have had weekdays to cure petitions not the weekend, when people are in church or celebrating other religious observances. The deadline for curing signatures was March 2nd, while the initial submission deadline was February 26th.
“They don’t want me here: It’s that simple,” Lucarelli added, further stating that there should have been a deadline extension given that the biggest blizzard in a decade hit the week signatures were due.
Finally, he told that he has a meeting with his lawyers later today and is planning on continuing to fight back: “We’ll see what the court says.”
The mayoral candidates that have already been certified are Business Administrator/Board of Education President Mary Jane Desmond, who submitted at the deadline, Councilman at-Large Loyad Booker, and former Council President Sharon Ashe-Nadrowski.
Booker and Ashe-Nadrowski are fielding full five-person City Council slates, while Desmond has running mates in the 1st and 2nd Wards, as well as one at-large.
Lucarelli is seeking the corner office in City Hall in a lone wolf effort under the banner “Make Bayonne Great Again.” He vowed to go to court last week, going as far as calling he’d win the race, if he ended up on the spring ballot.
