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Councilman-Elect Joe Lukac
Race highlights:
✅ Defeated a Democrat and two well-known Independents formerly elected as Republicans in a 6-way race, returning Republican Joe Lukac to the Council
✅ Joe's election was a sweeping rejection of the Manville establishment "Failing For Manville Party" and Independent Mayor who leads them
✅ Second victory for Joe Lukac in 2024: defeated two incumbents in a contested primary
✅ Democrats performed 7.3% worse than in 2020
Councilman-Elect Joe Lukac defeated a Democrat and two well-known Independents formerly elected as Republicans and supported by the Borough's Republican old guard in a 6 way race for 2 seats. Joe's election was a sweeping rejection of the establishment and incumbent Independent Mayor, whose candidates earned even less votes in presidential turnout than he did in the prior year's state midterm election cycle. Joe was victorious despite the "Failing For Manville Party" siphoning off around 20% of the vote in the most favorable election cycle for Democrats.
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. The latest battle of the Manville Republican Civil War began in the primary, when Joe Lukac and Tina Lazzeri defeated two incumbents supported by the incumbent Mayor and old guard, cementing Republican Chairman Lukac's anti-establishment faction as the dominant force in Manville Republican politics. Their county committee slate was also elected 11-3, a net gain of 3 in their caucus. The incumbent Independent Mayor (who was not on the ballot) made his support the centerpiece of our opponents' campaign, so we crafted our message accordingly, making the primary a referendum on him.
Joe and Tina were victorious on Election Day along with their county committee slate, 11-3, cementing the anti-establishment faction's dominance in Manville Republican primaries. The Manville GOP ran a full scale county committee campaign, including targeted negative to select districts. Among the victories were GOP Vice Chair Kathye Quick and her husband Don taking back their former county committee seats from an Independent Council member and her husband.
Fearing that his self-described "nemesis" would win the primary, while campaigning for his endorsed primary candidates, the Mayor was circulating a petition to run Independents against the Republican nominees in the general election, which he filed on Primary Election Day.
Manville has been voting almost 2:1 Republican in recent years, but in presidential cycles, the Democrats are able to cross the 40% mark (48.2% in 2020). Since the Independents won the 2023 election by going bitterly negative, we would have to beat them at their own game and fight another Republican Primary in the general election.
Starting over the summer, we relentlessly rebranded the Independents' ballot slogan "Fighting For Manville" as "Failing For Manville" as they had a combined 39 year tenure on the Council. Manville has been facing the same challenges (flooding, economic development) for decades and nothing ever gets better. In a town where just about every resident is unhappy with the way things are going, we mostly just reminded them of what they already know, and made sure they also know who to blame. Our opponents' long history in the public eye made opposition research simple. We defined them early on in the race, in the late summer, and kept hammering away in every medium available to us.
Trump is popular in Manville, and every other Republican candidate on the ballot would perform even with or worse than the President's 59.2% (the combined share of the Republicans plus the Independents was 62% of the Council vote). Joe and Tina latched on with "Make Manville Great Again" messaging and were helped along by a photo of Joe Biden with the Independent Mayor from 2021, when Biden, Murphy, and a merry band of Democrats infuriated Manville residents by touring the Hurricane Ida damage (they lined the streets to boo them) before the state ultimately went back on its plans to fund home elevation in the flood zone. Manville has a decades-long history of getting screwed by every level of government, and that fact of life is felt acutely by its many lifelong and generational residents.
In addition to heavy mail, digital, and text campaigns among amother things, Joe and Tina put in a tremendous amount of time going door to door connecting with people as they always do.
The combined vote share of Joe Lukac plus the top vote getting "Failing" candidate was 62%. The Democrats' 40.9% performance was much worse than their 48.2% in 2020, but it was enough to get one of their candidates over the finish line with Independents splitting the Republican vote.
The former Democrat Councilwoman who won did so by also railing against the people in charge and was elected on a platform adjacent to Joe and Tina's. There will be much opportunity for Joe and his allies to work with her. This campaign was a message of "change," and change is coming to Manville as a result.
Congratulations to Joe for reclaiming his "Landslide Lukac" title in such a difficult environment to do so, and proving that political resurrections can happen sooner than you think. He has turned the Manville GOP into a machine, and he is the change his town needs.
A special thanks to Tina, a fighter, without whose hard work this victory would not be possible. Her future is bright.
Follow the Manville GOP on Facebook here.