A poll conducted by TargetSmart released April 5, 2022, shows incumbent Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh leading his rivals by a comfortable margin across age brackets and ethnicities in the run up to the city’s election.  Only with specifically Dominican voters among those polled does Sayegh not command the highest numbers, falling short to Councilman Alex Mendez 23% to 46%.

The total returns for the five-man race should Mayor Sayegh taking 47%, with Mendez second at 20%, Michael Jackson taking 9%, Luis Velez 5%, and Alson Goow 2%.  Of those polled, 4% selected “Other” and 13% were undecided.

In a polling memo, TargetSmart noted that Mayor Sayegh has a broad “cross-racial coalition of supporters,” taking more than 40% of the Hispanic and Black voters.  According to the 2020 US Census, Hispanic or Latino residents make up 61.4% of the City of Paterson, making Sayegh’s support with this community essential.  Sayegh himself is not Hispanic, but rather a Lebanese-Syrian Roman Catholic.

“While Dominican voters support Mendez by a 2-to-1 margin over Sayegh,” the TargetSmart poll said, “Sayegh leads Mendez by an even wider margin among non-Dominican Hispanics in Paterson. Sayegh also leads among municipal voters of all ages and holds a wide advantage over the field among senior citizens, a reliable voting bloc in lower-turnout municipal elections.”

The poll’s age brackets were defined as 18-34 (Sayegh 48%, Mendez 12%), 35-49 (Sayegh 44%, Mendez 32%), 50-64 (Sayegh 42%, Mendez 22%), 65+ (Sayegh 55%, Mendez 13%).

Mendez’s support was lowest among the 18-34 group, Sayegh’s second-highest age-bracket after seniors.  Mendez came in 3^rd with younger voters after Michael Jackson polling 15%.

On Sunday, Mendez received the endorsement of former Mayor Jose “Joey” Torres, who served from 2022-2010 and 2014-2017.  In September of 2017, after he pleaded guilty to corruption charges, his term in office came to an end and he served 13 months in prison.  Despite this, Torres has and continued to enjoy a solid core of supporters in the City of Paterson.

Although legally barred from running for office again, Torres nevertheless mounted a mayoral campaign of his own, looking to unseat Sayegh, until his petitions were rejected by the City Clerk and acting Attorney General Platkin struck him with fourth-degree contempt of court charges.  Torres’ alignment with Mendez, who has been trailing behind Sayegh, is thought to bring further support for the latter’s bid for mayor.  Torres’ supporters will certainly bring a more weight to Mendez’s campaign, but the alliance of an indicted candidate and a previously-jailed mayor may actually further sour others.

Sayegh had told the Paterson Press, “It’s not surprising that Mendez and Torres are as thick as thieves.”

Mendez himself has legal woes, indicted by a state grand jury for charges of election fraud connected with the May, 2020, election.  The 2022 campaign has been fraught with tension.  On Friday, Sayegh responded to Mendez’s name-calling, in which the councilman called the mayor “Vladimir Putin” for directing the City to investigate his petitions, telling InsiderNJ that Mendez’s “reckless” behavior was demonstrating “a pattern of criminality.”

The baggage carried by Mendez going into the campaign hurts him, according to TargetSmart, although it has yet to be seen what impact the endorsement of Mayor Torres will fundamentally have.  “What’s more,” TargetSmart reported, “voters are incredibly troubled by information about Alex Mendez’s recent indictments for voter fraud. When informed about this, we find that 76 percent of likely primary voters indicate the information about Mendez’s indictment makes them less likely to support him.”

The bi-lingual poll was conducted prior to Torres’ endorsement of Mendez, carried out via the internet and by phone between March 22 and March 22 with a margin of error of +/- 5.2%.