Charlie Kratovil has been informed by the Middlesex County Clerk’s Office Division of Elections that his candidacy for Mayor of New Brunswick was approved and his name will appear on the November 6, 2018 ballot.

On June 5, Charlie submitted 127 signatures from New Brunswick residents who support his candidacy. The opportunity to challenge the validity of that petition passed last week without any objections being lodged.

“It’s always a victory when voters have a choice, and the choice couldn’t be more clear this November: four more years of the same out-of-touch political machine, or a new administration that will finally put the people of New Brunswick first.”

Charlie’s candidacy marks the first electoral challenge to the seven-term incumbent Mayor since 2010, and Charlie is also the first independent candidate to challenge him since 2006. The current Mayor has been in office since 1991 and splits his time between running the city government and a private law firm, in addition to representing a government agency in another town.

In contrast to the Mayor, Charlie has promised the residents of New Brunswick that, if elected, he will serve as the city’s first full-time Mayor and accept no other paid positions. Charlie currently works as the editor of the city’s bilingual community newspaper, New Brunswick Today.

Charlie announced his candidacy at a well-attended kickoff event outside City Hall on June 6, with a speech unveiling his wide-ranging plans to investigate and eliminate government corruption, reform the city’s troubled public authorities, and establish a city bus system.

Video and the full text of the kickoff speech is available here: https://cleanupbrunswick.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/charlies-campaign-kickoff-speech/

The campaign will continue to build upon Charlie’s years of volunteering, community organizing, and journalism with a grassroots effort to strengthen the movement for change that has been building here.

A resident of the city since 2004, Charlie graduated from Rutgers University and has been giving back to the New Brunswick community for over a decade. He has worked as a community organizer with two respected non-profit organizations, The Citizens Campaign and Food & Water Watch. He also taught journalism students at Rutgers, volunteered as a staff member at nine different Model United Nations and Model Congress conferences, and served as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Rutgers Student & Alumni Federal Credit Union.

Since starting the New Brunswick Today newspaper in 2011, Charlie’s work has received high honors from multiple organizations, including:
• The NJ Society of Professional Journalists’ Stuart and Beverly Awbrey Award for Community-Oriented Local Journalism (for his coverage of the Cahill administration’s water quality cover-up scandal)
• The NJ State Governor’s Jefferson Awards for Public Service Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Champion for Justice (for his volunteer efforts to serve New Brunswick)

For more information about the campaign, visit our website: CleanUpBrunswick.com