2024 Glassboro Election Results
Not boring.
Please remember that all numbers published here are preliminary. The State will certify final vote counts in early December. I’ll provide an update if anything major changes.
Turnout
8,225 Glassborons, about 69% of registered voters here, voted this year. That’s nice, and higher than 2016 turnout (64%), but down from 2020 (75%) and lower than Gloucester County as a whole (74%).
By comparison, West Deptford, a township in GlouCo with a similar population to Glassboro’s, had a higher turnout rate this year. This despite West Deptford having an un-competitive school board race (3 candidates for 3 seats) and lacking hot-button ballot questions.
The Map
Glassboro is split into 13 election districts; several districts share a polling place. I’ll name each district after a prominent neighborhood or feature that I associate with that area. So you’ll get to see how your neighborhood voted in each race.1
Borough Council
4 candidates—2 Democrats and 2 Republicans—ran for 2 seats on the Glassboro Borough Council. This was the first full, 2-vs-2 Council race in at least a decade.
Incumbent Democrats Anna Miller and Andrew Halter won reelection by almost 10-point margins. Together, Dems received 59.6% of votes. Miller works for a hospice, while Halter is Chief of HazMat at the Gloucester County Office of Emergency Management. They ran on a record of recent projects like downtown redevelopment, new housing, and park amenities. Neither candidate responded to a request for comment.
Miller and Halter ran unopposed for Council in 2021 and 2018. In fact, almost all Glassboro Council elections from 2013 to 2023 were no contest—except 2016, when a single Republican ran. Online records only go back to 2013.
Their Republican challengers were Danielle Mazza-DiVenti, a realtor, and Michael Oscar, a courier. Both ran on vocal opposition to the proposed Route 322 bypass, the Glassboro-Camden Line light rail, and paid parking. A Miller-Halter campaign mailer promised to adjust the bypass plan, and expressed either neutrality or qualified support for the GCL. Neither Republican won a plurality of votes in any district. Mazza-DiVenti conceded on Facebook in the morning after Election Night.
Board of Education
8 candidates ran for 3 seats on the Glassboro BOE, making it the most hotly contested Glassboro BOE race in over a decade. And the winners are:
Ryan Hughes (reelected)
Lori Dempster (reelected)
Natasha Briggs
While Ryan Hughes and Lori Dempster won reelection, their non-incumbent running mate, Stephen Kudless, received the fewest votes of all candidates.
Challenger Natasha Briggs won the 3rd seat just 151 votes (0.8 percentage points) ahead of Andy Savicky. Briggs’s running mate, Antoine Sabb, came in 5th place behind Savicky.
Briggs carried most of southern Glassboro, while Hughes and Dempster split the North. Savicky came in 4th place overall yet won Chestnut Ridge.
BOE elections are non-partisan; candidates aren’t officially associated with any political party on your ballot. But some candidates either openly expressed conservative positions while campaigning, have past connections to the Republican Party, or were promoted by a right-wing group. (I haven’t yet found any similar ties to any political party or group for other candidates.)
In her campaign announcement, Cedrone aligned herself with US Presidential candidate (and now President-elect) Donald Trump; Frangos was her running mate.
Savicky ran in a Republican primary for State Assembly in 2009. According to the NJ Election Law Enforcement Commission, Savicky donated to the NJ Republican State Committee in 2007 and 2008, and to Republican candidate for governor Bret Schundler in 2001. (I find no past donations made or received by any other candidate.)
Dempster first ran in 2021 in part to prevent the teaching of critical race theory, but her 2024 campaign made no reference to this issue.
Dempster and Stephen Kudless were endorsed2 by the New Jersey Project, a right-wing, self-described parents’ rights group classified as an “anti-government group” by the Southern Law Poverty Center.3 NJP advocates for—among other things—teachers to leave the NJEA teachers union, banning certain books from school curricula or libraries, and abolishing legal protections for LGBTQ students. Dempster denied having any prior knowledge of the group; Kudless declined to comment. NJP did not respond to a request for comment, but in a post on their website they state that their listed candidates “were recommended by parents in the NJ Schools group on facebook [sic].”
Altogether, BOE candidates with ties to or supported by conservative groups received 55% of votes. However, Dempster, Kudless, and Savicky made no explicit reference to conservative causes in their 2024 campaigns. The BOE candidates who ran openly conservative campaigns, Cedrone and Frangos, received 17% of votes.
Ballot Questions
Glassboro considered 2 ballot questions this year:
Do you support the construction of the “Route 322 Bypass Project” in Glassboro as it is presented with the current plans of construction?
Do you support the construction of the proposed Glassboro-Camden Line light rail transit system?
Voters rejected the bypass as presented with 48.4% voting Yes vs. 51.6% No. The two districts where traffic would be diverted, Elsmere and downtown, voted in favor. Meanwhile, the two districts that would lose the state highway cutting through them, Hidden Creek and Bowen, rejected the plan. Route 322 also borders the Renlund, Bullock, and Holly Crest districts, but most of those portions of 322 will remain.
Voters approved the GCL by a wider margin: 54% Yes vs. 46% No. The only district that “swung” between ballot questions was Hidden Creek: Most voters there rejected the bypass, but approved the GCL.
Both referendums were non-binding and meant to measure public support for each project. A Yes or No vote on either project doesn’t guarantee their success or failure. They appeared on your ballot because enough citizens signed petitions to get them on the ballot.
An anti-bypass, anti-GCL mailer sent to Glassboro residents claimed that “1,100 registered voters [signed] the petition for the ballot questions.” That’s 9% of registered voters (11,923) or 13% of people who actually voted (8,225) in Glassboro. The mailer was paid for by Woodbury resident Charles Hughes. (A YouTube channel called “Charles Hughes” hosts a campaign video recorded by Republican Boro Council candidate Danielle Mazza-DiVenti.)
Brooklawn, Camden County, also had a GCL ballot question and rejected the project by 29 votes: 321 Yes vs. 350 No. The anti-GCL Republican candidates for Borough Council there, Brittany Henry and Christopher Drummonds, lost.
According to South Jersey Climate News, the project was first proposed almost 30 years ago and is currently in the preliminary engineering design phase. Service was once expected to begin in 2019, but the goal is now 2028. In recent years, most voters in Mantua Township and Woodbury Heights rejected the GCL via ballot questions. Pitman’s Borough Council passed a resolution against the GCL in 2022; Glassboro’s Council passed a resolution in favor that same year.
Opponents of the GCL cite concerns about crime, noise, traffic, pollution, taxes, property values, parking, and eminent domain. They suggest Bus Rapid Transit as an alternative. Proponents say a train would bring faster commutes, improved property values, economic benefits, traffic congestion relief, and environmental benefits.
Coming Soon
Stay tuned for a rundown of other Gloucester County election results, including County Commission, Sheriff, notable municipal races like the Washington Township school board, and a few towns that went purple.
If you feel strongly that I should rename an election district, let me know at Glassbro.blog@gmail.com.
That’s an Internet Archive backup, in case the page ever gets taken down.
NJ Advance Media covers this group in their Project Extreme series.