Donald Cresitello, a 79-year-old former mayor of Morristown who has run for county freeholder, state legislature, and U.S. Senate over the course of a long and circuitous career, is attempting to make yet another comeback, this time as the new Democratic congressman from New Jersey’s 11th congressional district.
Cresitello, now on his 25th bid for public office, also said he was filing a lawsuit against the 11th district’s special election schedule, which was set by Gov. Phil Murphy last week to quickly fill the seat left behind by Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill. Democratic and Republican candidates have until Monday, December 1, to gather 500 signatures to make the February 5 primary ballot.
“No fair-minded person believes a ten-day window – five of which fall during Thanksgiving week – is a legitimate way to run a democratic process,” Cresitello said in his campaign announcement. “This deadline makes it virtually impossible for any candidate who is not already plugged into the political machine. It is the opposite of fairness, the opposite of transparency, and the opposite of what New Jersey voters have demanded since we abolished the county line.”
The lawsuit, filed in state Superior Court, asks the judiciary to halt the December 1 filing deadline and “require the State to adopt a reasonable deadline that gives all candidates – not just insiders – a meaningful opportunity to gather signatures.” (It does not seem to challenge the 500-signature requirement, which was increased from 200 signatures by the legislature earlier this year.)
Cresitello’s political career began all the way back in 1969, when he first won a seat on the Morristown Board of Aldermen at the age of 22. He has spent every decade since then running for local office in Morristown, usually as a Democrat but sometimes as a Republican or an independent; his long career has included several stints on the town council and two as mayor, from 1977 to 1981 (when he lost to Republican Emilio Gervasio) and again from 2006 to 2010 (when he lost to Democrat Tim Dougherty, who remains the mayor today).
Cresitello’s second tenure as mayor drew national headlines for his criticism of state immigration laws; he controversially applied for a federal program to deputize local law police officers as immigration enforcement agents, briefly making him the face of anti-illegal immigrant sentiment in New Jersey. “To the Communists across the street, and the Marxists, we know your motives, and we will not continue to let you go forward with your intent to take over our country,” he said at one anti-illegal immigration rally in 2007.
In 1982, he ran for U.S. Senate, but dropped out prior to the Democratic primary and got 1% of the vote in a race ultimately won by Frank Lautenberg. Cresitello ran again for the Senate in 2008, becoming the third man in a two-man race between Lautenberg and Rep. Rob Andrews; he came in a distant last place with 6%.
He’s also campaigned at various times for State Assembly and county freeholder, switching parties several times along the way.
In 2021, Cresitello launched yet another campaign to return to the mayor’s office as an independent, but election officials determined he didn’t meet the residency requirement to run; after all, just two years earlier, he had run for the borough council in Manasquan, a Jersey Shore town nowhere near Morristown. (It’s also nowhere near the 11th district, though there aren’t any residency requirements for congressional candidates as long as they live in the state.)
Cresitello’s entrance makes him the 13th candidate to launch a campaign for the 11th district, a Democratic-leaning district that Sherrill had held since 2019. Some of his opponents similarly have had long political careers, though most have had more recent electoral successes than Cresitello.
One of those candidates is Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill (D-Montclair), who is running with endorsements from Murphy and many other prominent local Democrats. Cresitello singled out Gill in his announcement today, alleging that the short signature-gathering window is designed to help candidates like him.
“What the Governor has done here is create a process that is technically legal, but fundamentally unfair,” Cresitello said. “We cannot allow signature deadlines to be weaponized in a way that predetermines who gets on the ballot. If this is allowed to stand, New Jersey will be right back to the insider games voters have rejected.”
