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Edison Township Councilwoman Sapana Shah lashed out at Democratic Party bosses accusing them of avoiding a primary for the 18th Assembly District seat in a bid to control who gets in.
Shah, 39, announced her candidacy for Legislative District 11, April 22, a seat that opened up as a result of Gov. Chris Christie’s recent nomination of Democratic Sen. Peter J. Barnes III to the state Superior Court bench. Barnes is expected to be replaced by state Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, leaving the 18th District seat open, a rare occurrence that a number of candidates are lining up for.
The contenders for Diegnan’s seat include Shah, Edison Councilman Robert Diehl, Robert Karabinchek, and Elsie Foster Dublin. Shah has so far won two at-large elections to the Council, and in the 2013 council, she was the third highest vote-getter in a 12-candidate field. Diehl is the only five-term councilman. Karabinchek is a two-term councilman. Foster Dublin has been a Highland Park councilwoman since 2000.
Shah told Desi Talk, “Party bosses” delayed Barnes’s announcement until after the April 1 deadline for candidates to file their papers to run for the District 18 seat. She was echoing what an April 12, Politickernj.com report headlined, “The Timing Factor with Barnes’s Seat Scrubs the Possibility of a Dem Primary” also contended. “… the Democratic Party made sure to keep state Senator Peter Barnes (D-18) on ice, his judges’ robes folded and boxed until after the filing deadline for what would be a special June Primary to fill his seat,” the article said.
This in effect means that some 300 Democratic Party Committee members will vote on who occupies Barnes’ seat. That candidate will then have to run for the November 8 elections, and again fight for the seat in 2017 when it is up for re-election.
“They took the election from us. The announcement for the (Barnes) vacancy came after the April filing deadline. I even had my hundred signatures ready to file by the deadline,” Shah said, adding, “The (Democratic) Party even though it says it wants to be inclusive, doesn’t give a chance to Desis.”
Despite that disappointment, the feisty Shah who has butted heads with the party in the past, is now campaigning to secure a majority of those 300 or so Democratic Party Committee votes which represent 7 towns, East Brunswick, Edison, Helmetta, Highland Park, South Plainfield and South River. The largest is Edison, which has more than 100 votes.
She knows she has a tough road ahead. “Each of the towns has party bosses and they tell the committee members who to vote for,” she says. “We from Middlesex have not even sent one person to Trenton,” she adds despite the high concentration of Indian-Americans and South Asians in the district. She worries that seats like LG 18, come vacant in 15-20 years, leaving little opportunity for Indian-Americans to get into office. Add to that what she sees as party machinations coming in the way. To date, only two Indian-Americans have made it to the state Assembly, current officeholder Raj Mukherji, and former Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula.
An Edison council member since 2014, Shah serves on the municipal Planning Board and was previously an Edison Board of Education member. An attorney in private practice, Shah also serves as an Assistant Corporation Counsel in Jersey City. She is past-president of the Asian Pacific American Lawyers Association. A graduate of John P. Stevens High School in Edison, Shah has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Rutgers University, and worked as financial analyst for Dun & Bradstreet before graduating from Albany Law School.
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