Mayor Zimmer vetoes runoff election referendum late on Friday

HOBOKEN — At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, the council voted 7-2 to host a referendum in November of 2018 to possibly bring back runoff elections.
Until 2012, if several candidates ran in a mayor or council election in Hoboken, and no one got more than 50 percent, the top two vote-getters would compete in a final runoff. Ultimately, Mayor Dawn Zimmer and her supporters said the system was too costly and led to too much political wrangling, and supported a public referendum that did away with runoffs that year.
But after this year’s six-way mayoral election, in which Mayor-Elect Ravi Bhalla won with 32.7 percent of the vote, the majority of the City Council (who backed the other candidates) voted 7-2 on Wednesday to hold a new referendum next November.
However, late on Friday, Mayor Zimmer vetoed the measure. Councilman Michael DeFusco said on Twitter that he’d reintroduce it in 2018.
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