Mendez and Jackson, still charged with election fraud, seek new terms on Paterson council

PATERSON — Incumbents Michael Jackson and Alex Mendez will be among the City Council candidates whose names will be picked from a raffle drum on Monday in the 11 a.m. drawing for ballot position.

The two men almost faced scheduling conflicts.

Jackson and Mendez both had court hearings set for 9 a.m. Monday involving the New Jersey attorney general’s election fraud indictments against them.

But those court sessions ended up being postponed late last week for reasons that officials have not revealed. The adjournments represent the latest in years of delays in two cases that have dragged on for about 45 months, or more precisely 1,350 days.

When did the case begin?

Jackson and Mendez first got hit with separate criminal election charges in June 2020, less than a week before they were going to take the oath of office. They are now nearing the completion of their terms with accusations against them still unresolved, and they are running for reelection on May 14.

“What can you say?” mused former Paterson Councilman William McKoy. “The whole thing has become a farce.”

McKoy has been more than a casual observer. After two decades as Paterson’s 3rd Ward councilman, he was ousted by Mendez in the 2020 election.

Back then, McKoy was predicting he would make a quick return to the council as soon as Mendez’s criminal charges were resolved. But there has been nothing speedy about the voter fraud case, and now McKoy is taking on Mendez again, in an election that includes a third candidate, Assad Akhter.

“No one can defend a simple case like this lasting for four years,” McKoy said.

Jackson and Mendez have remained steadfast in professing their innocence, asserting they will be vindicated when they go to trial and that they will emerge as winners again in the upcoming May elections.

The councilmen have claimed they were targeted by state investigators in 2020 because they were political adversaries of Mayor Andre Sayegh, then a staunch ally of Gov. Phil Murphy and his attorney general at the time, Gurbir Grewal.

Grewal, the attorney general who filed the original complaints against Jackson and Mendez, even went so far as to refer to the two accused councilmen as “criminals” when he announced the case.

Things have changed politically. Sayegh and Mendez have become allies during the past year. In fact, the mayor’s behind-the-scenes backing helped Mendez become City Council president last summer, according to city government insiders.

Jackson and Mendez never were politically aligned, and they have become increasingly hostile toward each other during public meetings in the past nine months.

Meanwhile, Sayegh has been at odds with Murphy’s current attorney general, Matthew Platkin, a rift that widened after the state blindsided the mayor in taking over the Paterson Police Department.

More from Paterson Press: A year after Najee Seabrooks’ shooting at the hands of police, Paterson seeks answers

What do Jackson and Mendez say?

In separate interviews, Jackson and Mendez said last week that they think state officials have allowed the charges to linger.

“They want to be able to have this over me, like it’s something,” said Jackson, who represents Paterson’s 1st Ward. “But they don’t have anything on me.”

“They’ve been damaging my reputation for four years,” Mendez said.

The original charges made allegations that Jackson and Mendez committed crimes in their handling of absentee ballots and voter registrations in an all vote-by-mail election in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their indictments were separate, with no assertions that the two accused council members cooperated in any way during their election campaigns.

Mendez voters have a track record of using mail-in ballots in previous elections, but Jackson’s backers do not. Two other men — campaign workers for 2nd Ward Councilman Shahin Khalique — also were charged with election fraud on the same day as Mendez and Jackson.

But the charges against the Khalique supporters were dismissed in fall 2022, something the Attorney General’s Office did not acknowledge until a year later, only after one of the accused men’s lawyers made that information public.

The fact that Jackson and Mendez were scheduled for court dates at the same time on March 18 sparked speculation in Paterson political circles. But the Attorney General’s Office last week confirmed that their cases remained separate.

One major change in the case took place last October, when Platkin announced a second set of voting fraud charges against Mendez stemming from the same 2020 election, part of an expanded case that also accused the councilman’s wife and several campaign workers of crimes. Among the accusations is that Mendez’s campaign destroyed mail-in ballots casting votes for his opponents and replaced them with ones that checked off his name.

“That’s a new low, even for Paterson,” McKoy said.

Jackson also faces a second attorney general probe, one involving witness tampering in the first case. The attorney general seized the councilman’s phone last spring, but he has refused to provide his passcode, despite court orders requiring him to do so.

Jackson said last week that he expects his next court appearance to involve the New Jersey Supreme Court’s recent denial of his appeal on the passcode.

“I have nothing to do with Jackson’s case, and he has nothing to do with mine,” Mendez said. “Right now, I’m just concentrating on winning this election.”

McKoy said winning won’t be easy for Mendez.

“Right now, it’s in the hands of the courts,” McKoy said. “If the courts don’t do anything soon, I’m confident the voters will make their voices heard.”

Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press. Email: editor@patersonpress.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ: Alex Mendez, Michael Jackson election fraud charges loom