Ward 26 alder hopefuls Joshua Van Hoesen and Amy Marx.
Upper Westville voters will have the chance to pick between two different candidates running on — checks notes — two different party lines, as Democrat Amy Marx and Republican Joshua Van Hoesen vie to become the next alder for Ward 26 following the resignation of incumbent Darryl Brackeen, Jr.
That special election will take place on May 30 at Davis Street School at 35 Davis St. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to this newly released notice from the city clerk’s office. Voters can also request an absentee ballot for the race as of Friday.
The special election follows five-term Alder Brackeen’s decision to step down from his local legislative post effective April 14 for a job that he said will frequently take him and his family out of state. (According to a Facebook video Brackeen posted on Wednesday, that new work is with J.P. Morgan Chase.)
The May 30 election will determine who will fill out Brackeen’s role for the rest of the two-year aldermanic term that ends Dec. 31.
According to an “Election Information” page on the city’s website, Marx and Van Hoesen are the only two candidates who have filed to run for the Ward 26 alder seat so far. (This past Monday marked the final date candidates seeking ballot access to submit nominating petitions to the town clerk. May 15 is the final date for write-in candidates to register with the Secretary of the State.)
Marx is a Ward 26 Democratic Town Committee co-chair and legal aid housing attorney who spearheaded a class-action child lead-poisoning lawsuit against the then-Harp administration back in 2019. That suit, which the Elicker administration settled in 2021, forced the Health Department to comply with local law in how it protects lead-poisoned local children.
“I have been honored to be part of Alder Brackeen’s leadership team for the last ten years,” Marx told the Independent in a written comment for this article. “I seek to fulfill his term, continuing to work with my dear friend and trusted political partner Sharon Jones to lead our ward into the future.”
Van Hoesen is the chair of the Westville/West Hills Community Management Team, a member of the City Plan Commission, and the director of engineering at a firm that produces accounting software for nonprofits. He has run for alder as a Republican three times before — once in his former home neighborhood of Morris Cove, twice in his current home neighborhood of Upper Westville. (He’s lost all three races.)
All of the current members of the 30-member Board of Alders are Democrats.
In a Friday phone interview with the Independent, Van Hoesen said he’s running for alder yet again because he wants to take his experience as a director of engineering who writes accounting software and as a small-time local landlord to the alders to help the board accomplish what it wants to accomplish “in an efficient and effective manner.”
What has he learned from his time on the City Plan Commission so far that might inform his bid for alder?
“I definitely have a better grasp of some of the difficulties in getting changes made in city government,” he said. One key lesson: “I think we need to put a little more thought process into some of our ordinances before we put them on the table.”
One example, he said, is the city’s accessory dwelling unit (ADU) ordinance, which was designed to make it easier for owner-occupants to create new garage, basement, and attic apartments, and which hasn’t resulted in a single as-of-right new unit of housing yet. He said that legislation needs to be rethought and potentially updated to make sure that the law works in promoting housing density and economic benefits for smaller property owners.
Why is he running as a Republican again in a city that hasn’t elected a Republican to any local office in, well, a long time?
Van Hoesen said, as skeptical as he is of the national Republican Party, he still thinks it’s “beneficial for any sort of governance” to have “more than one perspective” in the mix. “Being a Republican on the Board of Alders does give benefits in regards to transparency and governance,” he said, by forcing some political conversations out into the open that might otherwise be taking place behind closed doors in Democratic-only caucus meetings.
Brackeen’s resignation marked the fourth time this two-year term that an alder has stepped down early. Last June, Ward 28 Alder Shafiq Abdussabur resigned after citing a conflict between a custodial cleaning contract his company was bidding for with the public school system and his continued services in local elected office. Last August, Ward 9 Alder Charles Decker resigned right before moving out of state. And last December, Ward 21 Alder Steve Winter resigned to become the city’s first-ever executive director of climate and sustainability.