Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso cruised to his sixth term when he ran unopposed in 2020 and he intends to seek reelection despite criminal charges for allegedly operating his business out of township offices using municipal resources, revelations about a racist scandal involving the police department, and a $400,000 taxpayer-funded payoff to cover it up.
“Clark has been and will be in good hands if we are re-elected,” said Bonaccorso, who confirmed that Council incumbents Bill Smith, Angel Albanese, and Jimmy Minniti would be joining him on the ballot. Petitions are due at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 25 at the Township Clerk’s office.
Bonaccorso’s four Republican allies were handily returned to the Township Council office in the 2022 election despite hopes among Democrats that they could capitalize on the police department scandal.
In November 2023, Bonaccorso was charged by the New Jersey Attorney General with official misconduct, tampering with public records or information, witness tampering, forgery, and falsifying records.
The investigation started after audio recordings surfaced in 2022, featuring Mayor Sal Bonaccorso using profanity and racist language has propelled his small town into a national spotlight.
Black residents of Clark and the surrounding area say that the town’s history of bigotry is on display, but it has never been far below the surface even before Bonaccorso was first elected.
Clark has a Union County residency preference in all hiring matters, owing to a lawsuit litigated by the NAACP around 1995, when the civil rights group filed a half a dozen or so similar cases. At that time, the township had fewer than 15 African American residents out of a population in excess of 14,000.
“I was not shocked. I was disgusted, but I was not shocked,” said La’Tesha Sampson, a Black Clark resident who has a psychotherapy practice in the town and described her reaction to the New York Times when the recordings surfaced two years ago. “I am keenly aware of many of the sentiments of the people here. The town we live in is not known because we have a great park or a great program. We are known because of the history of racism.”
Others have commented on the incredible diversity of defendants appearing in municipal court, as it compares with the predominantly white population in town, as well as the outcome in historic NAACP lawsuits.
Four Republican council members — Frank Mazzarella, Patrick O’Connor, Steven Hund, and Brian Toal — were reelected to new four-year terms in 2022, defeating their Democratic opponents by wide margins shortly after news of the scandal broke.
Bonaccorso, who has been mayor for over two decades, has resisted calls to resign.
After he initially denied accusations that he used racist language, Bonaccorso later apologized and acknowledged his is the voice heard on secret audio recordings made by former Clark police Lt. Antonio Manata. Bonaccorso is heard on the recordings using such racial slurs as “spooks,” “shines,” the N-word and saying female police officers were “all f—— disasters.”
In addition to making racist comments, Clark municipal officials approved a $400,000 payout to cover up the incident but four Republicans on the township’s council were handily returned to office in the ensuing election.
Bonaccorso was accused of using his township offices and Clark employees to help run his private landscaping and oil tank removal business. Prosecutors also claim he forged an engineer’s signature on permit applications to remove underground storage tanks.
Bonaccorso’s lawyer, Robert G. Stahl, said the mayor denied “each and every allegation.”
Platkin said that his investigation showed that the confidential settlement with the lieutenant who recorded the mayor did not justify criminal charges but did warrant departmental changes, including improved data collection and record retention and enhanced employee attendance policies. The Attorney General also called for the termination of the police chief and a sergeant, but said that he could not fire them.
The Union County prosecutor’s office seized day-to-day control of the Clark Police Department after getting anonymous letters in 2020 outlining the allegations surrounding the confidential settlement. At the time, 37 of the department’s 39 police officers were white men, and it employed no female officers.
Democrats say Michael R. Shulman, 37, will be the Democratic candidate but observers have little expectation that he will defeat the Republican incumbent.
Shulman was born and raised in Union County New Jersey. He graduated from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a B.S. in Political Science in 2008. During college, Michael studied abroad at the University of Manchester in Manchester, England.
He went on to receive his Juris Doctorate degree from the Touro College-Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in 2011.