What to Know About Millburn's Township Committee Election This November

By Remy Sardar:  July 12, 2026

On November 3, Millburn voters will fill two of the five seats on the Township Committee. Three weeks ago it was not clear that this election was going to happen at all, because voters were still deciding whether the Township Committee would continue to exist.

In June, residents voted on whether to replace the Township Committee with a seven-member Council-Manager government, which is what the Charter Study Commission had recommended (see: "Millburn Township Residents Take to the Polls for Historic Special Election"). If it had passed, the terms of all five sitting committee members would have been cancelled, voters would have elected an entirely new seven-person council in November under nonpartisan rules, and the results of the June primaries would have been thrown out.

It did not pass. The certified count was 2,034 against and 1,975 in favor (Patch). That is 4,009 votes total, meaning the measure failed by 59 votes, or roughly 1.5% of everyone who turned out. So the November ballot now looks the way it would have looked if the charter question had never been asked, which is two seats, three-year terms, one Republican column and one Democratic column.

Who is running

The two seats that expire on December 31 are both held by Republicans, and both of those Republicans are running to keep them.

Mayor Frank Saccomandi IV and Committeeman Ben Stoller were elected together in 2023. Saccomandi's colleagues selected him as mayor at the reorganization meeting this past January. The Democratic candidates are Beth Zall and Bill Brazell, neither of whom has served on the committee before.

All four filed with the Essex County Clerk in April, and none of them drew an opponent inside their own party, which meant that the June 2 primary did not actually decide anything (Patch). Independent and third-party candidates can still get onto the November ballot, though none appear to have filed as of early July.

Why two seats decide the entire committee

Republicans currently hold the committee 3-2. Saccomandi, Stoller, and Jamie Serruto make up the majority, and Michael Cohen and Deputy Mayor David Cosgrove make up the minority. That majority is only about nine months old. In November of 2025, Serruto beat then-Mayor Annette Romano by 140 votes while Cohen held onto his own seat by 26 votes, and the result gave Republicans control of the committee for the first time in more than a decade (New Jersey Globe).

Both of the seats on this year's ballot are currently Republican. That means if Zall and Brazell win both of them, Democrats end up with a 4-1 majority in January, and if either Saccomandi or Stoller survives, Republicans keep control. Millburn split its two seats between the parties last year, so a split this year would not be surprising.

However, none of the local election results indicate that Millburn is becoming a Republican-dominated town. In the same election that produced the Republican majority, Millburn gave 62% of its vote to Democrat Mikie Sherrill in the governor's race. Voters here have shown that they will vote for one party at the top of the ballot and the other party at the bottom of it, and the last two committee elections were both decided by margins small enough that turnout alone could have reversed them.

Campaign Platform Predictions

Affordable housing, most likely more than any other issue. Millburn has spent years in court over a plan to build 75 units of 100% affordable housing at 9-11 Main Street, on the site of a public works building. The township has tried more than once to delay or unwind that project and has lost each time, and it has also joined a group of other New Jersey municipalities in a lawsuit challenging the state law that determines how much affordable housing each town is required to build. Stoller ran in 2023 in opposition to the Main Street development. Zall and Brazell have not said publicly where they stand on it, at least not anywhere this paper was able to find.

The charter question is also not really finished, even though it lost. Roughly 4,000 residents turned out in June for a standalone election about municipal structure, which is a considerable amount of attention for a subject that most towns never think about at all. The campaign also cut across party lines, because Stoller, a Republican, supported nonpartisan elections, while Romano, a Democrat, opposed them. That means a number of voters who agreed with each other in June will spend the fall choosing between two party columns, and neither party is going to be able to claim the charter coalition as its own.

How to vote

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, and polls are open from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Knowing your district number and polling place ahead of time makes checking in easier, and both can be found through the state's polling place search.

State law closes voter registration 21 days before an election, which works out to October 13 this year, and mail applications for a vote-by-mail ballot are due seven days out, on October 27. Early in-person voting is also held before general elections. However, these dates should be checked against the Essex County Board of Elections calendar rather than taken from this article, because the county publishes the official version and it controls.

Along with the committee race, Millburn voters will be deciding a U.S. Senate seat, the 11th Congressional District, Essex County Executive, and seats on the Essex County Board of Commissioners.

More information

The Charter Study Commission's final report is still online, and it is probably the clearest plain-English explanation of how Millburn's government actually functions. Committee agendas and minutes are posted at twp.millburn.nj.us.