Sayreville voters handed Democrats full control of the borough council, unseating two Republican incumbents and setting the stage for a political shake-up that could strip the mayor of his tie-breaking power. Unofficial results from Tuesday's election show Democrats Bernie Bailey and Dexter Thomas defeating Republican Councilmen John Zebrowski and Michael Colaci, a result that will leave Sayreville with a 5-1 Democratic majority once the new council is sworn in come January 2027.
Bailey pulled in 8,419 votes and Thomas took 8,301, compared to 4,959 for Zebrowski and 4,654 for Colaci, according to unofficial tallies reported by mycentraljersey.com. Zebrowski, one of the ousted incumbents, formerly served as Sayreville's police chief, a detail that underscores just how deep the Democratic wave ran in a borough that had looked solidly Republican just a few years ago. Election Day brought few surprises to most local races across Middlesex County, the outlet reported, with Sayreville standing out as the night's notable exception.
A Mayor Loses His Deciding Vote
The most consequential fallout from Tuesday's results may not be the seats themselves but what they take away from Republican Mayor Kennedy O'Brien. With Bailey and Thomas set to join Democratic council members Mary Novak, Alberto Rios and Herve Blemur, the incoming 5-1 majority is expected to end O'Brien's ability to cast the deciding vote in 3-3 party-line ties, the kind of standoff the council hit earlier this year. Stanley Synarski will be the lone Republican left on Sayreville's governing body next year.
That tie-breaking power mattered just months ago. According to Sayreville's own June 15, 2026 council meeting minutes, a motion to toughen a proposed data-center moratorium into an outright ban ended in a 3-3 deadlock, with Mayor O'Brien casting the no vote that killed it. The same meeting's minutes also show a separate attempt to stretch the moratorium from 18 to 24 months failed, with only Rios and Novak voting in favor and four other members opposed.
Data Centers Loom Over the New Council
That June vote matters now because data centers have become one of the defining issues heading into the new council term. The borough currently has an 18-month moratorium on data-center development, and Bailey and Thomas said in a social media post that they plan to address a data-center ban after being sworn in. Democratic council members have advocated for such a ban, and the fresh majority gives them the votes to push it without needing to win over the mayor.
Sayreville's fight is part of a much broader reckoning playing out nationally. CNBC reported that 41 local data-center-related ballot measures appeared across 10 states in Tuesday's midterm elections, with New Jersey among the states where communities weighed in alongside California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Nevada and Wisconsin. Per the same report, voters sided against data centers in every measure with results available except one in Harwood, North Dakota, where residents rejected added review of industrial projects. A CNBC Voter Poll also found that 56% of voters said data centers were a crucial or major factor in how they cast their ballots.
A Sharp Reversal From 2023
The scale of Tuesday's result stands out against Sayreville's recent political history. The New Jersey Globe described the outcome as a sharp reversal from 2023, when Republicans swept the borough's mayoral and council elections. Sayreville's politics have swung before: in 2019, Democrat Victoria Kilpatrick won the mayoralty by just three votes, the Globe noted, a margin that shows how competitive the borough has historically been.
The flip also fits a wider pattern across Middlesex County, where Republicans have struggled for decades. The county has not elected a Republican to countywide office since 1991, according to the Globe. Still, the same outlet reported that the county's Democratic margin narrowed considerably in recent presidential cycles, falling from 22 percentage points when Joe Biden carried it in 2020 to just eight points four years later.
Quiet Nights Elsewhere in the County
Beyond Sayreville, Tuesday's election was largely uneventful across Middlesex County. Carteret Mayor Dan Reiman, New Brunswick Mayor James Cahill and South Plainfield Mayor Matthew Anesh all faced no challengers in their reelection bids, the report noted. Both Reiman and Cahill are Democrats, while Anesh is a Republican, and all three return to office unopposed.
A couple of contested mayoral races did play out elsewhere in the county. In South Amboy, unofficial results showed Anthony Conrad leading independent challenger Christopher Smiga, 1,434 votes to 1,291. In South Brunswick, incumbent Democratic Mayor Charlie Carley led Republican challenger John G. O'Sullivan by a wide margin, 11,153 votes to 4,047, in unofficial returns.
