Defying an ugly campaign in which he was sought to be branded a “terrorist”, Ravinder Bhalla has won the Hoboken mayoral contest, becoming the first-ever Sikh mayor of a New Jersey city. “Thank you Hoboken. I look forward to being your Mayor!” Bhalla tweeted on Tuesday night as he defeated five other candidates.
“Thank you for having faith in me, for having faith in our community, faith in our state, and faith in our country; this is what America is all about,” he told his supporters.
“We’ve been through a bruising campaign… but now is the time we come together and see who we can work with to bring this city forward,” said Bhalla, in an obvious reference to the slanderous flyers left on car windshields. “Don’t let terrorism take over our town,” said the flyers in bold letters above the picture of a turban-clad Bhalla, a Councilman for eight years.
Reacting to the flyers, Bhalla himself had said: “We won’t let hate win in Hoboken. I want to use this incident as an opportunity to affirm to each other and our children the value of living in a diverse community where we are judged by the content of our character - not by the colour of our skin or how we worship.”