Councilwoman: Criminal or Champion?

October 25, 2026

West Orange has spent a week arguing about whether a councilwoman took a lawn sign. It has spent almost no time on the two facts underneath it: nobody has produced permission to put that sign on the property, and the sign never said who paid for it.

WEST ORANGE, N.J. — Ten days before the November 3 election, this township is arguing about a lawn sign.

Here is what is established. The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office confirms it is investigating Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Tammy Williams over political signs reported missing. Police body-camera video from October 15 shows officers taking signs from the trunk of her car. Williams says she removed a sign with the property owner’s permission, and that the signs were turned over to police. The prosecutor’s office will not discuss details of an open investigation.

Here is what has not been established, and what almost nobody is asking about.

No one has produced permission to place the sign

The sign at the center of this was put on the lawn of a vacant building at 222 Main Street. Williams’s campaign says it was placed there without the property owner’s permission, and that the owner then asked her to remove it. Williams Campaign Statement.

There is a reason the owner reached her rather than the township. Williams is a licensed real estate broker in West Orange. Young West Orange understands that the owner had dealt with her on that property and contacted her directly after learning signs had been placed on his land, asking her to take them down. That detail does not appear in any of the television or wire coverage, and none of it has been independently corroborated here.

The man who paid for the signs, Bagels by Jarrett owner Jarrett Seltzer, has not claimed he had the owner’s permission to put one there. His argument is a different one — that the person who authorized the removal never proved he owns the building. Seltzer told News 12 that West Orange police gave “this alleged owner” four days to produce a single document showing he was the property owner, and that in four days he could not do it.

Both halves of that matter. If the man cannot establish he controls 222 Main Street, he cannot authorize a sign’s removal — and no one has produced permission from the owner of record to place a sign there in the first place. The placement came first, and it has gone unexamined. The removal came second, and became a criminal investigation.

There is no public record, in any of the reporting reviewed for this piece, of a police inquiry into how the sign got onto that lawn, or of the building’s owner of record being identified at all.

The sign did not say who paid for it

Williams raised a separate issue in the police footage: she said the signs lacked identification of who paid for them and that she had reported the matter to election officials. News 12 reported that exchange.

New Jersey law expressly includes signs within its definition of political communications. Under N.J.S.A. 19:44A-22.3, sponsor-identification requirements apply to communications financed through expenditures that must be reported to the Election Law Enforcement Commission. The law also addresses disclosure of spending made independently of a candidate.

The organizer is not a candidate and has described financing signs urging voters to reject Williams and the incumbent mayor. Whether these particular signs violated disclosure requirements depends on the applicable reporting obligations, facts and rules. A missing disclaimer allegation alone does not establish a violation.

No ELEC determination concerning these signs was located in the sources reviewed. Williams’s statement that she reported them does not establish that the commission has made a finding.

The numbers do not add up to the story

The organizer told News 12 that approximately 50 of his 100 signs had been taken and alleged that three were directly linked to Williams. The footage described in the reporting shows police recovering two signs from her car.

Those are different figures describing different claims. The reported recovery of two signs and the organizer’s allegation concerning three do not establish that Williams took all 50 missing signs. They also do not support describing the entire dispute as involving only one sign.

The prosecutor’s office has not publicly detailed the full scope of its investigation in the reports reviewed.

Then came the voicemail

A separate recording surfaced in the private Facebook group Black West Orange on October 24, presented as a voicemail received by Williams. The visible transcript contains racist abuse directed at a Black recipient and disparaging remarks about her candidacy. Comments on the post condemned the message and called for action.

Another Facebook post described a call to Williams’s personal cellphone and a voicemail left at Town Hall. It characterized the messages as offensive, threatening and, in some cases, racially charged. The post said a recording had been preserved and provided to authorities.

These are accounts published by group participants. The recording’s origin and recipient have not been independently authenticated for this article, and the Town Hall account has not been independently confirmed. No law-enforcement confirmation concerning the calls was obtained for this piece.

The material reviewed does not establish the caller’s identity or a connection between the caller and the sign organizer or any candidate’s campaign. A Facebook post’s description of the message as a hate crime is the poster’s characterization, not an official determination.

And then the forums closed

As the recording circulated, participants reported that West Orange 411 had stopped accepting political posts. Several described comments being blocked or removed, including comments challenging how the group handled the controversy.

Young West Orange requested membership in the group to examine those accounts further. The request was denied.

One post said the recording had been removed from the group. Another described a member’s removal after criticizing the administrators and alleged inconsistent enforcement of the rules.

A different commenter said moderators needed a break, were considering how to move forward and might revisit the voicemail post. That explanation was relayed secondhand.

Young West Orange could not independently verify these accounts against the group’s moderation record. The administrators’ explanation has not been obtained directly.

Not everyone sees the same thing

The argument over race and political criticism predates the latest sign-investigation coverage and the voicemail post.

An October 8 post challenged the suggestion that criticism of Williams was necessarily motivated by race and argued that residents were entitled to question her record. Other posts described heightened scrutiny of Black women in politics and interpreted the campaign’s tone as part of a longer pattern of racial hostility.

The earlier disagreement concerns the broader campaign. It does not establish who made the later abusive calls or explain their origin. The posts show differing views within the same group; they are not a measure of opinion across the township.

What is actually unresolved

Ten days out, the official record contains one confirmed criminal investigation: whether a councilwoman removed signs that were not hers.

It contains no answer to who authorized the sign’s placement on private property. No answer to whether signs paid for by a private individual to defeat named candidates complied with New Jersey’s identification law. And no public accounting of a racist voicemail that a candidate’s supporters say was left on her phone and at Town Hall.

Williams, West Orange’s first Black councilwoman, is one of seven candidates for mayor. Early voting Was started at The Berson Family Center (Turtle Back Zoo). The election is November 3.

Works Cited

Info

Madthew PL
Young West Orange
[email protected]