Mayor Candidate
A lifelong activist and tireless community advocate, Staci represents her Piscataway Heights neighbors as a Middlesex County Democratic Organization (MCDO) County Committee member and serves as an elected member of the Piscataway Democratic Organization. Staci is the Chair of the Piscataway Progressive Democratic Organization (PPDO), which she helped found in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. She has lived in Piscataway for over 25 years, raising her sons Billy and Sam Irwin with her husband Bill Irwin.
In her career as an advocate and in her personal life, Staci works to advance social, political, and economic justice for working people. She mobilized resistance to the Trump Administration and helped start the PPDO and other groups to restore the core values to our Democratic Party. Along with Kamuela Tillman, she made history as one member of the first all-female slate to win Committee seats in 2019. After winning the seats, she has served and supported her constituents by helping them access resources during the pandemic, meeting with them regularly to hear their concerns and advocating for a shared vision of making Piscataway work for everyone
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She has run for Township Council twice, coming very close both times, and has led numerous campaigns to ensure open, accessible government, including the TAPE ordinance. As Mayor, Staci will ensure tax fairness, lead initiatives for social, economic and racial justice across our Township and open our government for everyone to participate and be heard. She will work with Council members, restart dormant Commissions, meet with residents and solve problems for our community. Staci will always stand up for transparency at every level of government and in the Democratic Party. Piscataway deserves leaders who will work for everyone, and fight for our future together.
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Since 2013, Staci has served as the president and CEO of the Housing and Community Development Network of NJ, the statewide association of non-profit groups working to ensure safe, affordable homes for NJ residents by ending homelessness, preventing evictions, providing special needs housing, stopping the foreclosure and abandoned properties crisis, funding housing counseling, and protecting Ida and Sandy survivors. Prior to her work at HCDNNJ, Staci led consumer advocacy at NJ Citizen Action, the state’s largest consumer watchdog organization. While at NJCA, she helped create NJ’s Paid Family leave laws and state campaign finance reform, updated NJ’s open public meetings/records laws, organized against the privatization of Social Security, advocated for raising the minimum wage and adopting NJ’s first Millionaire’s Tax.
In 2020, Staci and PPDO members helped mobilize voters in swing states to elect President Joe Biden, and organized letter writing campaigns to infrequent voters to help send Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate to represent Georgia. In 2021, Staci actively participated in Women for Murphy and Progressives for Murphy, helping to re-elect a Democratic Governor in NJ for the first time in decades.
She has a B.A. in political science from Rutgers (Livingston College) and earned a Masters Political Affairs and Policy from Rutgers’ Bloustein School of Public Policy. Other honors include: Livingston Alumna Association’s Distinguished Alumna Award (2018); Edward J. Bloustein School of Public Policy Career Achievement Award (2017); NJ Assembly Honoree, Women’s History Month (2016). A lifetime member of the UFCW, Staci gardens, runs, knits, reads, cooks and makes good trouble in her free time. You can reach her at 732-406-7604 or staci@staciforpway.com