Vito Perillo is a 97-year-old WWII veteran, who was reelected to a second term as mayor of Tinton Falls, N.J. on Tuesday.
Perillo is believed to be the oldest person ever to win a mayoral race in the U.S.
“Thank you to my fellow residents for trusting me to lead Tinton Falls forward for the next four years. You may know that I am not a politician, but today I stopped to think about why people might vote for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a WWII veteran, or an ‘old guy’ (hopefully not), or maybe it’s because you read my flyer highlighting our accomplishments over the last 4 years. My hope, however, is that it’s because you see that I care about our town,” Perillo wrote on Facebook.
He entered local politics four years ago at age 93, when he was elected mayor of the New Jersey borough, located 40 miles south of Newark.
Perillo was drafted into the Navy after high school, and after the war he spent 38 years working as an electrical engineer for the Department of Defense. He came out of retirement and ran for mayor because he grew increasingly frustrated with his property tax bill, the town administration’s spending practices, and scandals facing the police department, The Washington Post reports.
During his first campaign, he knocked on every door in Tinton Falls, and met with the town’s 18,000 residents.
The effort paid off, and he beat out the two-term incumbent.
He drives to City Hall each day in his Honda Accord, always wearing a suit and tie, and has financed the repaving of miles of roads and sidewalks in the town. He also established a park and is working to reopen the town’s shuttered library.
“The thing about my age is that, when people read about it and hear about it, they’re encouraged,” he said in a recent interview with People magazine. “They say, ‘If he can do it …’ ”
Go get ’em, Vito!
