Henry Kuhl

The announcement today that Bloomsbury Mayor Mark Peck has decided not to run in a special election convention for Marcia Karrow's Assembly seat is good news for John DiMaio.  While it ought not to be assumed that the 54 Republican County Committee members from Hunterdon County who voted for Michael Doherty would have been Peck's votes, the conventional wisdom is that any Peck votes out of Hunterdon would have come at DiMaio's expense. 

Karrow received 125 votes out of Hunterdon on Saturday - one more than Henry Kuhl received in his 2008 bid for re-election as Republican County Chairman.  Kuhl's challenger in that race was Peck, who received 78 votes - 24 more than Doherty did among Hunterdon County Committee members.

Hunterdon County Republican Chairman Henry Kuhl's vote total in his 2008 re-election campaign was nearly identical to the number of County Committee votes Marcia Karrow won in Hunterdon in the special election convention for State Senator.

Marcia Karrow won a State Senate seat by 42 votes, 195-143, boosted by receiving 70% of the vote (125-54) in her home county of Hunterdon and by holding Michael Doherty to 56% (89-70) in his home county of Warren.

Voter turnout in Hunterdon was 86%; thirty Republican County Committee members from Hunterdon County did not show up to vote today.  GOP County Chairman Henry Kuhl told PolitickerNJ.com this week that there were three vacancies out of 212 seats.

Karrow's vote tally in Hunterdon (125) was nearly equal to the votes received by Kuhl (124) in his 2008 re-election bid.  But while Kuhl's opponent, Bloomsbury Mayor Mark Peck, received 78 votes, Doherty won just 54.
 
All but a few of the 181 County Committee seats in Warren were filled.  Today, 159 votes were cast from Warren County.

Hunterdon County GOP Chairman Henry Kuhl

There’s back-chatter in the 23rd District that Hunterdon County Chairman Henry Kuhl doesn’t have all of the county’s 212 county committee seats filled in what most insiders predict will be a photo finish election between  Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington Twp.) and Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow (R-Raritan Twp.) for the vacant state Senate seat.

But Kuhl, who supports home-county candidate Karrow over the Warren-based Doherty, says there are only three vacancies in all of Hunterdon County – a point of pride for the chairman.

“Our seats are harder to fill because we have arguably the purest county committee system in the state,” said Kuhl. “Our seats are harder to fill, but we have only three vacancies.”

Bloomsbury Mayor Mark Peck

Bloomsbury Mayor Mark Peck acknowledged today that he is mulling a run for the Assembly in the 23rd District. 

“It’s certainly something I’m considering, and it’s a matter of where I think I can make the most difference,” said Peck, who failed in his 2005 primary bid for the Assembly, and last year challenged Hunterdon County Republican Chairman Henry Kuhl and lost.

“We needed new direction and new energy in the Republican Party and to date I’m pleased to see a lot of the reform aspects I called for have been adopted,” Peck said of his challenge to Kuhl. “The party is more open and inclusive, they’re having more lower-cost events, they have a website up and running, and there is more of an effort to communicate electronically.”

Hunterdon County Republican Chairman Henry Kuhl has sat down with all three potential candidates to succeed state Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Flemington), but said he won’t make an endorsement yet.

“This is too soon. Some people jump in front. I’m usually a late endorser because I want to see how all candidates running for office are participating, and whether they intend to be in to the end and so forth,” he said.

Hunterdon GOP Chairman Henry Kuhl "assumes" his county will field a candidate for Leonard Lance's State Senate seat

While Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Washington Township) is already pounding the pavement in an effort to succeed Congressman-elect Leonard Lance in the state Senate, no definite candidate from Lance’s native Hunterdon County has emerged to compete for the seat yet.

But long-time Hunterdon County Republican Chairman Henry Kuhl thinks there will be one.

“I would assume that that would happen,” he said.

A riverboat welcome.: Politicker photo 

MINNEAPOLIS - If the Democratic National Convention provided a simple conflict-resolution storyline, the Republican counterpart took the shape of a Quentin Tarentino script in comparison, with a hurricane threatening to throw everything off and the New Jersey delegation heading out on a river boat cruise anyway and doing relief work in the morning, and protest actions punctuating the streets.

All against the backdrop of McCain/Palin.

Despite a gaffe-filled Tuesday production, with Jo Ann Davidson, co chair of the Republican National Committee, referring to Alaska Gov. Sarah "Pawlenty," and a trio of gray or white-haired prime time speech-makers, including an unpopular sitting president and a former Democrat, hardly igniting the New Jersey delegates.

Tear gas cartridges hit the pavement outside the Xcel Center

"The protesters are all in here fighting with police," said the cabby on the way out of the downtown.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- Hunterdon County Republican Chairman Henry Kuhl said this morning that the sheer amount of votes his county will deliver for Republican congressional candidate Leonard Lance will easily trump Democrat Linda Stender’s huge fundraising advantage.

“I don’t know the actual number of votes, but we’ll deliver about 70% of the number of votes for Leonard,” said Kuhl, who expects Hunterdon to vote about 65% for both Senate candidate Dick Zimmer and presidential candidate John McCain.

The 7th district is comprised of Hunterdon, Union, Somerset and Middlesex Counties – the last of which makes up just a small portion of the district.

“Fundraising is very difficult whatever you are: a candidate, county organization or municipal organization. Everybody has fundraising problems,” said Kuhl.

MINNEAPOLIS - Stunned by Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) headline-snatching announcement last Friday that he selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, N.J. Democrats this week re-set after taking a three-day hard look at Palin.

So far, they’re having a difficult time squaring an obscure Alaskan with New Jersey’s hard-edged, ethnically diverse environs, despite Republicans’ best efforts - in the words of State GOP Chairman Tom Wilson - to make a case for why "New Jersey will love Sarah Palin."

"They have Eskimos in Alaska," former Summit Councilwoman Kelly Hatfield said to the suggestion that Palin may not have experience relating to the kinds of ethnic groups whose myriad cultures saturate New Jersey.

As for the fact that Palin’s a woman - a younger, slimmer verison of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with an attitude to tempt backlash voters over to the GOP after Clinton’s primary loss - Democrats remain unimpressed.