Marcia Karrow

The third-step in the four-part contest to nominate Republican legislative candidates in the 23rd  district will be a decision by Hunterdon County Republicans to pick a second Assembly candidate to run on their organization line in the June primary.  Their ticket already includes newly-elected State Sen. Marcia Karrow (R-Raritan) and Assemblyman-elect John DiMaio (R-Hackettstown).  The other Assembly candidate will be from Hunterdon.

The leading candidates for the one seat are the two Hunterdon Freeholders who lost to DiMaio in yesterday's special election convention: Erik Peterson and Matthew Holt.  On the first ballot, Peterson beat Holt 104-56.  These numbers might indicate an advantage for Peterson.

Hunterdon GOP Chairman Henry Kuhl and the Republican screening committee must pick a candidate to replace Assemblyman Michael Doherty (R-Washington), who says he's leaving the Assembly to challenge Karrow in the Republican State Senate primary.  Even if Doherty decides to drop his Senate bid, it appears that the door is closed to being included on the organization line for a fifth term in the State Assembly.

The main thing to watch over the next few weeks is to see if Doherty stays in the Senate race - an uphill fight, now that his friend and ally, DiMaio, has now endorsed Karrow and will run on her ticket, and that his friend and ally, Warren County GOP Chairman Douglas Steinhardt, has agreed to back the Kuhl slate.  If Doherty continues, he might recruit two Assembly candidates to run with him. Read More >

Voters will go to the polls today, likely in very small numbers and using paper ballots, to elect Fire Commissioners and approve fire budgets in a more than 25 municipalities throughout the state.  In many towns, Fire Commissioners are paid positions.  Polls are typically open from 2PM to 9PM, and most contests are unopposed. 

The premier Fire Commissioner race is in Woodbridge, where former Council President and Republican Municipal Chairman Kenneth Gardner hopes to restart his political career as a District 1 Fire Commissioner.  Gardner, who sought the GOP nomination for Congress in 2000 and lost bids for local office, is hoping that the Fire Commissioner seat might help him return to public office or enhance his ability to get a state job if a Republican is elected Governor.  He faces Ryan Horvath, a young fire captain who has been visiting voters door-to-door.

Republican County Committee in Hunterdon and Warren County are meeting today to elect a new Assemblyman from the 23rd district.  Hunterdon Freeholders Matthew Holt and Erik Peterson, and Warren Freeholder John DiMaio, are vying to fill the vacant seat created when Marcia Karrow moved up to the State Senate earlier this month.

And in Union County, Republicans will hold the first-in-the-state gubernatorial convention to award the organization line for the June primary.  Former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie is favored to win, and former Bogota Mayor Steven Lonegan is likely to finish second.  The real race is for third place between five-term Assemblyman Rick Merkt and Brian D. Levine, the Mayor of Franklin Township.

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There are three votes worth watching on Saturday:

1.  In District 23, Republican County Committee members from Hunterdon and Warren counties will meet to elect a new Assemblyman.  Hunterdon Freeholders Matthew Holt and Erik Peterson, and Warren Freeholder John DiMaio face off for the Assembly seat left vacant earlier this month when Marcia Karrow (R-Raritan) took her seat in the State Senate.  Hunterdon GOP Chairman Henry Kuhl has promised at least one Assembly seat to Warren County, so if DiMaio loses tomorrow, he'll still be on the organization line in the June primary for the seat Michael Doherty (R-Washington) is giving up to challenge Karrow for the State Senate.  If DiMaio wins the special election convention, Holt and Peterson can fight it out in April for the other Assembly seat.

2. The first-in-the-state Republican gubernatorial convention is in Union County, where former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has a substantial lead among endorsements from party leaders and elected officials.  With former Bogota Mayor Steven Lonegan seemingly a lock for second place, the real race is the one for third place between five-term Assemblyman Rick Merkt (R-Mendham) and Brian D. Levine, the Mayor of Franklin Township.  There is not a lot of room for another candidate in a field that looks to be as many as seven, and if someone were to break out of the pack, it can be either one or the other.  Merkt may have the edge: his campaign manager, former Hillsborough Councilman Christopher Venis, is a longtime political operative with roots in Union County as an aide to U.S. Rep. Bob Franks and as a member of a Union County-based local political consulting firm.  The other three candidates, Morris County Freeholder Jim Murray, and businessmen David Brown and Dennis Knight, are not participating in the Union County vote.

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Republican County Committee members in either Hunterdon or Warren counties will return in March for their third special election convention of the year.  They will need to elect a new Freeholder to replace the winner of Saturday’s State Assembly contest in District 23.  All three candidates are Freeholders: Matthew Holt and Erik Peterson in Hunterdon, and John DiMaio in Warren.   Holt’s seat is up in 2009, and there would be special elections in November to replace Peterson or DiMaio.

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CLINTON TWP. – Undeterred by a hotel bar television set in the next room that jars the chandeliers with each apparent dramatic upswing, 50 people pack the chairs in the Holiday Inn ballroom here on the outskirts of downtown as three Republicans make their respective cases for why they should be the next assemblyman from the 23rd Legislative District.

It’s a comparatively quiet drama – quiet but intense.

Hunterdon County Freeholder Matt Holt, Hunterdon County Freeholder Erik Peterson, and Warren County Freeholder John DiMaio have spent the last six weeks relentlessly crisscrossing the Warren-Hunterdon county line and engaging members of the GOP committees of these two rural and expansive west New Jersey counties.

They recognize faces in the crowd tonight, including that of Hunterdon County Republican Party Chairman Henry Kuhl, who impassively says to a visitor, “Welcome to God’s country,” to the question of who’s going to win the contest.

Sponsored by the Clinton Township Republican Club, this is the same brook and hamlet part of the state that launched the political career of U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton), a political moderate whose 7th Congressional District victory last year gave the GOP something to savor in an otherwise frigid political year for Republicans - but also left the harder right wing of the party agonizing about its future.

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WHITE - After approaching the Warren County Freeholders at their meeting last week, Assemblyman Michael Doherty (R-Washington Twp.) plans to sit down with the freeholders this afternoon to try to convince them to pass a resolution banning borrowing at the county level without voter approval. 

It’s no declaration of political war, insists Doherty – simply a good government broadside and timely exclamation point on a crusade he launched a year ago.

“Voters approved the Lance Amendment (forbidding borrowing without voter approval at the state level), but there remains a huge loophole that needs to be closed for counties and municipalities,” said Doherty, a former freeholder who is pursuing an off-the-line run against state Sen. Marcia Karrow (R-Raritan Twp.) in the 23rd District.

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Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Parsippany) named Assemblyman David Wolfe (R-Brick Township) to the Budget Committee today.

Wolfe replaces state Sen. Marcia Karrow (R-Raritan), who was elevated from the Assembly earlier this month to replace U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton) in the state senate. 

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HACKETTSTOWN – Pro-life and pro-gun, Warren County Freeholder John DiMaio calls himself the most conservative candidate in the race for the vacant District 23 Assembly seat even though he started his political career in the opposing party. 

The president of A. DiMaio & Son, Inc., a general contracting company he co-founded in 1977, he came up the hard way, working in a family business that taught him early the value of a dollar and that honed his instincts for survival and self-sufficiency.

At 53 now, the Republican’s been around a little longer than his Hunterdon County competitors, Freeholder Matt Holt and Freeholder Erik Peterson, and he’s punched more time at the local level, having served 11 years on the Hackettstown council and then an additional nine years as mayor before winning a seat on the Warren County Freeholder Board.

He spent 14 of those years in Hackettstown as a Democrat, and not surprisingly in this increasingly competitive GOP terrain heading toward Saturday’s special convention, that’s the first fact about DiMaio’s background his opponents’ surrogates highlight in casual conversation.

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FRANKLIN – If politics inevitably involves relationships, Hunterdon County Freeholder Erik Peterson has a good one in U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-Clinton).

Not only did Lance serve as best man at Peterson’s wedding, but he’s the godfather of Peterson’s son. Those connections are not insignificant in the budding career of the 42-year old Franklin Township politician, especially considering Lance’s solidification as the darling venerable statesman of Hunterdon County last year when he thrashed Linda Stender in their 7th District Congressional contest.

From his perch in the U.S. Congress now, Lance isn’t exactly seizing handfuls of glossy campaign literature and making triumphal rounds in a Republican special election and indeed sources say he's hardly been visible, but, Peterson assures, “He’s helping me.”

He won’t elaborate. But any kind of “help” from Lance presumably can’t hurt in Hunterdon. 

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CLINTON – By design, Matt Holt’s grandfather, the late U.S. Sen. Clifford P. Case, kept politics separate from his family, so Holt learned what he knows about the trade on his own, at the local level. 

After trying at first and failing, he won a seat on the Clinton Town Council with the death of Councilman Rich Simpson. 

Six years into his service, Holt decided he wanted to be mayor. 

He told longtime incumbent Mayor Allie McGahren of his plans. McGahren told Holt she wanted to be mayor for two more years. If he could hold off until then, she would retire and cede the field to the young up-and-comer. She followed through on the agreement, and Holt was elected mayor.

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