Gloucester GOP county chair election will be in 2024, judge decides

A Superior Court judge won’t order Gloucester County Republicans to hold an election for county chair this year, a ruling that allows the incumbent, Jacci Vigilante, to remain in office at least until next summer.

The judge, Benjamin Telsey, said the party has inconsistent bylaws for county chair elections: one that establishes a two-year term and another that explicitly requires county chair elections to be held in the year following county committee contests.  Vigilante was elected in 2021, and the county committee ran this year.

Stephen Pakradooni, who has run for county commission and the State Senate, has entered the race to challenge Vigilante.    Gloucester’s election cycle was knocked off course due to the COVID-19 pandemic that pushed back county committee elections.

“If I were to rule on the plaintiff’s request to require that election take place this year, that would require this court to ignore and disregard an existing provision of the bylaws that says it has to take place in the election has to take place in the off-year,” Telsey said.

Telsey cited a landmark decision involving former State Sen. Pierce Deamer in the 1960s, saying the courts should not get involved in intra-party squabbles unless they violate state law.

“I don’t find that this court should.  Involve itself when there’s two competing interests in the bylaws.  That’s the problem for the committee,” Telsey stated.  “The county committee has had two years if they felt that the clause requiring that the election take place in off years was not important anymore, then they’ve had two years to change that clause.  They haven’t done that.”

And Telsey suggested that if he did order Republicans to hold an election, he’d be ignoring the intent of Gloucester GOP bylaws that specifically decided that county chair candidates would be held one year after the county committee is elected, not a few weeks later as most counties do.

The judge said there was a “rationale behind making sure that those county committee people are more informed, and that’s why it was elected not to occur in the election (year).”

“The language in the bylaws is clear,” he said.  There’s no room for interpretation of that.”

Vigilante’s attorney, Matthew Moench, argued that the county committee set that system in place.

“They can amend their bylaws if they want to move forward in the future and have the elections consistent with the county committee.  They can do that.  They can amend their elections, but (the) county committee has understood that the bylaws haven’t changed and they should be enforced as written now,” Moench said.

Mark Sheridan, representing Pakradooni and a slate of GOP candidates for countywide office who won the June 7 primary election, disagreed with Telsey’s analysis.

The court hearing was broadcast live on the court’s website.

“I know there’s some public interest in it, so we elected to live stream it, Telsey said.