The first votes in the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate will be cast tonight when first-in-the-state Hunterdon County Republicans hold their annual party convention to award their organization line, where a candidate with close ties to former President Donald Trump faces off against a candidate who refused to support him.
Tonight’s vote features a matchup between Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner and real estate developer Curtis Bashaw; two announced candidates who are generally considered the top-tier contenders in the race for the seat currently occupied by indicted three-term Democrat Bob Menendez.
Serrano Glassner has the support of Rep. Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield), who represents Hunterdon in Congress.
Former News 12 reporter Alex Zdan is also on the ballot tonight. He was in Arizona this week to see the U.S.-Mexican border. Zdan told Matt Rooney on his 1210 WPHT radio show on Sunday that he has made a final decision about running and will announce it this week. He does not need to be an announced candidate to compete this evening.
There are seven other candidates in the GOP Senate race—an unusually large field in a state where Republicans haven’t elected a U.S. Senator in 52 years – but only three of them filed to compete in Hunterdon in time to meet the January 19 deadline: Albert Harshaw, a decorated U.S. Navy veteran from Pemberton who briefly sought the Republican presidential nomination this year; small businessman Michael Estrada, who won 1% of the vote in an independent State Assembly bid six years ago; and perennial candidate Gregg Mele, the 2021 Libertarian candidate for governor who is making his fifth run for public office.
Former Tabernacle Deputy Mayor Justin Michael Murphy is also in the race; Fred Schneiderman, a Cresskill businessman who briefly ran for Congress in New Jersey’s 5th district in 2022, filed to seek party support for U.S. Senate at the Bergen County GOP convention but his social media does not mention is candidacy. In his brief bid to take on Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff), Schneiderman raised $279,841 — $164,748 of that was his own money.
The other two GOP U.S. Senate candidates are newcomers: Steve Boston, an entrepreneur from Ocean City; and Brian Jackson, an America First Constitutionalist Conservative and former software sales company owner from Dumont.
Before becoming mayor, Serrano Glassner served in George W. Bush’s administration. Her husband, Michael Glassner, has been a key member of Trump’s political team since 2015. Bashaw, a Cape May hotelier and former executive director of the New Jersey Casino Reinvestment Authority from Cape May County, contributed to Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016 and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2024.
Kean has no Republican primary opponent; no GOP candidates filed to run against him in Morris County either. He is expected to face presumptive Democratic nominee Sue Altman, a former teacher and activist whose last of three primary opponents dropped out of the race yesterday.
Two incumbent county commissioners, Susan Soloway and Jeff Kuhl, are unopposed in their bids for party support at the convention. Soloway, seeking her third term, is a former Franklin Township mayor who attended the January 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol but did not go inside the building. A former Raritan Township mayor, Kuhl became a county commissioner last year following the resignation of Matthew Holt; his late father, Henry, was a former GOP county chairman.
Democrats have not won a county commissioner election in Hunterdon since 1979, when Benjamin Kirkland lost his bid for a fourth term to Henning Holmgaard. The last Democrat to win countywide office was James Marino, who ousted two-term Sheriff Warren Peterson under unusual circumstances in 1989. Marino had lost a GOP primary to Peterson by about 700 votes, and before the enactment of New Jersey’s Sore Loser law, became the Democratic candidate and defeated Peterson in the general election. Marino switched back the GOP, narrowly won renomination in 1992, and then lost a GOP primary in 1995.