Administrative Law Judge Carl Buck III spent about 12 ½ hours on the bench today, hearing a challenge to the nominating petitions of Mario Kranjac, the former Englewood Cliffs mayor seeking the Republican nomination for governor after rival Bill Spadea filed a challenge on Friday.
Buck invalidated 204 of the 372 signatures reviewed today, while reserving action on twelve others. Kranjac, a late entrant into the governor’s race, filed with 2,949 signatures just before the 4 PM filing deadline last Monday. That means Spadea needs to get 450 of the signatures removed to toss Kranjac from the ballot.
The Spadea campaign said in their filing that as many as 1,258 signatures are in dispute.
Kranjac did not qualify for matching funds and will not be on the stage when Republican gubernatorial candidates debate on May 20.
In State Assembly races, candidates for State Assembly sharing a slogan with gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop came up short after judges rejected enough signatures to annul their petitions: Dave Luciano in the 14th and David Tingle in the 18th.
Petitions for two other Fulop-backed candidates, Kevin Ryan and Rebecca Holloway in the 6th, survived legal challenges. Two more – former Evesham Councilman Eddie Freeman in the 8th and Piscataway school board member Loretta Rivers in the 17th – are awaiting a decision by judges.
There are two separate challenges to nominating petitions involving Richard Castaldo, a political consultant running against incumbents Gerald Scharfenberger (R-Middletown) and Vicky Flynn (R-Holmdel) for State Assembly in the 13th district.
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