Mercer County Republicans will meet next week to pick a new GOP county chair to replace Lisa Richford, who is ending a controversial 11-year tenure by not seeking re-election.
The race to succeed her pits former State Senate candidate Pat Johnson against Maria Bua, who served briefly as county chair twelve years ago, for a post that might be more akin to a club presidency than a party boss.
Mercer is one of the least politically competitive counties in the state. Mercer County Republicans have not won a countywide election in 24 years or a legislative race in 18 years. Following the defeat of Hopewell Borough Councilman Sky Morehouse in 2023, there is not a single municipal official elected as a Republican in a partisan Mercer County election.
Republicans suffered a major setback in 2019 when they lost the Hamilton Township mayoralty; Democrats now have a 5-0 majority on the council.
Johnson, who worked as a cancer care nurse, lost an Assembly bid in the 15th district in 2021 and then moved to the next-door 14th to run for Senate in 2023. She lost to State Sen. Linda Greenstein (D-Plainsboro) by nearly 20 points.
Bua had become Mercer GOP co-chair in 2011 after Roy Wesley ended his own contentious four-year tenure by resigning. She shared the post with Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried. She is a former Ewing school board president.
In 2012, Bua and Fried stepped aside and a Fried ally, Richard Levesque, became county chairman.
Richford has faced attempts to remove her, but she shut down votes on those issues. She has run for office twice herself, receiving 38% in a 2011 bid for Mercer County surrogate and 33% last year against Democrat Dan Benson in the race for county executive.
She was re-elected in 2020 by an 86-42 vote against Lawrence Republican Club President Falk Engel.
Mercer County Democratic Chair Janice Mironov was unopposed in her bid for re-election earlier this month.
Kimberley Stuart, a former four-term Haddon Heights school board member and municipal prosecutor, has announced that she will challenge incumbent Tom Crone for Camden County GOP chair.
Stuart is a former assistant counsel to two New Jersey governors, Christine Todd Whitman and Donald DiFrancesco.
Crone, who was elected in 2022, has scheduled his reorganization meeting for July 1.