Allocco mulling challenge to Sherrill

Patrick Allocco, a former aide to New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, says he is considering a challenge to Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) in New Jersey’s 11th district next year.

“I am thinking about running,” Allocco told the New Jersey Globe.  “I think she’s going to be incredibly difficult to beat.  She’s well-funded and she’s middle of the road.”

Allocco, 58, ran for Congress in 2018 following the retirement of Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Harding) and finished fourth in a field of five candidates with 4% of the vote in the Republican primary.

A former staffer on Ronald Regan’s 1984 re-election campaign, Allocco later worked as an advertising executive at Dow Jones and as a concert promoter.

In 2012, Allocco was held hostage by the Angolan government for 49 days after an act he booked for a New Year’s Eve celebration failed to show.

As a congressional candidate last year, Allocco proposed using American Idol audience participation technology to let constituents tell him to vote in Congress.

“You can vote on American Idol, Dancing With the Stars and The Voice, but you can’t vote on taxes, guns, health care and immigration,” he said last year.

Republicans have not yet found a candidate to challenge Sherrill, who flipped a House seat the GOP had held for 34 years.