Hotelier Curtis Bashaw won his fourth organization line tonight after Somerset County Republicans endorsed him for the U.S. Senate.
He defeated Mendham Borough Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner in a runoff, 110-84 (57%-43%).
While Somerset Republicans voted overwhelmingly to award their organization line to Donald Trump – he defeated Nikki Haley by a 3-1 margin, 171-52 – they picked a U.S. Senate candidate who opposed Trump three times and still hasn’t endorsed him.
Twenty Republicans who voted on the first ballot didn’t stay for the second.
Somerset County made up 4.5% of the total votes cast in the 2020 Republican primary statewide, the seventh highest in the state.
North Plainfield GOP Municipal Chair Francine Gargano nominated Trump; Haley’s nominating speech was delivered by Gary La Spisa, a Bridgewater zoning board member and the vice president of the Insurance Council of New Jersey. La Spisa said Trump has lost Somerset twice and that local candidates cannot survive him being at the top of the ticket.
In the race for Somerset County Commissioner, Republicans picked Nick Cuozzo, a Bernards Planning Board member and former Somerset County grants coordinator (152), and Rocky Ganta, an engineer and businessman who serves on the Warren Township Environmental Commission (148). They defeated Bernards school board member Kirsten Light (98) and Noah Fofanah, a former Franklin council candidate (36).
Cuozzo and Ganta will face Democratic County Commissioners Shanel Robinson and Sara Sooy. Robinson and Sooy ousted incumbents in 2018 as the first Democrats to win freeholder seats since 1979.
Rep. Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) faced no convention opposition in his bid for a second term in New Jersey’s 7th district. Two minor primary opponents, Raafat Barsoom and John Sauders, did not file to compete at tonight’s convention.
Somerset Republicans backed Darius Mayfield’s bid for a rematch with Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) in the 12th; his lone opponent, North Plainfield school board member Thomas Jones, Jr., has dropped out of the race.
Bashaw, a real estate developer from Cape May County and a first-time candidate, has scored wins in Atlantic, Cumberland, and Ocean.
A former George W. Bush administration officia with close ties to Trump, Serrano Glassner has won conventions in Hunterdon, Morris, Union, and Warren counties. Zdan has the line in Monmouth.
Five other GOP U.S. Senate hopefuls – Fred Schneiderman, Justin Michael Murphy, Brian Jackson, Michael Estrada, and Steve Boston – did not enter the Somerset Republican convention contest.