Peter Vallorosi, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, told a judge today that he’ll withdraw his candidacy following a challenge to his nominating petitions brought by one of his primary opponents, Mendham Borough Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner.
Vallorosi filed for Senate with 1,122 signatures, 122 more than the 1,000 needed, but a large number were challenged by Ethan Adams, the political director for Serrano Glasner’s campaign. In his challenge, Adams listed 192 signatures that had a variety of deficiencies – voters who were registered at different addresses, who were registered with the wrong party, or who didn’t seem to exist at all – and another 450 that appeared to be written in the same handwriting.
At a virtual hearing today before Administrative Law Judge Andrew Baron, Vallorosi did not show up to defend his petitions, and did not initially respond to multiple attempts by the judge to reach him by phone and email. But after several hours of adjudicating signatures in his absence, Vallorosi at last contacted the judge’s office and said he plans to withdraw from the race.
His decision won’t be formalized, though, until he files paperwork ending his campaign. Baron said that in the event Vallorosi doesn’t do that promptly, he’ll have to reconvene the hearing tomorrow at 11 a.m. to determine whether Vallorosi should remain on the ballot.
The Vallorosi challenge was one of two Senate petition challenges brought by the Serrano Glassner campaign; the other, against former Tabernacle Committeeman Justin Murphy, was not successful.
Adams contested 64 of Murphy’s 1,053 signatures, but Murphy successfully defended enough of them to keep himself above 1,000. Once Murphy reached that threshold, Adams withdrew his challenge, thus guaranteeing Murphy will remain on the ballot.
With Vallorosi set to depart the race, there will soon officially be four Republican Senate candidates on New Jersey primary ballots this June: Murphy, Serrano Glassner, developer Curtis Bashaw, and U.S. Navy veteran Albert Harshaw.
Serrano Glassner and Bashaw are the only two candidates to have any county organizational lines – and Bashaw has substantially more of them, making him the frontrunner for the nomination. (County lines have been struck down by a federal judge for this year’s Democratic primary, but they’ll remain in place for the Republican primary.) By challenging Murphy’s and Vallorosi’s petitions, the Serrano Glassner campaign was likely trying to reduce the number of fellow off-the-line conservative candidates she’ll have to compete with in counties where Bashaw has the advantage.