Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) is set to face a primary challenge for the first time since her initial 2018 run for Congress, with Totowa real estate consultant Mark De Lotto filing petitions to take her on in the 11th congressional district.
De Lotto, who has not run for office before, was mistakenly excluded from the New Jersey Division of Elections’ initial list of candidates, but was added this afternoon. On a Substack devoted to his campaign, De Lotto calls himself “the Dark Horse Candidate” and “the originator of the Singular System [a system he says would solve overtaxation] and an advocate for the revival of the American Dream.”
“I am a candidate that stands by our founding Republic’s maxim ‘United we Stand, Divided we Fall’ and strives for unity to ensure that we remain a strong and resilient nation,” one of De Lotto’s posts says. “I am a candidate unconnected to the political establishment and capable of rising above the constraints of the current political environment. ”
In 2018, Sherrill walloped several Democratic primary opponents for what was then a Republican-held district with 77% of the vote; she did not face any primary challengers at all in her 2020 or 2022 elections. There’s no reason to believe that the congresswoman, who has built up a strongly loyal base in her Essex and Morris County-based district, is in danger from De Lotto this year.
(Sherrill also wins this year’s prize for most petition signatures submitted by a New Jersey House candidate with 3,706 – slightly more than the 200 she needed to make the ballot.)
De Lotto isn’t the only candidate who did, in fact, file petitions this year despite being initially excluded from the list of candidates. Shirley Maia-Cusick, a Republican running for the open 3rd congressional district, has also been added to the list of candidates; a spokesperson for the Division of Elections said that Maia-Cusick’s petitions were temporarily misplaced, but were located today.
Maia-Cusick started out the cycle as a candidate for Senate before moving to Burlington County and switching to the 3rd district race. But local Republicans instead chose Rajesh Mohan as their preferred nominee, leaving Maia-Cusick and fellow off-the-line Republicans Greg Sobocinski and Michael Faccone with an uphill battle – unless the ongoing lawsuit to strike down the county line is successful.