Signorello will drop out of NJ-7 race

Roselle Park Mayor Joe Signorello III plans to drop out of the Democratic primary for New Jersey’s 7th congressional district, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.

Signorello’s departure will leave two Democrats remaining in the 7th district race: former New Jersey Working Families Party director Sue Altman and former U.S. State Department official Jason Blazakis. A third candidate, Summit Council President Greg Vartan, is considering entering the race but has not yet announced his plans.

The winner of the primary will take on Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), who flipped the seat from Democrats last year.

Signorello first won the mayor’s office in Roselle Park (pop. 13,967) in 2018, when he was 30 years old. Three years later, he became the Democratic nominee for State Senate in the competitive 21st legislative district, but amid the 2021 red wave, he lost to now-State Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield) by seven percentage points.

At the beginning of this year, Signorello announced that he would take on U.S. Senator Bob Menendez in the 2024 Democratic primary, arguing that the senator had too many ethical issues and that the state was ready to move on. His argument proved prescient; federal charges against Menendez were released last month, and most state Democrats have since called on the senator to resign.

Signorello himself, though, had gotten out of the Senate race long before the Menendez charges became public, switching to a 7th district campaign in July. That put him on a collision course with Altman, who had launched her campaign two months before; Blazakis joined the race in August.

While it’s not immediately clear what is causing Signorello to drop out, his path to the 7th district Democratic nomination was always going to be difficult. From the beginning, Altman and Blazakis possessed advantages that Signorello was hard-pressed to match – particularly when it came to fundraising, arguably the most important part of a swing-seat congressional campaign.

The deadline for candidates to release fundraising reports from the 3rd quarter is coming up next weekend; Altman has already announced that she raised $283,000 during the quarter and $500,000 since launching her campaign, while Signorello and Blazakis have not released their own reports yet.

It remains to be seen how Signorello’s departure will shake up the campaign, and both Altman and Blazakis could stand to benefit in different ways from a Signorello-free race. His absence also means that there will be no candidate running from Union County (which makes up a third of the district’s Democratic primary voters), potentially representing an opportunity for Vartan or some other late-arriving Union-based candidate.