In Memoriam

Renee James, who worked as an immigration specialist on the staffs of U.S. Senators Andy Kim, George Helmy, and Bob Menendez, died on January 9.  She was 64.

Paul Budd, a former Gloucester County Freeholder, died on March 11.  He was 82.  A Republican, Budd was elected to the Woodbury City Council in 1968 – he took office in the final days of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, and in 1970, at age 26, he was appointed freeholder after Paul Cunard resigned to become assistant county solicitor.  He was elected to a three-year term in 1970; one of the Democrats he beat was Raymond Zane, who went on to serve 28 years in the State Senate.  Budd lost his seat in the 1973 Democratic Watergate wave.  In 1975, he returned to the Woodbury City Council. He resigned in 1980 to pay more attention to his growing funeral home business.

Joseph Cappello, a former councilman in Belleville and Woodcliff Lake, and the Auditor General of the Newark Board of Education during the state takeover in 1995, died on January 30.  He was 79.  Cappello served as a school business administrator in Ridgefield Park, Clifton, Millburn, and Ridgewood.

William Bain, who served as mayor of Deptford from 1996 to 2005 and as a councilman from 1989 to 2005, died on March 8.  He was 78. A U.S. Navy veteran and a Camden City firefighter for 30 years, Bain was the assistant superintendent of the Gloucester County Department of Buildings and Grounds for 25 years before his passing.

Gabriel Spera, a former Scotch Plains mayor and State Assembly candidate, died on January 9.  He was 90.  Spera was slated to go to the Assembly in a 2001 special election convention following the death of Assemblyman Alan Augustine (R-Scotch Plains), but got edged out by Tom Kean, Jr.  Later, redistricting moved Scotch Plains into a Democratic-leaning district, and he lost to Linda Stender (D-Fanwood) and Jerry Green (D-Plainfield by over 10,000 votes.

James Norton, a two-term Republican mayor of Bloomfield, died on January 25.  He was 91.  Norton died hours after his wife of almost 70 years, Dorothy, passed away.  He unseated Democratic Mayor James Gasparini in 1992 and was re-elected in 1995.  Norton lost the 1998 Republican primary to John Butkowski, whom he had removed as municipal court judge earlier in the year.

Richard Macomber, a former mayor of Delaware Township, died on February 26.  He was 86.  He had also served as mayor of Mead, Colorado.

Richard Dunne, a former Manasquan mayor and councilman, died on February 13.  He was 91.  Dunne was a U.S. Army veteran and former Republican Club president.

Charles Delehy, who served as a New Jersey Superior Court Judge for 32 years, died on February 11.  He was 86.  He was appointed to the bench by Gov. Thomas Kean in 1987 and served on recall until he was 80.

Dean Buono, who served as an Administrative Law Judge, died in January.  He was 57.

Paul C. Lambert, a Middletown native who served as U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador from 1990 to 1992 under President George H.W. Bush, died on January 2.  He was 97.  Lambert served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer and was a teammate of Bush on the 1948 Yale baseball team

Martin Rubashkin, a former Summit Republican municipal chairman, died on February 9.  He was 94.  A former planning board member, Rubashkin died three weeks after his wife of 71 years passed away.

James Hinckley, a former Hasbrouck Heights councilman in the 1970s, died on January 27.  He was 86. After moving to Middletown, Hinckley served as zoning board chairman, planning board vice chairman, and Sewage Authority chairman.

Stephen Quinn, the father of Democratic strategist Mickey Quinn and a diehard New York Yankees fan, died on February 16.  He was 73.

Donald Rosselet, a former reporter for the Courier-News, Perth Amboy Evening News, and Elizabeth Daily Journal, died on January 16.  He was 90.

Jonathan Berr, who won awards as a journalist for Bloomberg, Forbes, CBS MoneyWatch and other publications, died on February 18.  He was 58.

Elaine Christiansen, who worked as an aide to several state legislators in the 1970s and 1980s, died on January 30.  She was 88.

Gregory Roberts, a former president of the Bayonne NAACP and Planning Board member, died in February.  He was 77.

Donald Ellison, a former Mercer County Undersheriff, died on January 27.  He was 60.  He worked for the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s office.

Harvey Moscowitz, a former Passaic County planning director and executive assistant to New Jersey Commissioner of Conservation and Economic Development (now the Department of Environmental Protection) Robert Roe, died on January 23.  He was 93.

Rita Gore, a nurse who served as an advisor to the New Jersey Commissioner of Health, died on February 23.  She was 93.  She was the mother of former Hamilton Township (Mercer) Councilman Ed Gore.

Phyllis Dickson, a former Cherry Hill Women’s Republican Club president, died on February 5.  She was 93.

Rosetta Lattimore, whose late husband, Rev. Everett Lattimore, served as mayor of Plainfield and as a Union County Freeholder, died on February 15.  She was 95.  Lattimore served as a Plainfield Democratic County Committeewoman and as the first Black president of the Plainfield/North Plainfield Area YWCA.

John Pogorelec, a longtime Clifton zoning and planning board attorney, died on February 21.  He was 83.  Pogorelec had served on the Governor’s Ethnic Advisory Council and the New Jersey Health Care Facilities Financing Authority.

Edward Baltazuk, a former member of the Toms River Rent Leveling Board, died on February 9.  He was 88.

David Lodge, Jr., a retired electronics technician for the Associated Press in Newark and Trenton and a former Cherry Hill Republican Club President, died on January 25.  He was 77.  Lodge was a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam.

Richard Stout, who served as a Republican county committeeman in Hamilton (Mercer), died on January 11. He was 76.

Jeffrey Belding, a former Hamilton (Mercer) Republican Club president, died on February 21.  He was 82.

Nancy Gilbertson, a partner at Bathgate, Wegener & Wolf, a politically connected Ocean County law firm, died on January 2.  He was 78.

Frances Haines, whose late husband, William Haines, served as mayor of Hazlet, died on February 14.  She was 92. Haines owned Club Miami in Keansburg.

Robert Klinger, who served as an Ocean Township (Monmouth) fire commissioner in the 1970s, died on February 5.  He was 94.

Nancy Bailey Judy, a native of East Orange who later served as a county commissioner in Dallas, Texas, died on December 29, 2025.  She was 94.  Judy was the GOP nominee for Congress in Texas’ 5th district when Republican Alan Steelman gave up his House seat to challenge Democratic U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen; she lost to Democrat Jim Mattox by nine points.

Joseph Bradley, who spent four decades as a Delaware River pilot, died on January 8.  He was 88.  His uncle, Michael J. Bradley, represented Philadelphia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1937 to 1947, and later served as Philadelphia Democratic city chairman.  Michael Bradley worked in the White House as President Woodrow Wilson’s personal telegrapher during World War I.