Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin re-elected to 19th district Assembly seat

The New Jersey Globe is projecting that Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin has been re-elected to a fifth term by the voters of the 19th district.

His running mate, Yvonne Lopez, was re-elected to a second  term.

They defeated Republicans Rocco Genova and Christina Onuha.

Craig Coughlin, at the pinnacle of a political career that began as a 25-year-old South Amboy School Board member in 1983, is also poised to return as Speaker for another two years after wresting the job away from Vincent Prieto.

Republicans won the 19th in the 1991 anti-Florio landslide and held it in 1993.  Democrats easily ousted the GOP incumbents in 1995 and have held the district with little difficulty since then.