Dunn wins one seat in LD25; other seat too close to call

GOP Assemblywoman Aura Dunn (R-Mendham) has narrowly won re-election in New Jersey’s 25th legislative district, the New Jersey Globe projects, but the other seat remains too close to call between Assemblyman Christian Barranco (R-Jefferson), a Republican, and Morristown planning board member Marisa Sweeney, a Democrat.

As of 12:25 a.m. and with just a few votes left to be counted, Dunn is in first with 47,605 votes, or 25.6%; Sweeney has 46,960 votes (25.2%); Barranco has 46,715 votes (25.1%); and Sweeney’s Democratic running mate, Morristown Councilman Steven Pylypchuk, is in last with 44,857 votes (24.1%).

Dunn and Barranco went into Election Night as the favorites to win re-election in their Morris County seat, but their plans were complicated by Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, who cruised to a landslide win and lifted up downballot candidates all around the state. Sherrill, who has represented Morris County in Congress for the last seven years, appears to have very narrowly carried the county against Jack Ciattarelli, the first time since Brendan Byrne’s 1973 landslide that a Democrat pulled that off.

If Sweeney does end up winning the second seat, it would be a momentous outcome for the 25th district, which has only ever elected one Democrat to the legislature since its creation 50 years ago.

Dunn first got to the legislature in 2019, after State Sen. Anthony R. Bucco (R-Boonton) died and his son, Assemblyman Anthony M. Bucco (R-Boonton) succeeded him in the Senate. Bucco and Dunn both had to run in hotly contested special elections to keep their seats in 2020, which earned them the honor of being the top two vote-getters in New Jersey legislative history, since they were on the same ballot as that year’s presidential election.

Barranco joined the Assembly in 2021 after ousting Assemblywoman BettyLou DeCroce (R-Parsippany) in a Republican primary for the neighboring 26th district; redistricting ahead of the 2023 elections moved him into the more competitive 25th district.

Sweeney and Pylypchuk, meanwhile, took an interesting path to the Democratic nominations. Rather than seek support from the party organizations in Morris and Passaic Counties, they instead joined gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop’s slate of reform candidates; the local Democratic parties then simply declined to recruit anyone to run against them, and they won their primaries uncontested.

Thanks to their ties to Fulop, the 25th district’s stubborn red lean, and the strengths of Dunn and Barranco as incumbents, state Democrats saw little reason to invest in the Sweeney-Pylypchuk campaign. But with Sherrill at the top of the ticket, all of those factors were wiped away, making for one of the closest races anywhere in the state.