GOP will need replacement candidate for Assembly in 27th district

Republicans are switching out their State Assembly candidate in the 27th district.

Jonathan Sym, a U.S. Navy Reserve commander from Millburn, decided to move his family to Virginia after his one-year deployment to active military service.

Two Republicans have filed to replace Sym on the ticket: Michael Mecca, Jr., a former Passaic County Freeholder and GOP county chairman, and U.S. Army veteran Malvin Frias.

The vote is set for Tuesday evening.

Mecca was serving on the Clifton Zoning Board in 1998 when Republicans, then the majority party in county government, picked him to replace retiring Freeholder John O’Brien. He was appointed in the fall after O’Brien stepped down early; on a slate with veteran Freeholder Walter Porter, Republicans easily defeated the two Democratic candidates, Kenneth Morris and John Nigro.

Mecca and Porter faced a tougher race in 2001; on election night, it looked like Mecca had lost, but a recount eventually put him in first place (47,366). Porter won his eighth term by just 171 votes in a rematch with Morris, 47,177 to 47,006, and Bloomingdale Mayor Craig Ollenschalger finished fourth with 43,690 votes.  Meca and Porter were the lone Republicans on a freeholder board that had been 7-0 Republican in 1997.

After leaving the freeholder board, Mecca served as the Passaic County Republican Chairman from 2002 to 2006.

In 2004, Mecca and Porter lost their seats to Democrats Terry Duffy and the Woodland Park mayor Pat Lepore by over 22,000 votes.

Frias ran for the Clifton City Council in a November 2018 non-partisan election, finishing last in a field of thirteen candidates with 3.5% of the vote.

27th district voters will see an entirely different ballot in November than they did in the primary, with just one of the six candidates running in June for the office they seek in the general election.

For the Senate seat, redistricting forced two longtime Democratic incumbents, Richard J. Codey and Nia Gill, into a primary; Codey won by fourteen points but decided instead to retire.  Assemblyman John McKeon replaced him.  Democrats picked Livingston Councilwoman Rosy Bagolie to replace him; she’ll run on a slate with the lone primary winner to run in the general, Assembly candidate Alixon Collazos-Gill.

Republicans missed the March filing deadline to pick their candidates and nominated their slate as write-ins in the June primary: Michael Byrne for Senate and Irene DeVita and Sym for Assembly.

Sym lost a 2021 Assembly bid against McKeon by 20,070 votes.  Before Clifton was redistricted from the 34th to the 27th, DeVita ran unsuccessfully for the Assembly three times.

The 27th is considered safe Democratic in the general election.