With no organization lines, former Tenafly Councilwoman Lauren Dayton appears to have won a comeback bid in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
Dayton leads incumbent Venugopal Menon by 57 votes, 597-540.
Another incumbent, Julie O’Connor, is the top vote-getter with 747 votes.
In 2021, Dayton ran for State Assembly in the 37th district, teaming up with Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-Englewood), who was mounting an off-the-line run for State Senate.
Democrats tossed Dayton from their line when she sought re-election in 2023. Beatriz-Pelaez-Martinez ran first with 714 votes, and Councilman Jeffrey Grossman defeated Dayton, 666-448.
Grossman was arrested on child pornography charges in October. He resigned from the council one week after his arrest but remained on the ballot. He was charged six weeks after the deadline to withdraw from the race, and three weeks after vote-by-mail ballots had already gone out.
Independent John Roglieri was the top vote-getter with 1,817 and his running mate, James Corsair, edged out Pelaez-Martinez by fifteen votes. Grossman ran 681 votes behind his running mate. No Republicans filed.
It’s not clear how many provisional ballots will be counted, the number of outstanding cure letters to repair technical defects on vote-by-mail ballots or the number of late-arriving VBMs that will be included in the final tally.