Republicans are holding a Seinfeld primary in Essex County, where two slates of candidates for constitutional offices are fighting over the chance to get crushed in November.
None of the candidates are well-known or spent much money, but the primary – in what might be the last one with organization lines — could test whether Essex GOP voters feel brand loyalty toward the organization slogan, Essex County Republican Party Organization, Inc.” or if the renegade slate’s use of “America First Republicans” on the ballot might attract more votes.
Former President Donald Trump is heading the Essex GOP line.
In the race for sheriff, Nicholas Pansini, an Essex County corrections officer running on the line faces Robert Bianco. Both have run for office before; Pansini received 23% of the vote against incumbent Armando Fountoura in 2021, and Bianco ran for the State Assembly in 2007 but lost to Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) by over 8,300 votes.
Jeffrey Polewka and Scott Pollack are facing off for Essex County Register of Deeds and Mortgages. Pollack, the American First candidate, won 21% in his 2021 campaign against State Sen. Nia Gill (D-Montclair). The winner will face incumbent Juan Rivera, Jr., who is unopposed in the Democratic primary.
U.S. Senate candidate Curtis Bashaw is on the line with Trump; his main opponent, Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner, who has Trump’s endorsement, is on the America First Republicans line with Bianco and Pollack.
Fontoura is retiring after serving as sheriff since 1991. The likely Democratic nominee is Undersheriff Amir Jones. Jones’ primary opponent is Gary Nash, a retired law enforcement official who got into the race before U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi abolished the Democratic line for this year’s primary. Nash’s original intention was to preserve a better ballot position for Bloomfield Mayor Ted Gamble, who had been running off the line.
Essex Republicans have not elected a sheriff since 1979 and a register since 1969.
Only Essex and Hudson still elect county registers. Other counties that had them have eliminated the position as unnecessary and transferred their duties to the county clerk.
In 1979, Republican Hyman Mintz came within roughly 1,250 votes of ousting Democratic incumbent Larrie West Stalks after mounting a campaign calling for the abolishment of the post. Mintz had served as an assemblyman and freeholder and was the register from 1969 to 1974 when he declined to seek re-election in the Watergate Democratic wave election.
Republicans won the sheriff’s race only after federal prosecutors obtained an indictment against the Democratic incumbent before the election. The following January, U.S. District Court Judge Herbert Stern, a former U.S. Attorney, dismissed the indictment, suggesting charges should never have been brought in the first place.