From Brielle with Love: James Bond takes his ballot fight to court

The name is Bond. James Bond.

His mission: November.

His target: one of two seats on the Brielle Borough Council.

His villain: Monmouth County Clerk Christine Giordano Hanlon has revoked his license to run.

A Superior Court judge will hear arguments Monday in an unusual ballot-access lawsuit that could determine whether James E. Bond appears in the November 3 general election as a Democrat, an independent or a replacement candidate selected by the Brielle Democratic organization.

Judge Linda Grasso Jones is racing the election calendar in a case filed June 29, four weeks after the primary, and delays have potentially robbed candidates and voters of clarity in the race.

Bond filed a direct nominating petition on June 1 to run as an independent candidate for Borough Council.  The petition was submitted on time and contained the required number of signatures.

One day later, Bond received 127 write-in votes in the Republican primary, finishing fourth in the contest for two nominations.

Republican incumbents John Visceglia and Timothy Shaak won renomination with 399 and 387 votes, respectively; George Mervine III finished third with 335 votes.  Bond received 121 write-in votes under his full name and another six under variations of it.

Hanlon rejected Bond’s independent petition on June 5, concluding that he had sought and lost the Republican nomination and was therefore barred from running in November by New Jersey’s “sore loser law.”

Bond appealed the decision to the clerk’s office, which upheld the rejection on June 9.

The case became more complicated after the Democratic primary results were canvassed.

No Democratic candidates had filed petitions for the two Borough Council nominations.  Bond received 33 Democratic write-in votes under variations of his name — enough to meet the threshold for a place on the general-election ballot.  Mervine received 20 Democratic write-in votes, also enough to qualify.

Bond changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat on June 15 and attempted to accept the Democratic nomination.  Hanlon rejected his certificate of acceptance on June 22.

Bond and the Brielle Democratic Committee sued one week later.

Their attorney, Kevin Starkey, is asking Grasso Jones to place Bond on the ballot through one of three routes.  He argues that Bond qualified as the Democratic nominee through write-in votes; that his independent petition should not have been rejected; or that the Democratic committee should be permitted to select him to fill a vacancy created by Mervine’s inability to accept the other Democratic nomination.

The dispute over Bond’s independent petition turns on whether he “sought” the Republican nomination.

Bond maintains that he did not organize, authorize, or participate in the Republican write-in campaign.  In a sworn certification, he said he made no social-media posts, asked no one to solicit votes on his behalf, and does not maintain any social-media accounts.

Starkey argues that the actions of Bond’s supporters cannot be attributed to the candidate without evidence that Bond directed or encouraged them.

He cited a 2024 administrative ruling involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential candidacy. In that case, an administrative law judge found that unsolicited primary write-in votes did not trigger the sore loser law without evidence that Kennedy or his campaign had sought them.

Starkey warned that Hanlon’s interpretation would allow political opponents to disqualify an independent candidate by mounting an unauthorized write-in campaign in a party primary.

“The question under N.J.S.A. 19:13-8.1 is not whether others sought to have Bond elected, but whether Bond himself ‘sought’ the Republican nomination,” Starkey said in his brief.

Hanlon’s attorney, Jason Sena, says the evidence establishes that Bond was part of a coordinated Republican slate and cannot avoid the sore loser law by denying personal involvement.

The clerk’s office found multiple Facebook posts promoting Bond and nine other candidates running together in the Republican primary.  Some of the materials included a first-person biography of Bond.

Mervine and Republican County Committee candidate Mary Burke promoted Bond’s write-in candidacy and later served as circulators for his independent petition.  Members of the Republican slate and their relatives also signed Bond’s independent petition, according to Hanlon’s filing.

Sena noted that Brielle covers 1.76 square miles and has fewer than 5,000 residents.  He called Bond’s claim that he did not know about the write-in campaign “simply unbelievable.”

Hanlon relies heavily on a 2023 Appellate Division ruling that removed Penns Grove Mayor LaDaena Thomas from the ballot after she filed to run as an independent while simultaneously participating in a Democratic write-in campaign.

The court found that a candidate cannot evade the sore loser law by delegating campaign activities to others and later claiming ignorance of them.

Bond argues that the Thomas case is distinguishable because there was direct evidence connecting Thomas to the write-in campaign.  He says Hanlon has shown that others promoted his Republican candidacy but has not demonstrated that he approved of their actions.

The clerk also contends that she had the authority to reject Bond’s petition even though no voter or opposing candidate filed a formal objection.

Bond argues that a nominating petition that appears to comply with election law must be accepted when no timely objection is filed. Hanlon says county clerks have an independent obligation to keep ineligible candidates off the ballot and may examine voter records and publicly available information when reviewing a petition.

The Democratic nomination raises a separate set of issues.

Bond argues that the statute governing write-in nominations requires only that a candidate receive as many votes as would have been required signatures on a primary petition. It does not expressly require the recipient of write-in votes to have been registered with that party on primary day.

Starkey cited earlier New Jersey cases in which a candidate won one party’s primary while receiving enough write-in votes to secure another party’s nomination. Those courts allowed the candidate to choose which nomination to accept.

Hanlon says Bond was a registered Republican on June 2, voted in the Republican primary, and received 127 Republican write-in votes. She argues that he could not then accept a Democratic nomination after changing parties two weeks later.

The clerk also says Bond became ineligible to sign a Democratic certificate of acceptance when he signed the certificate accompanying his independent petition.

Hanlon gained additional support Thursday when Sena submitted a Burlington County ruling issued earlier this month.

In that case, Superior Court Judge Terrence Cook refused to place Robert Lasater on the ballot as the Republican nominee for Burlington Township Council.  Lasater received enough Republican write-in votes to qualify, and the local Republican organization supported his candidacy, but he was a registered Democrat on primary day.

Cook found that a candidate must belong to the party whose nomination he seeks, regardless of whether the candidacy begins with a formal petition or a write-in campaign.  He warned that allowing cross-party write-in nominations could encourage party raiding.

Sena told Grasso Jones that Bond’s case presents an even stronger argument for disqualification because Bond voted in the Republican primary, participated in what the clerk describes as a Republican write-in campaign, and switched parties only after he lost.

Bond’s third possible route involves Mervine.

Because Mervine appeared on the Republican primary ballot, both sides agree that he cannot accept the Democratic nomination he received through write-in votes.  The Brielle Democratic Committee says his disqualification created a vacancy that it is authorized to fill under state law.

The committee wants Grasso Jones to declare Bond eligible to fill that vacancy. Starkey says Bond is now a registered Democrat and meets the statutory requirement that a replacement nominee belong to the party filling the vacancy.

In 2022, Jones defended New Jersey’s Sore Loser Law when she ruled that Joseph Abutel was ineligible to file as an independent candidate for the Colts Neck Township Committee after running a write-in campaign in the GOP primary.

Hanlon says the committee is free to fill both Democratic vacancies by August 25, but it must choose legally qualified candidates.  Her position is that Bond’s Republican primary candidacy and independent petition prevent him from becoming the replacement.