Nader loses re-election for county committee seat in Morris

Elizabeth Nader is a conservative activist and chair of the Elect Common Sense PAC, but voters in her own neighborhood squarely rejected her bid for re-election to a county committee seat on Tuesday in favor of challengers who live on her street.

Nader finished third in a five-candidate field for two county committee seats in Morris Township’s 6th district.  Marina Werner finished first with 40 votes, followed by incumbent Karl Werner with 33.  Nader received 25 votes, and her husband, George, came in fourth with 20 votes.  Paul Staudt finished last with 15 votes.

Nader’s defeat came largely from a rival, Laura Marie Ali, the Morris County GOP chair.  They’d been on different sides in recent primaries: Nader was for Phil Rizzo for governor in 2021 and Congress in 2022, while the Morris Republican line went to Jack Ciattarelli and Tom Kean, and this year, Nader was backing other off-the-line candidates.   Elizabeth and George Nader ran on a line headed by county commissioner candidate Paul DeGroot.

Ali was one of the big winners in the 2023 primary after the line she established in 2021 held firm: State Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Montville) and Assemblymen Jay Webber (R-Morris Plains) and Brian Bergen (R-Delaware) crushed well-financed, aggressive primary opponents; and her incumbent county commissioner, Tayfun Selen, defeated DeGroot by eight points.

Other high-profile county committee members who have become anti-organization Republicans also lost their seats.

William and Barbara Eames lost their county committee seats to Michael and Christina Cassidy in Hanover.  Bill Eames, 83, received 41%, and Barbara Eames finished at 43%.

After a new legislative map added six Morris County towns to the 27th district in 2011, Republicans had hopes of mounting a serious challenge to Democratic State Sen. Richard Codey (D-Roseland) and recruited William Sullivan, a wealthy Essex Fells councilman who was prepared to self-fund his campaign to run against him.

Bill Eames, the founder of the Tea Party-affiliated Morris Patriots, challenged Sullivan in the primary and won by 470 votes.  Sullivan won 57% in Essex but lost the race in Morris, which didn’t have a line then.    In the general election, Codey beat Eames by nearly 24 points.  Barbara Eames ran for freeholder in 2013, finishing 3,958 votes behind the third-place finisher, incumbent Tom Mastrangelo.

Parsippany Council President Loretta Gragnani lost her county committee seat in the 23rd district to Nancy Snyder, a former radio traffic reporter and now a New Jersey Transit executive.  Snyder won 45 to 36, a twelve-point margin (56%-44%).

The Morris GOP organization suffered one high-profile county committee loss:  in Rockaway Township, the GOP tried to take out Tucker Kelley, a former councilman who was running off-the-line for mayor.  While Kelley won 43% townwide, he was unbeatable in his neighborhood.  His opponent was Rachael Brookes, a councilwoman, and the Republican municipal chair; Kelley walloped her by eleven points, 94 to 64.   The top vote-getter in the three-candidate field for two seats was Kelley’s wife, Brooke, who received 100 votes; she received more votes than any other county committee member in Rockaway.

East Hanover Mayor Joseph Pannullo, who switched parties earlier this year after being courted by Ali, defeated Republican primary challenger Anthony Gelmi with 85% of the vote.