Neptune Democrats met today to fill a vacant township committee seat to replace Nick Williams, a three-term committeeman and former mayor, who cited health issues as the reason for his resignation earlier this week.
This is the second time in two months that the Democratic county committee was called upon to nominate candidates to fill a vacancy. State law requires the party to submit three names to the governing body, which can either pick one or send it back to the local Democrats to make the choice.
In December, they met to replace Dr. Michael Brantley, whose seat had been declared vacant in November after an illness kept him away from township meetings since June. Brantley died on January 6 at age 79.
Four candidates asked to be considered: former school board member Jason Jones; Democratic State Committeewoman and CWA leader Ava Johnson; planning board member Bryan Acciani; and Derel M. Stroud, who works for Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing).
All four received eight votes on the first ballot; a second ballot shifted votes to Jones, Johnson, and Stroud, eliminating Acciani. The township committee is expected to fill the vacancy next week.
Williams was up for re-election this year.
In the vote to replace Brantley, Jones received 20 of 36 votes in a field of five candidates, but the township committee chose former Mayor Kevin McMillan over Jones and Eric Houghtaling, a former three-term assemblyman and mayor.
Jones had been elected to the Neptune Township Board of Education in 2003, at age 21, and served for thriteen years. He is a former aide to Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-Long Branch) and Donald Payne, Jr. (D-Newark). McMillan spent eighteen years on the township committee before losing party support for a seventh term, and was a Democratic Assembly candidate in 2011. He is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of organization lines.
Stroud, a zoning board member, ran on a ticket in 2017 with Gina Genovese, a former mayor of Long Hill and Democratic State Senate candidate against Tom Kean, Jr. who mounted an independent campaign on a platform of lower property taxes. He later withdrew and Genovese, with received 0.6% of the vote and finished 1,190,816 votes behind Democrats Phil Murphy and Sheila Oliver.