Two Ocean County commissioners are on the chopping block after Republican screening committee members voted to endorse two challengers.
Manchester Mayor Rob Arace and Berkeley Township GOP Municipal Chair Jennifer Bacchione won the recommendation of the panel to replace incumbents Gary Quinn and Bobbi Jo Crea. The Ocean County Republican convention next month will need to decide if they’ll ratify the screening committee picks or stick with Quinn and Crea.
Arace and Bacchione are political allies of George Gilmore, who returned as Ocean County GOP chairman in 2022. The 30-year-old Arace, the mayor since 2022, would be an unusually young pick for Ocean. Bacchione is the executive director of the county GOP organization and the wife of Berkeley Township Mayor John Bacchione.
A former Lacey mayor, Quinn is serving his second term; he was elected in 2018 to replace John Bartlett, who had spent 39 years as an Ocean County freeholder. Crea, a former Little Egg Harbor mayor, was elected in 2021 after defeating John Bacchione and others in a vote of the screening committee.
Last year, the screening committee declined to support the re-election of 9th district Assemblywoman DiAnne Gove (R-Long Beach), who had spent nearly fifteen years in the legislature; instead, it endorsed Stafford Mayor Greg Myhre, who defeated Gove at the GOP convention by 11 votes, 67-56.
But in the neighboring 10th district, the screening committee advised dumping Assemblyman Greg McGuckin (R-Toms River), but he went on to win the Ocean GOP convention anyways – so the screening committee’s recommendations aren’t always gospel.