The race for three seats on the Passaic County Board of Commissioners remains too close to call, with Republicans leading for the first time in twelve years in a contest where about 3,300 votes are still uncounted.
The GOP candidate for Passaic County Surrogate is also ahead.
Democratic Commissioner Sandi Lazzara is ahead by just 74 votes, while the other two incumbents are currently in fifth and sixth place.
The top vote-getter is Republican Nick Gallo, a landscaper from Totowa, who has 49,388 votes. He’s followed by Lazzara (48,842) and Republican Lucy Rivera (48,815), a former councilwoman from Wayne. Republican William Marsala (48,768), a longtime Ringwood councilman, is just 47 votes behind his running mate.
Another Democratic incumbent, John Bartlett, is 830 votes out of third place.
The path for Assad Akhter to win re-election has become increasingly limited. Akhter has 46,857 votes and is 1,958 votes away from third place. He’ll need more than 60% of the remaining ballots to win.
In the Surrogate, Republican Aisha Mamkej leads the Democratic candidate, Zoila Cassanova, by 224 votes for a post the GOP hasn’t won since 1992.
In an email, Bartlett said he doesn’t expect mot of the remaining votes to be counted until early next week and hinted that it is headed toward a recount.
According to Bartlett, there are about 2,300 uncounted vote-by-mail ballots and “at least 1,000 provisional ballots — perhaps many more — that haven’t been counted.”
“There is no doubt that this will be a close race, and even after the count is certified there could be litigation,” Bartlett said.
He told supporters to expect him to make “an urgent appeal to help us cover the legal fees.”
The results in Passaic County are indicative of other Democratic stronghold counties, where Gov. Phil Murphy drew slightly less votes than he did four years ago while Republican Jack Ciattarelli received considerably more than the former standard bearer, Kim Guadagno.
Murphy has a two-point, 2,153-vote lead over Ciattarelli in Passaic. In 2017, Murphy carried Passaic by 22 points and a plurality of 21,185.
Turnout in Passaic County is projected to be around 33.5%. That’s up from 32% in the last gubernatorial election.
One stark difference was in Clifton, where six-term State Sen. Nia Gill (D-East Orange) edged out Republican Scott Pollack, a political newcomer from Montclair, by just 1,926 votes, 56%-44%. Gill carried Clifton four years ago by 4,125 votes, 565%-35%.
A GOP Assembly candidate from Clifton, Irene DeVita, held a Democratic incumbent to an 11,49-vote win there.
Republicans haven’t won a commissioner race since 2009 and haven’t won a countywide election since now-State Sen. Kristin Corrado was re-elected county clerk by 944 votes in 2014.
Lazzara is no stranger to close elections.
In the 1973 Democratic Watergate landslide, her father, State Sen. Joseph Lazzara (D-Paterson), lost his seat by just 93 votes to Republican Frank Davenport, the Passaic County Sheriff.
Three years ago, Lazzara was re-elected to her county post by more than 28,000 votes.
Passaic County Surrogate Bernice Toledo, who did not seek re-election, was criminally charged in August with “allegedly falsifying a judgment she filed in order to make an improper appointment of an estate administrator. The Supreme Court has suspended her with pay.