Hunterdon Republican, favorite to fill Assembly vacancy, has to move into district first

Via My Central Jersey:

The special Republican convention to fill vacancy in the state Assembly may be months away, but party leaders in the four-county 16th Legislative District appear to have already decided who will fill the late Assemblyman Peter J. Biondi’s term.

The only problem is that William G. Mennen, a Hunterdon County freeholder and an heir to the Mennen deodorant fortune, doesn’t live in the district. Not yet anyway.

Despite the state Constitution requiring members of the Assembly to have lived in the state two years and in their district one year before the election, Somerset and Hunterdon party leaders say recent court rulings set precedent allowing candidates to take office so long as they are living in their district before they are sworn in.

Mennen, an attorney who lives in Tewksbury “two doors away” from the district boundary, says he’ll likely move to neighboring Readington sometime after the holidays.

“I’ve been representing the municipalities in Hunterdon in this district on the freeholder board,” he said. “It’s not as though I’m without any degree of knowledge of their issues. I know these communities.”

Mennen’s residency is one more snag in the process of naming a successor to Biondi, who died two days after his re-election in November.

Biondi’s passing left not one, but two vacancies in the Assembly — the first being the remaining weeks of Biondi’s previous term, which is being filled by Assemblyman-elect Jack Ciatterelli.

Complicating matters is that the new term was for a seat in a new legislative district. The legislative boundaries are redrawn every 10 years to account for Census population counts. What once had been a solidly Republican district based entirely in Somerset County is now divvied among four counties — Somerset, Hunterdon, Middlesex and Mercer — and their respective political committees.

South Brunswick health board member John Saccenti and Bill Spadea, a political operative from Princeton Township, declared their candidacies for the seat last week.

Spadea, who expects to lose at the convention, intends to challenge Mennen among primary voters in the spring. Saccenti, who will enter the convention with the backing of his township’s Republican committee, says he will not run in a primary.

Continue reading...