Essex County Democratic Committee Chairman Leroy Jones reacted to the news that former Essex Freeholder Rolando Bobadilla formally backed Republican challenger Bob Hugin over incumbent U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ).

“Certainly everybody’s entitled to their choice of candidate, but when you have a Democrat endorsing a Republican in the  era of Trump, he’s clearly dead wrong, out of touch, and will withier away in New Jersey, along with bob Hugin, and the Trump agenda come Election Day.”

A former Democrat, Bobadilla said he changed his party affiliation to unaffiliated last week.

How’s the party operation looking for Menendez in Essex, InsiderNJ asked, alert to the advantage the incumbent would have with strong performance in one of his key base counties.

“I’m totally confident in our GOTV effort,” said the county chairman. “I’m always going to be cautiously aware, but we’re building our GOTV operation, been on it since the beginning of October. We’ve been in GOTV mode, and we will cover every corner of the county on Election Day.”