The Mountain Lakes Club dates back to 1913 and is a quintessential Morris County hideaway complete with lake access, a swimming pool and even four in-house bowling lanes. So it probably wasn’t surprising that Freeholder Doug Cabana chose the club for a fundraiser Wednesday night.

Besides the aforementioned amenities, Cabana was able to speak alongside a fireplace. Ah, the coziness of it all. Cabana has been a freeholder for just about 22 years, which makes him, so he says, the third longest serving freeholder in New Jersey. And he’s primed for more.

Now, serving as freeholder director, Cabana is seeking reelection beginning with the June primary along with fellow incumbents Tom Mastrangelo and Kathy DeFillippo. They are running under the slogan, Team Morris, a not too subtle idea that suggests the incumbents are the rightful representatives of the county.

The intriguing thing these days has more to with the county than a campaign slogan. Still predominately Republican, Democrats last fall came within about 10,000 votes on average of winning freeholder seats. And the Dems did win the two congressional seats representing the county.

Cabana grasps the new reality. Not that many years ago – like in 2016 – Republican candidates only had to concern themselves with winning a primary; the general election was just an inconvenient formality.
On the heels of last year’s success and the unpopularity in New Jersey of Donald Trump, Republicans now see local Democrats as legitimate competition.

Cabana warned darkly about rumors that Democrats will spent lavishly – up to $1 million he said – on county campaigns this year. That means not only freeholder, but on legislative campaigns in Districts 25 and 26. The only way to combat that sort of thing is to be unified, he said.

Rumors had circulated Cabana would give up his freeholder seat and run for county surrogate, a job with higher pay and less stress than freeholder. Incumbent John Pecoraro is retiring. But Cabana said he reasoned that the race for surrogate would mean a hard-fought primary – departing Assemblyman Michael P. Carroll  also wants the job – and he wanted to avoid that.

All well and good, but we also have a freeholder primary on tap. Two other Republicans, Donald Dinsmore and Will Felligi, say they plan to run. Both are considerably younger than the incumbents, setting up a possible generational clash. More candidates may enter the race as well. Morris Republicans have an open primary, a system in which the county committee does not officially endorse candidates.

That encourages hopefuls to run. Even if they lack strong political connections, they can always draw a good ballot position.

Cabana told the crowd the incumbents are giving residents what they want – good services with no big property tax increases. Team Morris put it this way in a release: “Cabana, Mastrangelo and DeFillippo (have) guided the county to annual fiscal responsible budgets including multiple zero percent tax increases and (have) reduced the county debt by tens of millions of dollars while continuing to deliver responsive, quality services.”

It probably was not surprising that Cabana’s crowd of well-wishers included some of the top officials in the county. Among them were state Senator Anthony Bucco, his Assembly member son of the same name, Assemblywoman Betty Lou DeCroce, County Clerk Ann Grossi, Sheriff James Gannon, and Freeholders Heather Darling, Deborah Smith and Stephen Shaw, a club member who eventually exchanged his suit for a bowling shirt to throw a few games.

Dinsmore said in response to the Cabana event, “I look forward to an issues-based campaign that will give GOP voters a choice. Competition is good for democracy.”

That sounds pretty wholesome, but it’s not exactly an embrace of unity.