MOUNT ARLINGTON – The room was ripe for campaigning.

And the five primary candidates for Morris County commissioner, incumbents among them, took full advantage a few days ago at the annual “big game” party in the local Elks Lodge hosted by Ann Grossi, the county clerk. As the candidates – some with clip boards needed to gather petition signatures – circulated among a crowd that munched on hot dogs, salads and eventually cake, others held forth at the bar.

It was a happy, festive event. But make no mistake, this is an awfully, acrimonious time for the all-Republican board.

As fate would have it, the three incumbents up this year have been more or less aligned politically. They are Doug Cabana, Tom Mastrangelo and Kathy DeFillippo, who is not running again. She has been replaced on the Cabana-Mastrangelo team by Melissa Florance Lynch.

The challengers, who are running separately, are Christine Myers, who previously served on the board, and Sarah Neibart, who serves on the Mendham Township Committee.

The candidates were briefly together last week in Montville, but the evening was mostly devoted to the 11th District congressional candidates so there was no real debate among the would-be commissioners. Hopefully, there will be some discussion prior to the county committee’s endorsement at its March 4 convention.

What was left unsaid is that Mastrangelo is in the odd position of seeking reelection a few months after his colleagues on the board asked the state to investigate him for a possible ethics violation. The specific charge is that Mastrangelo threatened the job status of a county employee over a dispute related to buying new voting machines. Mastrangelo has called the probe a “witchhunt.”

How big a role will this play in the campaign?

Hard to say.

Myers, for her part, said at the Elks Club event that there are other issues and she does not plan to campaign on that one.

Campaign on it, or not, the issue isn’t going away.

It stems from the board’s move last summer to buy voting machines to comply with early voting, which began in New Jersey with last fall’s election.

The board bought machines designed by Elections Systems & Software, or ESS, acting on the recommendation of an in-house committee. Mastrangelo strenuously argued the county should have bought machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems.

He lost that vote, but the saga was just beginning. It was in December when a four-person board majority said an investigation revealed that Mastrangelo threatened a county employee instrumental in recommending the ESS system to the board.

Now it’s February, and voting machines are again before the Morris board. The latest issue is for the county to bond nearly $5 million to buy a complete set of voting machines as opposed to just buying them for early voting.

This caused some commotion at Wednesday’s meeting when the bond ordinance was set to be introduced.

Cabana moved to table the measure, but that motion was defeated.

Mastrangelo questioned the wisdom of the purchase, but after a while, commission director Tayfun Selen called for a vote.

The ordinance was introduced in a 4-3 vote.

In favor were Selen, Stephen Shaw, John Krickus and Deborah Smith. Selen, by the way, is running for Congress in CD-11. And he’s been endorsed by the three commissioners who voted his way Wednesday.

Opposed were Cabana, Mastrangelo and DeFillippo.

So that ends it right? The county will buy the machines.

Not really.

Ordinances are introduced and then adopted a few weeks later after a public hearing. Introduction can be a simple majority – like 4-3 – but adoption with a seven-member board takes at least five votes.

So for this purchase to go through – and for Morris County to have new voting machines this year – one of the “no” voters will have to change their mind.

This intra-party fracas sure sounds like an issue that all candidates should address.