Sussex County Republican Leadership Endorses Frank Pallotta, Asks for Open Primary

Statement of Sussex GOP Chairman Jerry Scanlan and First Vice Chairwoman/ NJGOP State Committeewoman Jill Space:
We represent the more than 29,000 registered Republicans who vote in the CD05 portion of Sussex County.  Our county has a history of coming through for the Republican candidate in CD05.  The last Republican to represent CD05 was a voter in Sussex County.

A Republican cannot be elected in CD05 without winning Sussex County.  In 2018, we won for Bergen County’s endorsed candidate, John McCann, over Democrat incumbent Josh Gottheimer.  In contrast, McCann won only six towns in Bergen County.

McCann lost despite the facts that Donald Trump won CD05 in 2016 and Bob Hugin won CD05 in 2018, when McCann was on the ballot.  We believe that a second McCann candidacy is tantamount to handing the seat to the Democrats.

Of the other Republican candidates, two have collected the resources necessary to even contemplate a race against an incumbent like Josh Gottheimer:  Mike Ghassali and Frank Pallotta.  In contrast, John McCann remains mired in a debt of over half a million dollars from his 2018 race.  He will need to raise what Ghassali and Pallotta have just to break even.  He hasn’t shown that he is able to, this time around.

Between Mike Ghassali and Frank Pallotta, we favor Pallotta, simply because he has shown leadership and a willingness to fight for conservative values and a willingness to fight with us, Sussex County Republicans, for those values.  When our county’s Republican leadership, when our Republican Freeholders, were fighting to win an important ballot question that pushed back against Democrat Governor Phil Murphy’s sanctuary state policies and the porous borders that are now evidently so foolish in the midst of a global pandemic, Frank Pallotta stepped up and helped us.  He ran ads supporting our ballot question and we won.

McCann and Ghassali could have helped but they didn’t.  What Frank did for us meant a lot and we are endorsing him.  Of course, Sussex County doesn’t have a party “line” and our primaries are open.  There is nothing wrong with allowing the Republican voters of a district to make up their own minds.

We respectfully ask the Bergen County Republican Organization to consider adopting an open primary in CD05.  27 members of its policy committee recently voted to hand the party “line” to John McCann.  You are the largest county.  By turnout, you have roughly half the Republicans in the district and that allows you to throw your weight around, but while our county may be smaller than yours, no Republican can win CD05 without winning our county.  We ask you to respect that.

An open primary would allow voters in Bergen County to consider every Republican candidate in CD05 on their merits.  Whoever wins would have the enthusiastic support of the more than 29,000 registered Republicans who vote in the CD05 portion of Sussex County.

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