Doug Cabana knows how to adapt. That comes with experience and he’s been a Morris County freeholder/commissioner for about 25 years now.

Cabana earlier this month was endorsed for another term by Morris County Republicans. His running-mates, fellow incumbent Tom Mastrangelo and Melissa Florance Lynch, were not as lucky. Both were defeated.

Undaunted, Cabana just sent out a “thank you” note to county committee members thanking them for their support. Their rejection of Mastrangelo and Florance Lynch now apparently qualifies as “old news.”

Cabana is looking ahead.

Now that the convention is over, “We need (to) plan for the upcoming election,” he said. “The Democrats have made advances in Morris County and we need to work hard to turn them back.”

And that only can be done with a unified Republican Party. For Cabana, that means accepting new running-mates – convention winners Christine Myers, a former freeholder, and Sarah Neibart, a committee member in Mendham Township.

The primary is not until June and the general election is more than seven months away.  In the meantime, there’s a county to govern.

Cabana, most recently, has sided with Mastrangelo in a lengthy, and at times maddening, battle over buying voting machines that have been recommended by an in-house county committee. Their opposition has delayed the purchase to the dismay of the county board of elections, which is nervously aware of the June primary. It notes that the new machines need to be ordered and shipped and that workers need to be trained.

It remains to be seen if Mastrangelo’s rejection by the county committee will impact Cabana’s position on the voting machine issue. As we said, he knows how to adapt.

Anderson

Before leaving the convention, it’s worth mentioning a dust-up last week between the committee and Toby Anderson, who just barely missed getting into the runoff for the CD-11 endorsement. That contest was won by Tayfun Selen over Larry Casha.

Anderson last week demanded a whole new convention claiming voting irregularities at the March 4 session. But his appeal didn’t get very far. It was unanimously rejected by the committee’s executive board save for one abstention.

Laura Ali, the county chair, didn’t take kindly to Anderson’s accusations.

Here is the salient part of a statement she released after Anderson’s appeal was denied.

“It’s unfortunate that some losing campaigns attribute their loss to election wrongdoings,” she said. “I should have been clearer about the most important rule of all regarding the convention: That not everyone will win. And just because you lose, it doesn’t make it OK to scream from the rooftops and on social media that there was voter fraud. Our convention was run with the help of nearly 50 volunteer Morris County Republicans who operate with the highest level of integrity at all times throughout the convention.”

Ali finished her statement with an upbeat message about looking at “a sea of engaged, spirited Republicans,” adding that it’s a great time to be a Republican in Morris County.

The only thing missing were the pom-poms.