{"id":21889,"date":"2023-03-31T05:01:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T09:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=21889"},"modified":"2023-03-31T05:01:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T09:01:59","slug":"bricks-impending-political-battles-take-shape-as-primary-candidates-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2023\/03\/bricks-impending-political-battles-take-shape-as-primary-candidates-register\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick’s Impending Political Battles Take Shape as Primary Candidates Register"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brick<\/a>

Brick Township, NJ Logo (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Brick Township this year will navigate its way through an unexpected mayoral battle as well as control of the township council, races that could lead to significant changes at town hall \u2013 or a continuation of the policies put into motion by former mayor John Ducey.<\/p>\n

Partisan candidates for June\u2019s primary election were required to register this week. In Brick, the mayoral seat as well as four council seats are up for grabs. While there were initial fears that the civil war between rival factions of the county\u2019s Republican party \u2013 playing out in a major way in Toms River \u2013 would spill over into Brick, there is a single, unified ticket put forth by the GOP being led by state Assemblyman John Catalano, who is not seeking re-election to state office.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mayor Lisa Crate, who was selected to fill the seat of Ducey \u2013 who was appointed a Superior Court judge \u2013 until the end of the year, will run for the remaining two years of her popular predecessor\u2019s term. She will be joined in her campaign by Councilwoman Melissa Travers, who was sworn into office this week and, likewise, is filling Crate\u2019s former seat on the council for the remainder of 2023.<\/p>\n

Democrats have a 6-1 majority on the governing body and have held the mayor\u2019s office since 2013, however in the most recent general election, Republicans experienced their first municipal-level victory in more than a decade with the election of Councilman Perry Albanese. While Crate has pledged to continue on with the policies that propelled Ducey\u2019s popularity with residents, the Democrats lost the advantage of a well-known and popular incumbent at the top of their ticket. The 2023 election is also significant in that the majority party on the seven-member township council could conceivably change all at once if three of the GOP\u2019s four candidates connect with voters in a town where Republicans have a registration advantage. Brick, of course, has long been an outlier in Ocean County, with residents historically splitting their votes between local and state and national candidates on the ballot.<\/p>\n

The tickets have shaped up as follows:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Democratic Ticket:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lisa Crate \u2013 Mayor (Incumbent, Filling Unexpired Term)
\nVince Minichino \u2013 Council (Incumbent)
\nDerrick Ambrosino \u2013 Council (Incumbent, Filling Unexpired Term)
\nSteve Feinman \u2013 Council (Newcomer)
\nMelissa Travers \u2013 Council (Incumbent, Filling Unexpired Term)<\/p>\n

Republican Ticket:<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Catalano \u2013 Mayor (Current N.J. Assemblyman, Former Councilman)
\nMary Jonas Buckley \u2013 Council (Newcomer)
\nTheresa Gallagher \u2013 Council (Newcomer)
\nJames Palmisano \u2013 Council (Former Board of Education Member)
\nRocco Palmieri \u2013 Council (Newcomer)<\/p>\n

No individual candidates outside of those endorsed by their respective parties registered to run in the primary election, leaving both slates of candidates unopposed in June, and effectively settled for November.<\/p>\n

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Brick Township this year will navigate its way through an unexpected mayoral battle as well as control of the township council, races that could lead to significant changes at town hall \u2013 or a continuation of the policies put into motion by former mayor John Ducey. Partisan candidates for June\u2019s primary election were required to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"#Brick #NJ Impending Political Battles Take Shape as #Primary Candidates Register","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[4919,4893,24,4484,3999],"class_list":["post-21889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-2023-council-election","tag-2023-mayoral-election","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-featured","tag-primary-election"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/brick_nj_logo.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-5H3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}