{"id":8683,"date":"2016-06-08T00:12:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T04:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=8683"},"modified":"2016-06-08T00:12:56","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T04:12:56","slug":"gop-sees-shakeup-in-ocean-county-freeholder-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/06\/gop-sees-shakeup-in-ocean-county-freeholder-race\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Sees Shakeup in Ocean County Freeholder Race"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_8684\" style=\"width: 778px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/novak.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8684\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8684\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/novak.jpg\" alt=\"John Novak (Credit: Ocean County Politics)\" width=\"768\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/novak.jpg 768w, https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/novak-400x259.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8684\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Novak (Credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/politicsoc.com\/2016\/06\/barnegat-mayor-novak-enters-freeholder-race\/\">Ocean County Politics<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The powerful Ocean County Republican organization, which has won\u00a0all of the seats on the county freeholder board since 1989, is being challenged by one of its own this year.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday was not just primary election day in New Jersey \u2013 it was the deadline for independent candidates to register to run for office. One of the candidates to register Tuesday was Barnegat Township Mayor John Novak, who is seeking a full, three year term on the board.<\/p>\n<p>Novak, an attorney and former state trooper, will take on incumbents Jack Kelly and Virginia \u201cGinny\u201d Haines \u2013 who are heavily favored to win \u2013 as well as Democrats Michael B. Cooke and Ed Wolff, who won their party\u2019s nomination to run for the board Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<p>Novak, running under the banner \u201cGreat Opportunity Party,\u201d is apparently planning to make ethics and patronage appointments an issue in the campaign. On Tuesday, he <a href=\"http:\/\/politicsoc.com\/2016\/06\/barnegat-mayor-novak-enters-freeholder-race\/\">told local political blog Ocean County Politics<\/a>, \u201cMany positions of power or prestige have come to those of privilege and many have known little else in their lives other than public positions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Novak, the race for county sheriff has also gained a well-known independent candidate. Michael G. Osborn, former chief of the sheriff\u2019s office, is running for the elected sheriff position against GOP incumbent Michael G. Mastronardy, who is running for his second term in office. Osborn, who retired from the sheriff\u2019s office in 2013, is running under the \u201cHonor, Integrity, Pride\u201d banner.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/06\/gop-sees-shakeup-in-ocean-county-freeholder-race\/\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The powerful Ocean County Republican organization, which has won\u00a0all of the seats on the county freeholder board since 1989, is being challenged by one of its own this year. Tuesday was not just primary election day in New Jersey \u2013 it was the deadline for independent candidates to register to run for office. One of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8684,"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":"","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":[12],"tags":[24,2228,222],"class_list":["post-8683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean-county","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-john-novak","tag-ocean-county-freeholders"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/novak.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-2g3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8683","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=8683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}