It was a mixed night in North Jersey on the Republican side of the aisle.
Mendham Mayor Christine Glassner won the Bergen County line for the GOP U.S. Senate primary on Tuesday night with 254 votes. Cape May developer Curtis Bashaw finished a close second, approximately 50 votes behind the victor.
Bashaw recovered significantly from his fourth place finish before the “policy committee,” the Bergen GOP’s pre-convention screening mechanism, but Glassner will get premier ballot placement in the June primary for the state’s most populous county. That assumes a federal lawsuit filed by Andy Kim to end the county line system doesn’t agree.
Glassner now owns the lines in Bergen, Morris, Hunterdon, Union, Hudson, and Warren counties; Bergen supplied 8.5% of the primary vote in 2020.
There was a significant consolation prize: Bashaw was awarded the Essex GOP’s county line earlier in the afternoon. Essex produced close to 4%; Bashaw is still arguably the frontrunner with county lines representing about 50% of the 2020 primary vote.
