The New Jersey Globe has reported that longtime Union County Commissioner Bette Jane Kowalski will retire after 21 years in office and will not run for reelection to an eighth term this autumn.
Joseph Signorello, the mayor of Roselle Park, is the front-runner to succeed her.
Sergio Granados is stepping down to run for the State Assembly, and Stanley J. Neron, the president of the Elizabeth Board of Education, is anticipated to take his place.
In the 2018 election, incumbent Carl Hokanson, a Democrat, campaigned as an independent and won 18% of the vote, while Signorello won 54.5% of the vote.
In early 2023, Signorello declared he will run against U.S. Senator Bob Menendez in the Democratic primary amid rumors that Menendez was the subject of a criminal investigation. eventually, he decided to run for Congress in the 7th district of New Jersey, but he eventually changed his mind.
Signorello was the Democratic candidate for an open seat in 2021 when then-State Sen. Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) retired. Republican Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), who was the Assembly minority leader at the time, defeated him by seven percentage points in the general election.
Neron, the director of the Elizabeth Recreation Department, was born in Haiti.
After Mary Ruotolo, the incumbent, resigned, Kowalski, a former editor of a monthly foreign affairs magazine, was sworn in as a freeholder in September 2004.
