The race for one State Assembly seat in the 25th district remains too close to call, with Democrat Marisa Sweeney expanding her lead to 671 votes against Republican Assemblyman Christian Barranco (R-Jefferson) in what could be one of the biggest upsets of the election cycle.
Assemblywoman Aura Dunn (R-Mendham) appears to have won re-election, leaving the fight for the second seat between Sweeney and Barranco.
Dunn is at 48,061 votes, followed by Sweeney at 47,818 and Barranco at 47,147. The other Democratic candidate, Morristown Councilman Steven Pylpchuk, trails with 45,574 and has no path to winning.
Sweeney, a Morristown planning board member had led by 245 votes last night.
As of this afternoon, election officials reported that there were 1,703 provisional ballots and 331 vote-by-mail ballots in the 25th district that have not yet been processed. Mail-in ballots postmarked by 8 PM on November 4 will be accepted until the close of business on Monday, November 10.
It’s not clear when the remaining VBMs will be counted, but the provisional ballots won’t be counted until after the late-arriving vote-by-mail deadline.
The acceptance of provisional ballots is contingent on verification by the county Board of Elections.
Sweeney ran in the Democratic primary on a ticket led by Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a candidate for governor.
The 25th district has not elected a Democrat to the legislature since Gordon MacInnes unseated Senate Majority Leader John Dorsey in 1993; the last Democrat to win an Assembly seat was in 1977.
