Democrat Marisa Sweeney has won her race for State Assembly in the 25th district, flipping the Morris County-based seat for the first time since 1977.
Sweeney leads two-term Republican incumbent Christian Barranco (R-Jefferson) by 664 votes after roughly 243 vote-by-mail ballots were counted earlier today.
Sweeney, a Morristown planning board member, will share the district with Republican Aura Dunn (R-Mendham), who was re-elected on Tuesday.
Barranco acknowledged his upset loss and said he does not expect to seek a recount. He also suggested that he would seek to regain his seat in two years.
“I’m a fighter. I’m not going anywhere,” he told the New Jersey Globe. “The voters were very short-sighted in this election.”
Dunn led the voting with 48,175 votes, followed by Sweeney with 47,926. Barranco is at 47,262, and the other Democratic candidate, Morristown Councilman Steven Pylpchuk, ran fourth with 45,776.
There are 1,623 provisional ballots that won’t be opened until next week, but Barranco would need to secure an unrealistic percentage of those votes to secure a win.
Sweeney, the 41-year-old upset winner in a district that leaned Republican, will go to Trenton as one of the youngest members of the legislature and as part of an outsized Democratic majority in the Assembly.
“I am incredibly humbled and honored to secure an Assembly seat,” Sweeney said. “I’ve been a public servant my entire life, so the work that I’m doing will continue at a higher and more impactful level. It’s about a state where people can afford to live. I will not let them down.”
Barranco said that every poll he conducted came back positive.
“The hardest part for me is that I worked as hard in this election as I did in 2021,” he said. “I knocked on doors every day for months.”
A union electrician and the lone Hispanic in the Assembly Republican caucus, Barranco ousted longtime incumbent BettyLou DeCroce in the primary four years ago.
He indicated that New Jersey has some tough times ahead and expressed concern about how Democratic Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill will perform.
“Our part has a big problem, and it needs to be fixed. Freedom has a big problem, and it needs to be fixed. The private sector has a big problem, and it needs to be fixed,” Barranco said. “We’re going to see how she governs.”
