President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda hung over nearly every race, and the political cost to local Republicans in New Jersey was not confined to the top of the ticket.
From the suburbs of Essex County to the Jersey Shore, Republican mayors, council members and county officials — many of whom had won comfortably in the past — lost their offices Tuesday as voters delivered a stinging verdict on the president and his party.
The down-ballot carnage extended from Caldwell, where a Republican mayor was unseated, to Monmouth County, where Democrats broke an 18-year Republican streak in countywide races, and to a Bergen County council race where a Republican incumbent’s vote share plummeted from 50% to 29% in a court-ordered do-over election.
The losses came in a political environment shaped by Trump’s sagging popularity in New Jersey, where his job approval stood at just 31% in a Stockton University poll released in October, with 64% of voters disapproving.
Democrats entered Election Day with a commanding enthusiasm advantage. Statewide early-voting data showed Democrats casting 403,186 more advance ballots than Republicans, with Democratic participation up 2.7% compared with the 2025 gubernatorial election while Republican turnout had dropped nearly 25%.
Caldwell: A Mayor Unseated
In Caldwell, a borough of about 9,000 in Essex County, Democratic Councilman Ken Jurgensen unseated Republican Mayor Garrett Jones, and Democratic council candidates won both available seats, reversing the 4-2 Republican council majority the GOP had built in 2022. Jurgensen led Jones 1,560 votes to 1,470, while Democrat Jonathan Sagalow led the council field with 1,542 votes.
The result returned the mayor’s office and council to Democratic control in a borough that has swung between the parties for decades. Caldwell’s shift mirrored a broader suburban realignment: Kamala Harris carried the borough by four points in 2024, and Gov. Mikie Sherrill won it by 15 points in 2025 after representing the area in Congress.
Monmouth County: An 18-Year Streak Broken
Perhaps the most striking down-ballot result came in Monmouth County, a jurisdiction Trump carried by 11 percentage points just two years ago. Democrats won two seats on the Board of County Commissioners and ousted an incumbent surrogate, marking the party’s first countywide victories there since 2008 and breaking a Republican hold on all five commissioner seats that dated to 2011.
Democrat Anthony Cherry, a criminal defense attorney, defeated Republican Surrogate Maureen Raisch, who was seeking a second five-year term. With 484 of 485 election districts reporting, Cherry had 115,552 votes, or 51.04%, to Raisch’s 110,614, or 48.86% — a margin of 4,938 votes.
In the commissioner race, Democrats Chelsey Tanner and Sofia Ugarte defeated Republican Commissioner Erik Anderson and Middletown Mayor Tony Perry. Tanner led the field with 115,713 votes, followed by Ugarte with 114,049; Anderson trailed with 111,332. The victories left Republicans with a narrow 3-2 majority on the five-member board.
Morris County: A 53-Year Hold Broken
In Morris County, Republicans had held the Board of County Commissioners since 1973, when Democrat Douglas Romaine won a single term amid the Watergate scandal. This year, Democrat Chris Russo, a Morristown councilman and vice president of the Town Council, defeated Republican Commissioner Tayfun Selen by more than 22,000 votes, becoming the first Democrat to win a countywide election in the longtime Republican stronghold since Romaine’s historic victory.
Selen acknowledged the hostile climate, telling the Daily Record that national politics and politicians create their own “noise,” but that he was focused on the county’s record of seven straight budgets without a tax increase. Still, the voter registration gap in Morris County had narrowed from a 19,266 Republican advantage to 16,208 as of June.
Congressional Races
Democratic Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock delivered a crushing defeat to Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey’s 2nd District.
AWOL Republican Congressman Tom Kean Jr., who missed 140 votes on Capitol Hill after mysteriously disappearing from March 5 to June 30, was defeated by challenger Rebecca Bennett, a longtime Texas Republican with a military background who secured establishment support to win the Democratic nomination over three other more progressive contenders.
Bennett spent about $2 million more than Kean, the most vulnerable Republican in the nation and the son of a popular former New Jersey governor. Kean, who was in his second term, lost the support of top GOP super PACs in the closing weeks of the campaign.
Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s defeat exemplified the dynamic: Kean, a two-term incumbent, loyally supported the White House on major issues, including the tax and spending law that only partially and temporarily restored the federal deduction for state and local taxes that the GOP had gutted during Trump’s first term. That SALT cap had been deeply unpopular in high-tax New Jersey.
Other Local Races
In Trenton, challenger Corey McNair captured 4,417 votes and headed into a December 8 runoff election against incumbent Mayor Reed Gusciora, who was a distant second with 2,767 votes. None of the six candidates earned the 50% plus one required to win outright. Austin Edwards (1,709), Jasi Mikae Edwards (1,480), Rolando Ramos (1,191) and Ed “NJ Weedman” Forchion (299) also ran.
In Ocean County, independent Republican challenger Elliott Shem-Tov, 54, defeated incumbent Mayor Jennifer Kuhn, a registered Republican who was endorsed by the local GOP, although Jackson Township holds nonpartisan municipal elections. Shem-Tov ran on the “Fight for Jackson” slate, which also swept the township council races with running mates Christopher Pollak and Amanda Trombetta.
Kuhn assumed the mayoralty in October 2025 following the resignation of former Mayor Michael Reina. Shem-Tov captured more than 10,000 votes; Kuhn got about 8,000, and Democrat Brandon A. Rose received 2,868.
Democratic challenger Adam Armahizer won the race to fill an expired term as mayor of Raritan Borough in Somerset County, according to unofficial results. Armahizer received 1,920 votes to defeat Republican Don Tozzi, who took office as interim mayor in January, replacing former Mayor Nicolas Carra, who resigned suddenly on Dec. 16, 2025, halfway through his four-year term.
Berkeley Heights elected Democrat Susan Poage after Mayor Angie Devanney declined to seek a third term. Poage defeated Republican John Foster and independent George deLuna.
The Trump Factor
The common thread across these local races was Trump — not on the ballot, but at the center of the campaign. Trump’s approval in New Jersey had been sinking for months.
A Rutgers-Eagleton poll in October found him with a 24%-66% favorable-to-unfavorable rating among New Jersey adults, including a dismal 13%-72% rating among independents. The Stockton poll found that 57% of voters believed the economy had worsened over the past year, and Democrats held a 24-point advantage on the question of which party should control Congress.
The president’s policies also created specific local flashpoints.
His threats to withhold infrastructure funding — including the Gateway Project — had already hurt Republicans in the 2025 gubernatorial election, which Democrat Mikie Sherrill won by 14 points after making the project a top issue.
Former Gov. Chris Christie said after that race that Trump’s unpopularity had contributed to “the drubbing Republicans took” in New Jersey, noting the GOP also lost five seats in the state Assembly.
A Political Extinction Event?
The scope of the Republican collapse at the local level led some analysts to speak of a party facing political extinction in New Jersey.
Republicans have not won a countywide election in Bergen County since 2013. Democrats extended their countywide winning streaks in Camden County to 36 years and in Hudson County to a period dating to 1956.
For local Republicans who had built careers on county fairs, road repairs and property tax caps, the verdict was delivered not on their stewardship of local government but on their party’s allegiance to a president whose popularity in New Jersey had collapsed.
In Caldwell, Raritan, Monmouth County, Morris County, and across the state, the cost of that allegiance was measured in lost offices.
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