As mentioned above, the Monmouth County Democrats will be holding their election convention on Saturday, Feb 7.  At this convention, all of the official delegates will vote to decide which candidates the county party will be endorsing in the June primary.   ZZZZzzzzzzzz........

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Sorry, I fell asleep while I was writing that.

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Yea, the convention isn't always the most exciting thing, largely because in most elections, the candidates are running unopposed. Democrats rarely (as in never) challenge Democratic incumbents, and Monmouth County is so red that we're lucky when even one person steps up to challenge a Republican incumbent.

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However... each year, there always seems to be one race where there is an honest to goodness contest between multiple candidates:

• Two years ago was super exciting as we had to choose a Senate candidate to replace the disgraced Bob "gold bar" Menendez.  In that election, Monmouth County bucked the political machine and endorsed Andy Kim over Tammy Murphy.  It was actually a pretty big deal, and since our convention is so early, we might have set the tone for other counties as Andy Kim did eventually go on to win the primary and the Senate seat.

• Last year, we had to choose between six candidates running for Governor, and Monmouth County overwhelmingly voted for Mikie Sherrill.  It was a great victory, and of course Mikie went on to win the primary and the election, although on the way out of the convention, I thought I noticed the faint smell of machine oil.

• This year, the big race is for Congressional District 4, where the winner of the primary will get to take on Absentee Congressman Chris Smith for his seat in the House of Representatives.  There are four people running in that race, so our Tinton Falls Committee members need to decide who they want to vote for by Feb 7.  Yikes!  That's really soon.  See below for info about the candidates.

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I should add that up until two years ago, the results of the convention played an outsized role in who won the June primary. That's because the winner of the convention got their name placed in a super good position on the June ballot, while everyone else got placed in a less obvious location.  That was called the "Party Line", and it was super un-democratic.  But two years ago, after several years of litigation, a judge looked at it and said "Hey, this is super un-democratic!" and threw out the party line.  So now, while the county party still gets to endorse a candidate, it no longer affects the position on the ballot. One small step for democracy.​