4 Candidates Vie for 2 Seats in the General Assembly

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The Montgomery News is a proud sponsor of a forum for Legislative District 16 candidates for assembly and senate.  Princeton Community Television broadcast the forum live from Raritan Valley Community College on September 22.

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An archive version of the forum is also viewable from themontynews.com.

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One of the key goals of The Montgomery News is to provide fair and unbiased coverage of news in our community. This includes equal coverage of candidates—each candidate—running for public office.

The newspaper staff members were delighted to partner with The League of Women Voters who share this vision. They did most of the work for this forum, and have strict rules in place to ensure that each candidate has equal time to answer questions.

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The forum has two segments.

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Part one features the four Assembly candidates: Roy Freiman, Sadaf F. Jaffer, Joseph A. Lukac III, Vincent T. Panico are running for two seats.

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Part two features Senate candidates: Michael Pappas and Andrew Zwicker.

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The 16th District includes 14 communities in Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, and Somerset counties: Branchburg, Delaware, Flemington, Hillsborough, Manville, Millstone, Montgomery, Princeton, Raritan, Readington, Rocky Hill, Somerville, South Brunswick and Stockton.

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Voter registration in LD 16 leans Democratic — 36 percent  blue and 24 percent red, according to NJ Spotlight. While unaffiliated voters used to swing the results to the GOP, this is now a split district.

LD 16 has a Republican senator and two Democratic assemblymen. Sen. Christopher (Kip) Bateman is retiring.

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Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker of South Brunswick is running for the Senate and could become the first Democrat to represent the district in the Senate. Trying to keep the seat in Republican hands is former one-term Congressman Michael Pappas, the Bridgewater Township administrator and a Branchburg resident.

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In the Assembly race, incumbent Roy Freiman of Hillsborough is running with fellow Democrat and former Montgomery Township Mayor Sadaf Jaffer.

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The Republican candidates are Vincent Panico, a Readington man who is president of the Hunterdon Central Regional Board of Education, and Joseph Lukac III, a U.S. Army veteran and Manville councilman. ■

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