Lillian Burry

Monmouth County Freeholder Director Lillian Burry won comfortably tonight, but the second seat remains up for grabs with provisional ballots left to be counted, according to the Monmouth County Clerk’s Office.

Burry won with 136,875 votes.  As it stands now, Democrat Amy Mallet leads Republican John Curley by 18 votes, or 135,688 to 135,670.

Mallet’s running mate, Glenn Mason, lost with 127,699 votes.

With 98% of the vote counted in the race for control of the Monmouth County Board of Freehodlers, Republicans Lillian Burry and John Curley lead Democrats Amy Mallet and Glenn Mason.  Republicans have a 3-2 majority, and Democrats need to win one seat to win a majority.  

Vote totals: Burry (125,569), Curley (125,193), Mallet (122,949) and Mason (116,386).

In the contentious race for two seats on the Monmouth County Freeholder Board, the Democrats have mostly trained their sights on incumbent Republican Freeholder Director Lillian Burry, but today they went after her running mate, former Red Bank Councilman John Curley.

The mailer Democrats sent to voters accuses the former Republican councilman of dereliction of duty in his post on the council, which, Democrats said, eventually sparked the rest of the governing body to fire him.

As chairman of the local finance committee, “he failed to supervise the chief financial officer, causing overspending of $400,000,” reads the flyer, which also charges  that Curley voted to increase property taxes during each of his years in office.

Freeholder Barbara McMorrow, left, stands with fellow Democrats, candidates Amy Mallet and Glen Mason.

In Monmouth County, registered Democrats now lead Republicans by 10,000 voters, according to the County Board of Elections’ registration report, which positions the shore county once again for a likely battle come November.

And finally it’s a battle at the county level, where gleeful Democrats see an opportunity to gain control of this traditionally GOP stronghold.

But while the Democrats want to use those Board of Elections numbers to trampoline their pair of Freeholder candidates onto the board to at last seize the majority, GOP leadership feels confident that a John McCain presidential candidacy will play to their party’s root strength here.

"Obviously a vast majority of voters are overwhelmingly unaffiliated in a county that leans Republican," said state Sen. Sean Kean (R-Monmouth), a longtime McCain supporter.