Glen Mason

Amy Mallet has not had much time to rest.

Last year, she ran for Assembly in what was perhaps the most hotly contested - and most expensive - election district in the state.  Her entire ticket, which was made up of two incumbents, went down, largely attributed to a controversial farmland assessment tax break used by state Sen. Ellen Karcher.

But shortly after that loss, Mallet was again tapped by Democrats, the perennial minority party in Monmouth County, to work towards winning a majority on the freeholder board for the first time in recent memory.  She's running with Hazlet Board of Education President Glen Mason against incumbent Republican Freeholder Director Lillian Burry and Republican Red Bank Councilman John Curley, a former Democrat and outsider to machine politics who beat out the Republican establishment's choice to win the party's nomination.

"After I put so much into it last year, I was thinking about how the issues have not gone away," said Mallet, who owns a promotional marketing company.  "They're still out there in terms of government spending, and really the cost of living here and the fact that folks don't have a lot of faith in their elected officials."

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.