Sierchio Challenge Fails in GOP Assembly Race

Incumbent Republican 25th District Assemblymen Michael Patrick Carroll of Morris Township and Anthony M. Bucco of Boonton defeated challenger John G. Sierchio Tuesday in their party's primary.

Morris County had a 12 percent voter turnout, with 26 percent of Republican registered voters heading to the polls, and 11 percent of Democrats.

The 25th District contains 19 Morris County towns and Bernardsville in Somerset County.

Bucco and Carroll will face Democrats George Stafford of Wharton and Gale Heiss Colucci of Mine Hill, who ran unopposed, in the November general election.

Carroll received 8,473 votes in Morris. Bucco had 7,943 and Sierchio had 4,831

Stafford received 2,706 votes, and Colucci received 2,729.

Bucco is completing his first term in the Assembly. He serves constituents in the 25th District where he and his father, Sen. Anthony Bucco, are the only current parent-child legislative team in New Jersey.

Assemblyman Bucco, partner in the law firm of Johnson, Murphy, Hubner, McKeon, Wubbenhorst, Bucco and Appelt, P.C., is a practicing municipal attorney in private practice with more than 20 years of local government experience. He is counsel to the Morris County Republican Committee.

Carroll, a private attorney, has been a legislator since  1996, and served as parliamentarian from 2002 to 2005.

Sierchio of Boonton Township is a detective sergeant in the Bloomfield Police Department who began his law enforcement career in the Essex County Sheriff’s Office in 1986. He has been a member of the Boonton Board of Education since  2008, and served on Gov. Chris Christie’s transition team in November 2009.

The 25th District, after a reconfiguration earlier this year, is: