After just a year in Trenton, Red Bank’s Jennifer Beck has announced she’ll try to leap from the Assembly to the state Senate in November.
According to a story in the Asbury Park Press, Beck said she’ll run for the 12th District seat now held by Sen. Ellen Karcher.
The Press reports that Beck announced her intent in a letter Monday to Monmouth County GOP chairman Adam Puharic a few days ahead of a Feb. 1 deadline with the county committee.
From the story:
In her letter, Beck cites a lack of leadership on the Senate side in the past year on several important issues to the district and the state, including school funding and busing; State law 1701 which restricts local school district spending; disposition of the Marlboro Psychatric Hospital property; improving exit 8 on the NJ Turnpike; and the Fair Haven cell tower land swap before the department of Environmental Protection.
“All would have benefited from Senatorial leadership, have gone virtually ignored,” Beck wrote. “No responsible legislator could have voted for the 2006-07 (state) budget. Yet ultimately, it passed with a ‘yes’ vote from the 12th District Senator.”
Beck, 40, is a triathlete who served on the Borough Council from 1999 through 2005, the first Republican in more than a decade to break the Democratic lock under then-Mayor Ed McKenna. Beck outpolled Democratic incumbent Robert L. Morgan in 2005 to win a seat in the Assembly. She’s employed by QualCare Inc. in Piscataway, a health maintenance organization owned by New Jersey hospitals, where she’s a vice president. She previously worked for MWW, a lobbying fim.
Though Karcher, 42, who won her Senate seat in 2003 , hasn’t formally said she’ll seek re-election, the Star-Ledger reports that the race is expected to be “among the most competitive legislative races on the November ballot.”
From the Ledger:
[Beck] said she expects the Democrats to spend as much as $3 million to keep the Senate seat, and she will counter with shoe leather. I knocked on 10,000 doors in my Assembly race, Ill knock on twice as many this year, Beck said.
In addtition to two towns in Mercer County, the district includes 14 towns in Mounmouth County: Colts Neck, Englishtown, Fair Haven, Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Little Silver, Manalapan, Marlboro, Millstone, Oceanport, Red Bank, Shrewsbury Borough, Shrewsbury Township and Tinton Falls.
