This week’s edition of the TriCity News envisions a head-on political collision between two Red Bank residents — Councilman Mike DuPont and former council member Jen Beck — over the 12th-District state Senate seat she now holds.
But it’s not happening. Not this year, at least, DuPont tells redbankgreen.
Calling the recent redrawing of legislative district borders a “journalistic wet dream,” TCN publisher drools in the current issue of his Asbury Park-based newspaper that the reconfigured 12th will yield a never-ending supply of interesting stories.
Among them, he writes, is a likely showdown between Republican Beck and Democrat DuPont.
Jacobson writes:
So we can report that the Red Bank Democratic Councilman Mike Dupont, a protege and law partner of former Mayor McKenna, is seriously considering running agains Beck in the new TriCity District for state Senate. Or he may run for one of the two Assembly seats.
There’s a perception among Democrats that this new district is somewhat more favorable than Beck’s old one, which stretched west from Red Bank. The new TriCity district include [sic] eastern Monmouth with Democratic towns like Long Branch, Asbury and Neptune. So state Democratic leaders have been urging Dupont to jump in.
DuPont, in fact, added fuel to Jacobson’s speculation, calling the new 12th “a wonderful, wonderful district to run in. It’s the tapestry of society.”
DuPont said something similar to redbankgreen Thursday night. But as for throwing his hat into the ring this year, “it’s not happening,” he said.
“I have a young family, including twin four-year-olds,” DuPont said. “Maybe some other time, but not this year.”
