GOP Chairman Michael Clancy at last October’s Halloween parade. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
With its two incumbents dropping out, the Red Bank Republican party on Thursday chose its chairman and a newcomer to run for borough council this year, redbankgreen has learned.
Party head Michael Clancy will be joined on the ticket by Bank Street resident Allison Gregory on a ticket in which the mayoral slot will be blank, Clancy said Friday.
As previously reported, incumbent council members Mark Taylor and Mike Whelan announced late Thursday that they would not seek second terms, citing “partisan gridlock.”
So it’ll be Clancy and Gregory facing off against Democrats Kate Triggiano and Hazim Yassin, both seeking elective office for the first time, as well as Sue Viscomi, a former GOP regular who earlier this week announced her run for council as an independent.
“There were others who were considered, but the committee ultimately chose Allison and myself,” Clancy told redbankgreen early Friday.
For the third consecutive mayoral election, the Republicans won’t put up a candidate for the borough’s top elective office. After 18 years on the council, Mayor Pasquale Menna, a Democrat, was elected over then-Councilman John Curley in 2006 and is now seeking his fourth four-year.
Clancy, of Spring Street, is a medical device salesman. He ran for the board of education in 2015, winning a spot on the ballot despite not having lived in town long enough, under election law. He became party chairman in 2016, succeeding Sean Di Somma.
Gregory and her husband, Mark Gregory, are real estate agents at the Resources agency. In 2016, they bought the former Bank Street home of Lunch Break co-founder Norma Todd, where they live with their two daughters. Last year they installed a “little free library” in the front yard in Todd’s honor.
