Sussex County voters overwhelmingly reelect Republican commissioners

Sussex County voters overwhelmingly reelected two Republican incumbents to the Board of County Commissioners.

Voters on Tuesday also gave the commissioners the go-ahead to seek information on the root of COVID in nursing homes and to call for an investigation into the deaths of the elderly and veterans of those homes by voting yes on the county ballot question.

Commissioner Director Dawn Fantasia won a second three-year term on the five-member board with 33,988 votes. Chris Carney, who was appointed to the board earlier this year, was voted to a full three-year term with 32,010 votes.

Democrat candidates Scott Paul and Mike Vrabel, received about a quarter of the vote combined. Paul received 15,082 votes and Vrabel 14,683, according to the county clerk's office. Voters could vote for two of the four candidates.

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The county question was as much a political statement as it was a referendum since the result directed the commissioner board to take action which, legally, the board could already do.

The total, but unofficial vote was 41,644 yes votes and 9,854 no.

Fantasia said the COVID question vote was bi-partisan and "strengthens" the board's resolve to hold the Murphy administration and the New Jersey Department of Health "accountable for their actions that contributed to this tragedy."

She said the pandemic "did not discriminate according to political party when it took the lives of 134 residents and employees of Sussex County long-term care facilities." She said an investigation and the release of documents "the Commissioner Board requested over a year ago will be a step in the right direction to ensure this never happens again."

According to numbers from the Sussex County Clerk's Office, turnout at Tuesday election totaled 42,505. The election day turnout rate was 36.09 percent of the 117,790 registered voters.

The county reported 3,396 early in-person voters and as of Tuesday, 6,860 mail-in ballots.

The question was worded so voters were acting "on behalf of those who died of COVID-19 while residents of long term care facilities within Sussex County and their families" as well as those who died in other facilities within the state, and were directing the county board "to consider every legal action necessary to compel the governor and leaders of the state Legislature to "release all public information" sought by the county "in furtherance of full transparency" and to conduct "an independent, public bi-partisan legislative investigation" into the government's policies, regulations and oversight of those facilities as it pertains to the "deaths from COVID-19 of more than 8,000 residents."

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The scope of the deaths in long-term facilities became apparent in the early spring of 2020 when, according to first accounts published by the New Jersey Herald, outside authorities discovered bodies piled up at what was then called Andover Subacute, which ran two facilities in that township.

There are already federal investigations into care facility deaths, including at state institutions for veterans.

The Sussex County commissioners have said they have been stymied in their requests under the state's Open Public Records Act, for records on state inspections of long-term facilities even before the pandemic began and especially as those places were among the first to seek high numbers of deaths from the virus.

This article originally appeared on New Jersey Herald: NJ voters overwhelmingly re-elect GOP Sussex County commissioners