Alison McHose

State Sen. Bill Baroni will chair the New Jersey Delegation to the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis
Republicans tonight elected State Sen. Bill Baroni to serve as Chairman of the New Jersey Delegation to the Republican National Convention. Baroni is the Chairman of John McCain’s New Jersey campaign. Atlantic County GOP Chairman Keith Davis and Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose were named to the Platform Committee.

The May 13 race for Sparta Township Council is worth watching, where incumbents Scott Seelagy and Jerry Murphy face challengers Carey-Ann Shaftan and Christopher Curry. There could be some anti-incumbent sentiment in Sparta, where Mayor Michael Spekhardt, Deputy Mayor Brian Brady and Councilman Manny Goldberg face a possible recall election.

Alison Littell McHose entered the State Assembly in 2003 with a strong political pedigree. Her grandfather served as Senate President, her father has spent forty years in the Legislature, and her mother was the Republican State Chair in the 1990’s.

But the 42-year-old Sussex County Republican has emerged in her own right as one of the most reliably conservative legislators in Trenton. She is consistently pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, anti-tax and spend, and opposes civil unions, and civil unions. She is an unabashed supporter of George W. Bush -- her husband, Morgan McHose, served on active military duty in Iraq -- and was Lynne Cheney’s aide at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Formr Republican State Chairman Virginia Littell, the wife of State Senator Robert Littell and the mother of Assemblywoman Alison McHose, wants the state GOP to "ban employees of the NJGOP from seeking outside campaign consulting contracts with candidates or committees active in Republican primaries."

During this cycle, the Republican State Committee Communications and Research Director, Todd Riffle, was also a consultant to Guy Gregg's campaign for State Senate. At the time Riffle was first paid, Gregg's opponent was Littell, a 36-year incumbent.

While not exactly Hudson County, the race for the Republican State Senate nomination in the 24th district in Sussex and Morris counties was indeed brutal.  The contest for veteran Bob Littell's seat attracted two candidates: seven-term Assemblyman Guy Gregg, and Steven Oroho, a Sussex County Freeholder and Littell's handpicked successor.  Gregg was viewed as the front-runner, but he had expected to run against Littell's forty-year legislative record and not watch the race become a referendum on his own votes in Trenton.