Running For Office 2025

The Ocean County Clerk’s Office continues to have problems with voting! Besides purchasing a voting system that duplicated votes in Monmouth County, hiring an Assistant County Clerk that had previously violated a law, and now notified a voter on December 12 that their vote was not counted because their ballot was not filled out properly! We wonder how many others had the same problem!

State law requires that the voter be notified in 24 hours, and the voter has 11 days after the general election to correct it. When the voter asked why they received the notice so late, the voter was told that it was a Presidential election, and they were shorthanded! Notifying the voter takes precedence over everything! It is the law!

Scott Collabella, the Ocean County Clerk, has retired. John Catalano, the Assistant County Clerk, is now the Acting County Clerk overseeing elections until the winner of the election is determined on November 4, 2025! The same John Catalano that violated the law that the jewelry store must get the identification of the person selling them jewelry so that jewelry stores do not become "fences" for stolen jewelry.

This year two County Commissioner positions and the County Clerk are up for election besides the Gubernatorial, State Senate, State Assembly, Municipal elections, and Board of Education races. If you are interested in any of these positions, please contact us below!

 Joseph Lamb is interested in running for the position of Ocean County Clerk.

We are going to ask if you would be interested in either taking a petition for 5 or more Democrats to sign or signing one for Democrat(s) running for office in the primary. The purpose is to continue to build a bigger, stronger Democratic Party in Ocean County.

Some of you have either gathered signatures for the petitions last year or signed one and we would appreciate it if you would do it again. The more petitions we have out there and the more signatures of Democrats in Ocean County we gather, the more successful we will be.

We understand if you are not interested in asking friends or family, but we would be remiss in not asking. Whether you sign or gather a petition or not, we can provide you with a list of Democrats in your district or town if you want.

Another County Clerk Issue-In 2022, 200 Democrats were write-in candidates for County Committee. Acceptance letters for the write-in candidates from the County Clerk, some dated Friday June 17th, were not received until Thursday June 23rd and Friday June 24th! These letters stipulated that the letter had to be signed by the Municipal Chair or Assistant Municipal Chair and returned to the County Clerk by that Monday, June 26th!

1.        When a write-in is elected in the U.S.A., they do not need anyone’s approval! We do not have an authoritarian government! It is not state law or a Democratic by-law! The County Clerk did not have the authority to state this! Currently even the County Democratic website is wrong in stating that the candidate must have the Municipal Chair’s approval and does not state that the Assistant Municipal Chair is an option! They do not agree with each other! The Public Law and State Statute they both reference does not say either!

2.        Why did it take so long for the candidates to receive this letter? Was it mailed out when the votes were certified? Apparently not!

3.        This drew attention to a different problem. The same state laws they both reference require the County Democratic Party to list the names of the current Municipal Chairs on their website! The County Democratic Party website was seriously outdated and did not include the current Municipal Chairs as required by law. As a result of these issues, forty-one candidates were not certified in time. Also, sixty-four candidates were tied and seventeen lost, but the County Clerk does not notify those candidates that they were not elected. When there is a tie, no one wins.

After 3 years, only three of the 122 interested in becoming the Democratic County Committee have been appointed! The by-laws of the Ocean County Democratic Party and the Municipalities were not current even with the changes made to the election format in 2020 and were not valid for 2022! We cannot have a smooth legal election for the County and Municipal County Committee elections in 2026 unless the bylaws are compatible with the primary election date and certification!

The Democrats in Ocean County recognize that a change is needed and, even though last year was our first county primary fight, we were able to win one seat of the two County Commissioner positions. We took the Republicans to task for the high tax increases and unreasonable purchases! Our Democratic opponents supported by the Democratic County leadership did not criticize what the Republicans were doing with our hard-earned tax dollars and what voters cared about.

On a more personal political note, Joe Lamb was canvassing in Point Pleasant with a Democratic candidate for town council and another canvasser in 2023. The canvasser said Mitch Seim, the Democratic County Campaign Manager, told her that Joe Lamb ran against John Ducey when he ran for Mayor in Brick the first time and why did he run. Joe Lamb responded that technically he did file to run for Mayor in the primary, but the only two-page advertisement criticized the many examples of wasteful spending, extremely high taxes, and the huge increase in debt the Republican administration had made. No mention was made of John Ducey or Democrats. That satisfied the canvasser. You have to wonder how many other people Mitch Seim and others promoted this nonsense to who live outside of Brick and who would not be the wiser.

Joe Lamb and his family have five homes in Brick. He did not like how the Democrats campaigned in prior elections and was not going to let that happen again. The two-page advertisement was placed in a Brick newspaper that was mailed to every mailbox in town. That July Joe Lamb went before the televised council meeting and gave each council member a printout and addressed the council that the Housing Authority doubled up on the monthly waste removal payments for 2 years for approximately $26,000! These payments were approved by the director who was the campaign manager of the Republican administration. And several people and entities were responsible for oversight and auditing those transactions. Joe Lamb put an ad in the same paper in September listing it all. Joe Lamb worked at a phone bank, canvassed, and donated to John Ducey’s campaign that fall.

Mitch Seim made it seem to that canvasser, and who knows how many others, that Joe Lamb was intent on damaging John Ducey in that primary campaign. This is the same Mitch Seim who took a job with Republican Mayor Rodrick in the finance department. There is a reason Mitch Seim distorted Joseph Lamb's record, it is because Joseph Lamb is a formidable challenger and they do not have anything negative to say about him. You can draw your own conclusions.

We will appreciate any help you can provide. Let’s grow the Democratic Party in Ocean County!